The clouds drag over
the prairie to work
in the horse fields.
Rain—an instant sister.
Outside the barn,
the Mandarin language
in a raincoat.
Always the words
wonder where they
will fall when they
drip off the tongue.
My sister floods the plains
as a gift to our ancestors
who wove bicycles on looms.
Instant sister never arising
from good faith,
but falling from certainty,
a meteorological right
I’ll fight for.
In the wind,
Mandarin chatters.
My spirit is much gentler and much quieter than it used to be. A gentle and quiet spirit in a woman is precious to God. But although I try to be gentle, sometimes I lose my temper. I don’t even try to be quiet at home. I am not even sure I am capable of being quiet!
What does it mean to have a gentle and quiet spirit? How does this pair with being a strong person, with having a strong personality, with being opinionated? Can they go together? It is such a hard issue to understand. What is wrong with a spirit that wants to do more and be more? There is a fine line between gratitude and complacency.
So far, although I am reading about it and searching scripture, the conclusions I have come to are this: do not be contentious, control your temper, and use soft words for the people around you. Perhaps being gentle and quiet has nothing to do with whether you are weak or strong, opinionated or not, or the color of your personality.
I have made so much progress on having a gentle and quiet spirit, but I have a long way to go to be pleasing to God. I focus too much on my own needs and not enough on my husband’s. I am short tempered and rash. I am too easily stressed out, instead of taking serenity from the knowledge that God is in control. My tongue is too sharp at times.
My story is the decor
in a vault robbed of my
birth certificate.
Painted chapters—
good information about the
berries who influenced me
and the flowers I changed.
Chapter by chapter,
my flag unfurls,
a rainbow stiff in the breeze
on a line that could snap
and cut the sweet planet in half.
The juice will drip into
the hungry mouth
of directionless space.
The epilogue is encased
in purple plastic,
a report with glittering graphs,
sobering statistics.
As a firm believer in gender roles, the God-designed differences between men and women, and submission, I found this book to be one that really hit home. It spelled out cogent arguments for what I already believed, and it brought to my attention fresh ideas about the roles of the sexes in light of scripture. I have found that living out God’s designed role for me makes my life and my marriage better for me. I highly recommend this book, especially for Christian feminists. It presents clear rebuttals to that ideology.
Today I went to see the surgeon in Denver for his opinion. My doctor in Colorado Springs recommended that I do that since the problem with my ankle bone is uncommon and pretty severe. This doctor reiterated that the problem was severe, and that I would never have a normal joint again, but he gave me a brace to wear and the name of a special kind of shoe to buy. The doctor said that I may have no choice but to do surgery right now, and I definitely will not be able to avoid surgery in the future. However, every surgical option I have has a very low success rate. Sometimes people even get worse. And on top of that they are not permanent. There is nothing that can be done, from taking out a piece of bone from my hip and grafting it into my ankle bone, to finding me a cadaver match, to fusing the ankle and getting rid of the joint and the movement all together, that has a high likelihood of success. Of the three, fusing the joint and getting rid of it has the highest likelihood of success. However the downside is that when you do an ankle fusion you have a good chance of getting arthritis in your foot from having to use the middle of your foot too much. Then you can end up having to get your foot fused. If that happens you have no movement anymore. That’s not good. So he said that fusing the ankle should be a last resort.
He also said that a good section of my cartilage is pretty bad. My leg bone is also damaged and deteriorated. There’s evidence that the first surgeon in Virginia drilled into my leg bone for some reason. There is appears to be a drill hole going through the bone diagonally. He didn’t say that that’s what has caused my leg bone to be damaged. He wants to see the notes from that original surgery see what exactly was going on. But he cannot fathom why that drill hole is there. I doubt it’s exactly helpful, but we will see if there was a good reason for it. But part of the leg bone is damaged, and that connects to the cartilage that’s pretty much shot, and that connects to a damaged ankle bone actually missing a chunk of itself.
The doctor was very kind and patient and he also made it clear that it was my choice. If the bone proves to be infected I don’t know what I have to do. I have to get blood work done this week to determine that. If it’s infected that might throw a wrench in things. Beyond that he said that surgery is my choice and that I could give some thought into which kind of surgery I would want to do. I highly want to avoid surgery for as long as possible, so I’m going to be giving this brace a chance for a few weeks and get those special shoes. If there was an option for surgery that had good odds for success and would last at least a decent amount of time I honestly would prefer to just have surgery and get it over with. Suffer now to have my thirties and forties be pain free, or almost pain free, and be able to walk long distances like I used to and take the stairs without worrying. But since my chances are not good with any of these surgeries I don’t want to take that plunge if I don’t have to. If the brace and special shoes can give me enough relief for at least a couple of years, I would like to hold off. I really hope I will get some relief.
You must read this book! It is unique and filled with great imagery and sylph like ideas.
The forest clutches
stolen fire
while lightning loses her identity.
We hold onto bad things
and are leveled like
post-tsunami water.
In the forest,
trees in pain –
the communication between
leaf and air severed.
When the grasses and branches
have burned,
the forest repents.
And then the falling
of fallen water.
Miniature Moon 