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13 Reasons Why I'm posting dog poop and not prom pics

May 30, 2017 by Cindy DeBoer 7 Comments

The Netflix hit series, 13 Reasons Why, has created a maelstrom within the media, parental circles, and my mind. The show is essentially about teenage suicide but largely focuses on bullying and teenage angst. Because of my profession as a psychiatric nurse, I wrestle with these things often. Out of curiosity, I watched the show and lost a lot of sleep mulling it over. The best review I’ve read and the one I most resonate with is from Jamie Tworkowski from “To Write Love on Her Arms”. You can read his summary here.

To help sort things out, I consulted my 16 year old and asked her, “What makes kids bully others?”

She said, “They think they’re ‘all that’ – they’re usually the popular kids.”

So I asked her, “What makes kids popular?”

She said, “Bullying others.” (She’s one part smart and two parts cocky.)

“But why?” I asked, “Why do they think they need to do that?”

She said, “It’s classic psychology, mom. Weak people feel they need to put others down in order to elevate themselves. Strong people are secure in who they are and don’t have any need to adjust other people’s perceptions.”

Ahhh – so once in a while she DOES listen to what we’re telling her…

But her choice of words continued to haunt me: “Strong people are secure in who they are and don’t have any need to adjust other people’s perceptions…..”

And I’ve been vexed ever since about what to do with my own social media – the KING of all perception adjustment. I long to be strong and secure, but, at the same time, I had been accumulating all kinds of clever and envy-worthy pics and posts this spring – just waiting for the exact right time to unload them on all my “friends” and “followers.”

I started to wonder if my “friends” and “followers” were more my “victims.” I started asking: How might my social media posts potentially cause harm to others? And when I answered myself honestly (I’m really good at lying when it comes to myself), I realized many of my posts could be considered bullying – making others feel bad about themselves or their situation. It depends who’s looking at it and from what perspective.

But still. I decided to desist from social media for a while.

That is, until my dog pooped on our rug.

Here are the 13 reasons why (in David Letterman fashion) I felt POOP was worthy of my social media feed:

My friend’s daughter, a senior, did not go to her Junior/Senior prom. Not only did she not have a date, she didn’t even feel she had any girlfriends with whom she could attend. She told her mom that prom night was one of the saddest nights of her life. Hearing this, I knew I could no longer post my daughter’s prom pictures. I know we all want to believe that our “friends” and “followers” want to share in the joy of ALL our good news. Yet, studies consistently find that, for most people, a steady diet of viewing all the things other people are doing will actually INDUCE isolation – the exact OPPOSITE of a “social” media. Sometimes, when we think we’re sharing happy news, it’s really throwing daggers.

One of our kids had their heart shattered this past year – a wound so deep, that many months have passed with very little healing. And when the heartbreaker posts pics and captions revealing a life of joy and new love, my child’s wounds reopen. We simply were NOT meant to see and know everything – and all this access to information that we’d be better off without is making us miserable. I don’t have the answer. Parents, should we cut our kids off from social media? Do we throw their phones away? How do we give them nerves of steel to deal with the barrage of images that are undoubtedly way more information than the human psyche can handle? How do I get those nerves of steel? I don’t know – but this cruel media world is why shows like 13 Reasons Why exist. I wish I had a better answer – but I just think sharing a lot more pictures of doggie defecation wouldn’t hurt. Life is poopy sometimes.

I have never once posted a photo of a family vacation or shared some terrific news and received the response of “Ah! So glad you shared this! Now I know I’m not alone with my incredible life! I feel so much better knowing your life is as perfect as mine!” When life is going swimmingly, people aren’t generally lonely.

Vulnerability precedes intimacy. We cannot REALLY get to know and understand one another until we know each other’s pain. I realize social media is not the venue to find REAL friends, but, when we share glimpses of reality, photos of hard times, and stories of suffering, our “friends” will see we are REAL and maybe, just maybe, we’d start feeling less alone. Maybe that would put the SOCIAL back in the media…

I cannot take a decent photo to save my life. Social media makes those of us who stink at photography appear headless, washed-out, wrinkly, or red-devil-eyed. Dang – I hope I’m not all those things…. but it feels like just because we sucky photographers don’t have a $1000 camera and a creative eye, we appear “less than.” I say we need SOCIAL MEDIA REFORM – where sucky photographers get Disney passes or something.

Commonly heard among the young today, “Need a pic or it didn’t happen!” This is our culture – everything must be recorded and shared for verification. So, logic says, most people never have anything bad happen to them. No pics of hardship must mean no hardships have happened. But we all know better. So what will it take to get real with one another? Is it possible to put HONESTY into social media???

I sat by a mom I had never met before at my daughter’s recent graduation ceremony. With tears in her eyes, she shared how she never imagined her son would make it to graduation. He has both a learning disability and social cue deficits – but no one would know this by looking at him. When her son walked across the stage, I cried. When my own daughter walked across the stage, I just smiled – because she was always expected to graduate and to do well. Why do we insist on sharing photos and stories of life-things that are totally EXPECTED?

When we learn of one another’s burdens and hardships, we get to experience in the joy of being overcomers – one of the greatest gifts Christ’s death on the cross affords us.

When I wrote about our piece-of-crap house and the trials of fixing-up a fixer-upper (here), I received responses from thousands of people all over the world. They were all experiencing the same thing – DISILLUSIONMENT from HGTV, home magazines, Pinterest, AND social media pics of everyone’s beautiful homes. This has become a huge area where we are (often unknowingly) inflicting inferiority on one another. By constantly posting our beautiful, clean, and perpetually updated homes, we seem to be conveying the message, “I have it all together – and you, OH LOWLY YOU, with an unfinished basement, with weeds in your landscaping, with mounds of laundry in your hallway, with cobwebs in your corners, and with the PVC piping still spanning your sunroom ceiling which the previous tenants had used for stringing cannabis (or wait – that one MAY be just me….), you are such a mess, YOU LOWLY YOU.”

I actually want to see your laundry room on laundry day. I want to see your daughter’s room after six weeks of simultaneous soccer and musical practice. I want to see your kitchen after making a mother’s day meal. I want to see your bathroom after a full week at work. I want to see your garage the day after a garage sale. I want to see your basement storage rooms.

Because I desperately want to feel less lonely.

At work at the psych hospital, I often ask my patients “What are you finding to be the most helpful part of your therapy here?” Hands down, the most common reply is this: “Listening to, and sharing with the other patients. They get me in a way that none of you (staff) can.” Ah-ha!

Every dog poops. Every dog owner, every day, picks up dog poop. It’s disgusting. But for me, taking a plastic Meijer bag (which, in and of itself, is abhorrent because you have to deal with all those angry stares from the granola moms at the Meijer check-out when you actually request plastic bags….) then turning it inside out to make a glove for myself, reaching down and grabbing my dog’s fresh, warm poop has to be one of the lowest points of my day. BUT, my days have descended to an abysmal low when said dog poops INSIDE our home – which, as she ages, is happening much too frequently.

Dog poop on our rug is one of the milder stories I could share from our lives right now – things have been pretty bad around here lately – but this is where I thought I’d start. I almost kicked my dog today. Almost. I DIDN’T DO IT, OKAY?!?! I’m just so sick of crap on our rug!!! My life is light years away from glamorous, and right on the very edge of repugnant. Is it just me? I’d be lying if my newsfeed reflected something different.

Vulnerability precedes intimacy. I know I already used this one for #10. I’m just checking to see if you’re still reading (REAL bloggers say you should never write more than 1500 words. I’m already at 1600… but hang with me – the last 2 reasons are the best.)

Some of my lowest, most lonely moments in life came right after getting my diagnosis of Lymphanegieoleomyomatosis (LAM). It’s so rare – only a small handful of us women in Michigan have it, and a not much bigger handful in the whole USA. There was no one living near me that I could talk to. And then…. then, I met my Facebook LAM family! Over 2000 women from all over the world connect via this forum. And I suddenly knew that I could deal with this sucky, lung-sucking, sucker of an illness – because ALL of them were dealing with it, too. Those women from all over the world have given me strength.

It sucks to have to talk about your illness on social media. But now even my sister’s family is deriving comfort, prayers and community by sharing her journey of brain cancer on social media. Posting about your “crap” really does help – in some cathartic, Jesus-y, miraculous way.

The old proverb, “Misery loves company,” is incorrect. It should be, “Misery NEEDS company.” We were not made to do this life alone. It’s often the isolation and accompanying sadness that brings some people to take their lives. We NEED to help each other feel less alone. We NEED to share our sufferings. We NEED to become vulnerable with one another. And then maybe, just maybe, people will see they are not as alone as they thought. And maybe, just maybe, we will put the “social” back into our media. And maybe, just maybe, someone will decide to keep pressing on in life instead of the alternative.

Screaming into Nothingness (when God disappears)

February 17, 2017 by Cindy DeBoer 20 Comments

Christmas morning. As our girls tore into their stockings hung by the chimney with care, the phone rang. The phone call that changed everything. From now on, life will be defined as either “before” the call, or “after” the call.

My 45 yr. old sister had been rushed to the hospital after waking up with right-sided paralysis, vomiting and headache.

We’re a tight family. Without a second thought, we trashed our Christmas plans and bolted up to the hospital as well. And by “we” I mean, everybody – Grandmas, aunties, uncles, brothers, sisters, kids, and cousins. Someone pointed out how we must have looked like the Bravermans in the final episode of Parenthood.

Together, we exited this comfortable and familiar world called “normalcy” and were forced to enter a foreign galaxy called: “Neurology ICU”. Here, no English is spoken. Here, the air is thin and breathing is difficult. Here, minutes are hours and waiting becomes your livelihood. Here, appetite’s no longer exist. Here, sleep is stolen in 10 minute increments – in chairs – next to strangers who smell as if they haven’t showered in days. Here, you don’t remember if you’ve combed your hair or changed your underwear or brushed your teeth – but also, you don’t care. Here, you cry a lot.

ICU. IV. CT scan. MRI. Decadron. Dilaudid. Emesis. Norco. Emesis. Toradol. Emesis. Hemmorhage left parietal lobe. MRI. CT scan. PET scan. ICU. Tumor in eloquent area of brain. Differential diagnosis: Glioma. MRI. Surgery. MRI. ICU. EEG. Seizure? EEG. MRI. Diagnosis: High-grade Glioblastoma.

Welcome to our newest Galaxy: Brain Cancer.

And the common denominator of all those gathered in this galaxy? We are lost. None of us know our way around here. None of us know what to say, what to do. None of us know what we want, what we need. None of us know what questions to ask. None of us want to go home, none of us want to stay. None of us can eat.

None of us can pray.

None of us feel God anymore. We are told He inhabits this galaxy, too – but it doesn’t seem possible. There is so much pain and suffering and heartache and anguish here – this feels more like hell. God cannot inhabit hell, can He?

We wail and cry and mourn in this galaxy. It’s the only thing that comes naturally. And our cries turn into screams. And we scream into what feels like nothingness…

And yet…..

And yet….. our phones were lighting up from all the saints – the incarnate Jesus people – saying they were praying and giving us scripture to hold onto. All the things we could not do.

Screaming into nothingness was all we knew to do. But the Jesus-people took it from there:

If you’ve ever hit “like” on the Facebook post for the hospitalized person simply to show you’re out there and you care – it mattered.

If you’ve ever typed the simple word, “praying” on a carepages post – it mattered.

If you’ve ever dropped off bar-b-que on the porch of someone going through a crisis because you know they’ll eventually need it – it mattered.

If you’ve ever just showed up in the ICU waiting room with a basket-full of munchies and a tray full of subs – it mattered.

If you’ve ever awaken in the middle of the night and thought of someone in a crisis and then prayed for them – it mattered.

If you’ve ever felt God supernaturally gave you scripture to be shared with someone in crisis – it mattered.

If you’ve ever just hugged someone – really hard and really long – because the deep pain of the situation left you with nothing to say – it mattered.

If you’ve ever brought food to the home of someone in crisis even though they said they didn’t need any more – it mattered.

If you ever sent a “thinking of you” card – even a lame, dusty, covered-with-pink-grandma-style-peonies, cheap one that you resurrected from the bottom of your “card drawer” – it mattered.

When lost in the galaxy of brain cancer – or lung cancer, or breast cancer, or any cancer for that matter; or divorce, or reactive-attachment disorder, or death, or job loss, or the rejection of adult children, or alzheimers, or heart failure, or marriage infidelity, or financial ruin, or ALS, or any other crisis that launches you from earth – you cannot find your own way back. You truly are lost. And you cannot pray.

And the thing is, you’d stay lost in that galaxy forever – screaming into nothingness forever – if it weren’t for the Jesus-people who stepped up and prayed. In a crisis, the Jesus-people aren’t praying with you, they are praying for you.

I wonder.

I wonder if the Holy Spirit speaks through the prayers, the actions, the cards, the hugs and the bar-b-que, of the Jesus-people and if that’s what this scripture means:

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.” Romans 8:26

Will Muslims, Mexicans, and My daughter be forced to wear visible ID badges?

January 27, 2017 by Cindy DeBoer 4 Comments

I recently met an Armenian woman. She wore the traditional hijab and jellaba – the head covering and long flowing coat typical for Middle Eastern women and often associated with Islam. Her skin was dark tan and her deep brown eyes were lined with kohl. She looked strikingly similar to every other Muslim woman I had met while living in Morocco. But instead of following the teachings of Muhammad, she worshipped Jesus.
Selma is a Christian – yet dressed in the traditional Armenian attire encouraged by her Armenian Apostolic church . She educated me on the plight of Armenian Christians from Turkey. Selma’s great-grandparents fled the country in the early 1900’s escaping a violent genocide under Ottoman rule, making Selma a fourth generation American.

She shared how she is still persecuted here in America. She has been scorned, mocked, spit upon, and even been rejected service in restaurants and stores – and it is NOT because she’s Armenian, it’s because she LOOKS like a Muslim. And today, she wakes up in a country with a president who considers Muslims one of our biggest “problems”, who’s refusing to accept Muslim refugees, and whose inflammatory speech does more to fuel fear toward Muslims than anything else.

She’s a legal American citizen, with a prestigious career. She pays her taxes, lives peaceably in her neighborhood, and practices the same religion that the majority of people in America say they do: Christianity. And yet, because she looks like the people group that American’s are growing to fear the most: Muslims, she is treated harshly – even discriminated against.

She said, “I know it’s just because no one can tell from the outside who I really am.”

**********

At the inner-city junior high where I volunteer, we watched a film on the life of Corrie tenBoom. Corrie, and her entire Dutch family, were sent to Nazi concentration camps for hiding Jews in their attic during World War II. After viewing the film, I debriefed with three 8^th grade girls and asked them, “Do you think something similar – the systematic persecution and extermination of a people group – could happen today?”

A Mexican girl in my group immediately replied, “Absolutely. My parents [who speak very little English] are so afraid of being deported to Mexico. We are not illegals. But how will they know? Since we are Mexicans and immigrants from Mexico are being blamed for many of the problems in this country, it only makes sense that we’ll get blamed, too. My parents say they already get a lot of dirty looks from white people. They think that someday we’ll have to wear an ‘M’ on our clothes. You know, to like mark us as legal – so people won’t be angry with us and try to deport us.”

I told her I didn’t think she had to worry. After all, her family IS legal.

She said, “Yeah, but how will ‘they’ know that? No one can tell from the outside who I really am.”

**********

I shared those concerns from my Mexican-American student at the dinner table that evening. And my Guatemalan-born daughter asked, “What about me? Do you think I’ll have to wear an ID-badge of some sort?”

I told her no way. She was adopted at birth. She’s an American citizen. She is American in every way.

But she replied, “Yeah, but how will ‘they’ know? No one can tell from the outside who I really am.”

I couldn’t answer her. She’s Guatemalan – but could easily be Mexican. She’s adopted – but unless she’s walking beside her all-white family, you’d never know it simply from appearances. I can protect her from being deported, certainly, because she IS legal. But the fear in her eyes betrayed her. She’s awakening to the fact that the “they” she actually needs to fear isn’t the government – it’s those who are looking for a people-group to blame, someone to take umbrage with. And I can’t protect her from that. She looks just like the people that “they” say are the problem.

The Third Reich of 1930’s Germany forced Jews to wear the star of David badge to not just humiliate them, but to keep close watch over them and to facilitate in their deportation. It was an effective way to distinguish between people groups when judging by appearances didn’t work.

As the political, ethical, religious and racial divide in this country continually grows; and as more and more people feel their freedoms, their money, and their security are actually threatened by a few distinct people groups; and being that my daughter looks JUST LIKE one of those people groups – I’ve really had to wonder: Is she safe here? Do I need to have my daughter wear an external ID to show the public she is “good”? Maybe a letter on her clothing – something like an “L” for legal, or “A” for adopted, or “S” for safe? How else will people know? How else do I help her feel safe?

Then it hit me: The only other reasonable solution is to mark ALL THE OTHERS – those from the people groups that we, as a country, have deemed “the problem”.
The absurdity of that thought – and its frightening similarities to 1930’s Germany – is not lost on me.

**********

She’s an Armenian Christian – but she looks like other Muslims and she has received death threats.

She’s a legal third-generation Mexican-American – but she and her family could easily be taken for illegal Mexicans. The condemning glares already judge them.

She’s my adopted daughter from Guatemala – but she could be any illegal’s child. And she’s afraid she’ll be treated differently now.

**********

It’s not the government that these women need to fear. Whether we agree or not with the sweeping statements that have been made regarding entire people groups identified as “a problem” – the truth is, if so desired, the government CAN and WILL deport certain people and also create ways to keep other people out.

I’m mortified that my country is doing these things. But that’s not the REAL problem here. The problem is our ATTITUDE to those who are different from us. The problem is that we, the American public, are traveling a dangerous path towards ethnic cleansing. It begins with finger-pointing – “THOSE people over there – THEY are the problem!”

The finger-pointing inevitably turns into actions, “We must build a WALL!” or “We must ban all Muslims from entering!” or “We must make a public list of all crimes done by foreigners!” But those actions will lead us to a false sense of security and so whenever something goes bad in the land, we will only be left to find more people to blame. We’re adopting an “Us” vs. “Them” paradigm and creating a growing chasm between the two.

And all that propaganda leads to fear. As our president continues to stir the pot of blaming and shaming, he incites more fear. And hate inevitably follows fear. It’s eerie how quickly and easily we resort to hating that which we fear.

*********

My daughter and my Mexican student and my Armenian friend do not need to fear their government, or their comb-over president, or being deported. What they legitimately need to fear – and it’s already proving to be true – is simply the hate from other Americans.

We have become our own worst enemy.

“If a kingdom is divided against itself, it cannot stand.” Mark 3:25.

Teens: Want a tattoo for Christmas? How to get Mom to say "Yes":

December 1, 2016 by Cindy DeBoer 2 Comments

When our daughter Grace turned 16, she wanted a tattoo. She wanted one bad.

I had always believed tattoos were a terrible idea. First, the Bible says so (aka – a Christian’s favorite way to shut down a conversation…) And also, I felt God created us the way we are – with clear skin and no ink because He liked us that way and didn’t feel His handiwork needed to be improved upon.

However, those arguments don’t work. The Bible does mention tattoos (Leviticus 19:28), but if Christians today accept that passage as timeless law, so too, would we have to observe the following: No eating shellfish or pork – locusts, crickets and grasshoppers, however, are encouraged. No wearing any type of blended fabric and bathing after sex would be mandatory. Men would also have untrimmed beards and be allowed many wives. And women – oh my – we’d be killing turtle doves and pigeons left and right as we lived up to the host of rules regarding childbearing and menstruation! No – I most definitely do NOT want to keep Levitical Laws!

We cannot pick and choose which old testament laws we’ll follow – either they are contextual and not explicitly meant for us today, or, we must agree to them all. Additionally, if God didn’t want us to improve upon His creation, why do I not object to make-up, hair-cuts, ear-piercing, and working out?

My arguments against tattoos were weak at best. But I still thought tattoos were stupid.

Then Grace asked for one. And she presented me with a well-thought out proposal that was difficult to refute. She reminded me of the following story that happened to some dear friends of ours:

Our friends had raised their children in a solid Christian home and taught them all the tenets of the faith. After highschool, however, their oldest son rejected Christianity. He chose to live life on the edges – doing all the things Christians consider “big sins”. When numerous problems began mounting in his life, his father tried to reason with him: “You know, son, I think if you returned to your faith you would find life easier. I think you’re making life harder than it has to be and coming back to Jesus would help.”

His son’s response was legendary. He whipped back with this retort: “Are you KIDDING ME?? No way, dad! Right now, I’m choosing the easy way! I’m choosing to live my life MY WAY! If I were a Christian, THAT’S when my life would get difficult – because I would follow Christ with ALL of me. I could never be like all the Christians I know – who pick and choose the parts of Christianity they want to follow. No way. I’d be ALL-IN. I’d be BALLS-TO-THE-WALL, dad. I think life should be hard for a true Christian – not easy. For me, there’s no compelling argument to follow Jesus because I just don’t see anybody living ALL-IN.”

When the father shared that story with us, he said, “He had me. He’s right, you know. Not many Christians really do live ‘all-in’ and ‘balls-to-the-wall’. It really isn’t a compelling movement to follow when most people only follow it half-heartedly.”

So….. Grace reiterated this story and then lays this on me: “I want ‘ALL-IN’ tattooed on my wrist. I want to be constantly reminded to live for Christ – all of me – not just part of me.” She had given it serious thought, and wanted “ALL-IN” written in Arabic because it would remind her of when we lived in Morocco and she felt the most “all-in”. She wanted it on her wrist because that is where the nails were driven that held Jesus to the cross. She wanted the lettering facing HER, because this was HER reminder: to live so ALL-IN that her Christian faith would compel others to follow Christ, too.

At least she wasn’t asking for a “BALLS-TO-THE-WALL” tattoo…

She started asking for the tattoo when she was sixteen. And Paul and I both said no. No way. We refused to let our lovely olive-skinned, underage teen daughter get inked. We have two surf-loving, guitar/drum playing, fairtrade-coffee-drinking, long-haired hippy sons in their young twenties and they’re not even inked yet.

I told her to go read Leviticus 19:28. Proof! KaPow! (maybe she wouldn’t notice the parts about beards, wives, and menstruation…)

She told me to go read 1 Corinthians 10:31 and Romans 10:4

Touche’

I told her I’d think about it.

And her pursuit of that tattoo only built momentum over the coming year. If she ever fell short of the character we believed she had within her, she would say, “Well maybe if I had a tattoo to remind me of how to live…..”

She would often point out revered friends and/or popular role models who had tattoos and then ask, “Do you think [that particular person] lacks good judgment?”

She was good at this. Really good.

But as her 17^th birthday inched closer, she hit me with the winning stroke:

“Mom, you know how the Bible says that our bodies are like temples? Well I was thinking – we find it perfectly acceptable and even good and necessary to adorn the temples, or churches, with things like stained glass windows, beautiful architecture and ornate carvings. And we believe this to be good because all of if should point others to the holiness and beauty of Christ” (I started to regret that we had taken her to numerous grand cathedrals all over Europe and Central America…) “Well, the way I see it, if we tattoo our bodies with beautiful art, or any symbol that points us or others to Christ, we are really trying to accomplish the same purpose. Only this is with our body-temples, not the building-temples. I think tattoos should have meaning. They could be art, or words, or symbols, but their meaning would be to remind ourselves or others that we serve a creative God, who delights in beauty, and is somehow glorified when we create beauty.”

She had me.

So on her seventeenth birthday, I took her to get her first tattoo. And I got my first one, too:

We accidentally bought a crack house – and soon found ourselves addicted, too.

November 4, 2016 by Cindy DeBoer 2 Comments

There is a spiritual heaviness in our upstairs back porch and all the praying people who walk through the place can feel it.

Our college-aged sons who have done their share of watching “Breaking Bad” and have lived in plenty of sketchy neighborhoods quickly identified the telltale signs of a crack room: excessive amounts of electrical outlets, burn marks and beaker shaped cut-outs on the long built-in counter, and an oddly located, poorly constructed, pad-locked closet. Our next door neighbor says the porch was actually a meth lab. The probation officer who keeps stopping by to find the former renters won’t tell us exactly what went on this house, but obviously, some of it was criminal. So we can’t be sure if it was meth or crack or both – but we’ve affectionately dubbed the porch: the “crack room.”

So now we know what to look for when questioning if a home is being used as a drug dispenser – which is not exactly a resume-building skill…

But even better than learning a few things about the drug trade, buying a crack house in the city, surprisingly, gave us a new appreciation for crack and we, too, are now addicted. Here’s how:

At the “crack” of dawn, the Catholic church around the corner rings it’s bell nearly 20 times. It is to remind Christians to pray the Lord’s prayer. And this is done three times a day, all over the world, at most Catholic churches. It reminds our family of Morocco’s call to prayer – and because Morocco still feels like “home”, the church bells help to make us feel more at home here in Grand Rapids. Sadly, there were no Catholic churches in the very-Protestant suburbia we left behind and we never heard church bells.
I “crack-up” whenever I hear the lion’s roar from the zoo across the street. Some people get to have horses and hot tubs on their properties. Others have tennis courts, swimming pools, and lake-front beaches. We get to have lions.

Renovating this old house proved to me that plumber’s “crack” is no joke. Neither is electrician’s “crack”, carpenter’s “crack”, dry-wall guy’s “crack” or floor-guy’s “crack”. I mused at the fact that men love to look at the “crack” formed between women’s breasts, yet I found myself totally grossed out by the simple rear-crack of man’s anatomy. I still decided to take a peek every time anyway – purely for retribution…

There is a large “crack” in the plaster in our living room that we chose to not fix, but just painted over instead. It’s an every day reminder of my dear friend, Kathy, who painted that wall. And the day she selflessly came and helped me paint was such a beautiful picture of the body of Christ. We were NOT going to make our goal and get the house done before moving in, so all sorts of people with different talents stepped in and helped us and it totally saved the day and our sanity. We were never meant to do this life alone, folks. We are all just parts of the whole – and we really do need each other.

We share a driveway with our neighbors. In the “crack” dividing our two lanes, weeds are growing rampant – some nearly knee-high – but neither of us care. And I love it that there is no pressure here in the city to “keep up with the Joneses’”. Seasonal flowers and manicured lawns and fancy cars and new furniture and vacations are all luxuries – and here, we don’t freak out so much if those things don’t happen. We don’t feel judged. It’s very different here than in the burbs – and it simply suits us better.

When I sit on my porch and watch people walk by from every race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background, I “crack” a smile. Something about being surrounded by great diversity draws Paul and I closer to God. We see HIM bigger when we are reminded of how BIG his heart is for ALL people.
When I drive anywhere from here, I usually encounter at least one beggar – and my heart “cracks”. But it was our choice to live in that tension. We want to be reminded every day of our blessings – and also to daily ask ourselves what our responsibility is to serve the poor and oppressed.

And lastly, renovating this house nearly “cracked” the foundation of our marriage. When things were at an all-time low, when we had spent so much time on the crazy-cycle – you know, the disrespecting, cutting, jabbing, eye-rolling, shouting – that it had somehow become our norm, when we had both reached a point where we wondered if our marriage was going to survive, there was this day – this ONE day…. Paul came home from work and I just happened to be going out the door as he came in, and he “cracked” a little smile, and there was something about the little creases that form in the corner of his eyes when he smiles that reminded me of the 18-year-old that I fell in love with over 34 years ago. That little “crack” of a smile reminded me that life is a journey – and he and I have been on a great one. It reminded me that every great journey requires challenges. Every great story must have obstacles for the heroes and heroines to overcome. Every great life is precipitated by lessons learned through hard times – for it’s only through the hard things that we can be sharpened to greatness. It reminded me that, just like the sun after a storm, or birthing a child after 12 hours of labor, or forgiveness after being wronged, or Jesus Christ’s resurrection after death, a light always shines brighter against a backdrop of darkness.

His “crack” of a smile was the subtlest of reminders that everything was going to be okay. We will shine bright again.

Testing our marriage to the very brink of breaking has been the most powerful lesson the “crack house” taught us – because in spite of satan’s attempts to destroy us, we still found God faithful. We still knew, that anchored IN HIM, we were gonna be okay. And just like our marriage, the “crack house” doesn’t look too shabby anymore:
So now we wake up every day thankful for this new (to us) home, this new beginning, and new challenges.

In the words of the wise Helen Keller, “Life is a daring adventure, or nothing at all.”

Why Chip and Joanna are BIG, FAT, LIARS (But we should all be watching their show anyway…)

September 8, 2016 by Cindy DeBoer 11 Comments

I speak from experience. We just moved into our first (and last) fixer-upper. We chose the house because of the neighborhood – interesting social, religious, and economic diversity in a walkable neighborhood close to downtown Grand Rapids. We never once thought it’d be “fun” to do a fixer-upper. In fact, because we don’t have cable, we had never even heard of Chip and Joanna or seen their show before we were already knee deep in sheet rock.

But, curiosity got the best of me – and when our spring break hotel had cable, I binge-watched like 28 episodes of “Fixer Upper.” And now, like the rest of the world, I have a huge fan crush on the duo. This fact pisses me off, because I really want to hate them for making fixing-upping look “fun”.

However, as a REAL LIFE fixer-upper, AS WELL AS an expert on all things “Chip and Joanna”, I feel compelled to share our experience and contrast it to their show to expose them for the liars they are (or, to be fair, could it be they just have some incredibly crafty film editors??? It’s just not possible they are so perfect, is it???):

THEM: Chip and Joanna generally run into one “minor snag” per renovation where they have to call the owner and ask for additional funds.
- US: With REAL LIFE fixing-upping, the shocking discovery that you have blown your budget to crap happens daily. (In fact, if you’re seriously contemplating a fixer-upper, you might want to ask yourself if you’re okay with selling your plasma, hair, AND sperm – because the good Lord knows it’s gonna cost you EVERYTHING else…)

THEM: The Gaines’ kids are always polite, excited for their parents’ latest project, and eager to lend a hand.
- US: In REAL LIFE fixing-upping, your kids grow deaf to your endless requests for “help”. Our kids needed to take muscle relaxers to alleviate facial tension from all their eye-rolling.

THEM: Chipanna (I’m just going to call them that from now on, because they do life together so nauseatingly unified, they might as well be one…) don’t have to wait three weeks for the dry-wall guy to show up, four weeks for the plumber, and an eternity for the carpenter who promised every day for a month he’d be there tomorrow….
- US: In the REAL WORLD, you might as well get your Pokemon Go up and going – because you will be killing ALL KINDS of time waiting for MR. NEVER-GONNA-HAPPEN to show up.

THEM: Chipanna never accidentally rips out a support beam, or blindly drives a nail into a water pipe, or gets impatient putting polyurethane on the wood floors causing it all to bubble and have to be redone.
- US: Just sayin’…..

THEM: I’ve never seen Chipanna break a pane of stained glass window in a fixer-upper where the stained glass window was THE ONLY redeeming quality of the piece of crap house they were renovating…..
- US: Again, just sayin’…..

THEM: Joanna never swears at Chip.
- US: In REAL LIFE fixing-upping, well…… no comment.

THEM: Chip has all kinds of sweet pet names for Joanna – like Jo, Jojo, Mama and Buttercup.
- US: During our renovation, my husband had some choice names for me, too – but nothing like those…

THEM: Chipanna never accidentally purchase a crack house.
- US: Yes, in fact, we did.

THEM: Chipanna never seem to have to deal with probation officers who show up at the door looking for the previous tenants.
- US: Yes, in fact, they’ve been at our door more than once.

THEM: Joanna always looks so darn cute. Whether it’s at the work site, antique shopping, or during the big reveal, she’s invariably stunning.
- US: Me? I showed up at the work site every day with bed head, bags under my eyes, my shirt on inside-out (to save on washing my paint clothes so often) and wearing an old pair of too-small running shorts which gave me a not-too-attractive constant wedgie.

THEM: Chipanna always seem to throw together a hearty and healthy meal at the end of their long, hard work days.
- US: In REAL-LIFE fixing-upping, your evening meals look like this: McDonalds, Subway, Subway, Subway, and then every fifth day you “cook” and make everyone a tuna-fish sandwich that tastes like paint because of all the paint-brushes you have “saved for later” in your refrigerator.

THEM: Chipanna always gets the house done on time. Who are these freakin’ demi-gods that they always meet their deadlines? How on God’s green earth do they do it???
- US: Even though we gave ourselves SEVEN FREAKING MONTHS for our renovation, we weren’t even CLOSE to being finished when we moved in. Our house looked like a crack house and the worst-ever-KOA-campground had a baby. For our “big reveal”, our house looked like this:
  Living Room – still awaiting paint
  
  Solarium – aka our temporary kitchen. And yes, that’s a random toilet waiting to be installed
  
  Family room – no freakin’ idea what we’re gonna do with this mess
  
  Back stair-way – complete with protruding nails that impale you if you get too close!
  
  Upstairs hall – and yes, that’s right, there’s no door to the bathroom because we can’t find it.

THEM: Chipanna will once and a while make a joke about mice – but you never see any – or remnants of any other vermin for that matter.
- US: Our house had a horrific mice infestation. There was mice crap in every single cupboard and drawer. Oh – and the previous tenants left multiple piles of petrified dog crap dispersed throughout the entire house as little “welcome” gifts. Just lovely.

THEM: Chipanna always find shiplap in their reno-houses.
- US: What is it with WACO and shiplap???? A hundred years ago, people in Grand Rapids had very different ideas of what was “beautiful”. As we removed a hundred years of “decorating” layer by painstaking layer, we found: 8 (yes, EIGHT) layers of crispy wallpaper, ugly faux brick paneling, 6 layers of disgusting, asbestos-laden linoleum and 1 layer of tile that looked like an 8-yr-old installed it. Then – wait for it….. wait for it….. Lo and Behold! We finally discovered some shiplap! However, it was on the walls to the FREAKIN’ BASEMENT – the cold, dark, cinderblock Michigan basement that no one besides myself and spiders will ever see. How poetic.

HOWEVER – and this is why I will love Chipanna forever and ever a-men – it’s the reason we should all be watching more of their show: “Fixer-Upper” is far LESS about fixing up houses, and far MORE a beautiful tribute to marriage.

-Chip and Joanna tackle the notorious marriage-breaking endeavor of home renovation week after week and exemplify how we can love, honor, and respect our marriage partners even in challenging circumstances. I can’t get enough of them.

They inspire me to be a better wife, person, and Christian.

– I love how they genuinely enjoy each other and laugh at each other.

– I love how Joanna laughs when Chip bloats his stomach (why do all men think this is funny?) Joanna seems to really, genuinely find Chip charming no matter how ridiculous his antics. And soon, I started to find Chip charming, too. But then I realized this: my husband does these silly little things, too. I had just had grown so cold and calloused – I was choosing to roll my eyes at him instead of seeing it’s just my prince trying to impress his princess. He needs to see me impressed.

– Joanna looks at Chip likes he’s just the most handsome, strong, wise and powerful man she’s ever met. Wives – listen up – I think if we all looked at our husbands the way Joanna ogles Chip, we could probably save a lot of our marriages – because I really believe this is something all men are starving for.

– I love how they listen to each other before speaking.

– I love watching Chip watch Joanna. He looks like he wants to just lick her all-over.

– I love how they share hard news with one another – acknowledging the news stinks, but then, collaborating to find a way to “deal with it”. Ahhhhh – that’s beautiful marriage communication right there.

I think this is genuine Chip and Joanna – that they’re not just “putting on a show.”

They are the real deal – and we’d all do well to try to emulate them in our marriages. I pray for Paul and I to have a love for each other that’s a fraction as strong as Chipanna. And THAT, my friends, is the REAL reason I will keep watching Fixer-Upper. We might even have to get cable…

But we will NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER to INFINITY, tackle another Fixer-Upper ourselves.