Many of my Facebook friends recently listed several random, interesting, or relatively unknown facts about themselves, and anyone who liked their posts was then given a number of items to list in his or her own status. I have enjoyed reading these posts, and I have subsequently been assigned numbers ranging from 5 to 13. Being the wordy writer that I am, naturally I have decided to turn this into a blog post instead of a Facebook status. (I'm going to start with 10 total, but you have to know I could have come up with 20 if I thought anyone other than my mom, who already knows every bit of this information, would stick with me and read them all!)
1. I was adopted when I was 13 after living almost my whole life with my parents as my legal guardians and calling them "Mom" and "Dad" since I was 4 or 5 years old. (I called them "Lovey" and "Unc" before that.) I have the most wonderful mom and dad and have also always had a relationship with my birth mother (their niece) because she made the effort to be in my life and gave me up not because she wanted to but because she knew it was the best thing for me. Last year, I reconnected via Facebook with my birth father after 18+ years. As I have grown up and become a parent myself, I have realized that I am double blessed to be loved so much by not one, but two sets of parents: two people who gave up their parental rights even though it may have broken their hearts, and two people who prayed, fought, and loved hard to make sure I grew up in a safe, secure, godly home. I was the child my first parents shouldn't have had and tried in vain to make a life for, and by grace I became the child my adoptive parents couldn't have but knew in their hearts belonged to them. So mine was a story of grace, redemption, love, and beauty ... before I was even old enough to understand it.
2. As a small child, I chewed my fingernails until they bled. I couldn't break the habit until my mom told me to put my hands behind my back and say "Jesus heals!" every time I was tempted to bite my fingernails. I would say it everywhere, quite enthusiastically, which as a parent to small children I now think must have been quite cute and funny. It worked!
3. I first knew I wanted to be a writer when I was 6 years old. It was at that age that I wrote my first book -- a riveting retelling of how I helped my dad install our first satellite dish (one of those huge, white dishes). It came in lots of pieces and took all day to put together. "We" started with digging a deep hole in the ground next to our farm house, which I thought was great fun to crawl into as long as my dad was close by to pull me out. I wrote out all the details, complete with illustrations. That should have been my first clue that I was a task-oriented person who would be better at penning how-to instructions rather than the dramatic novels I dreamed I would write.
4. People think I'm fairly social, and I do enjoy planned social outings (key word: planned). However, I am really a homebody. I do get tired of being at home for days on end, but I am perfectly content being home about 90% of the time and try to reserve one day a week when I don't have to get out of my pajamas until late afternoon ... or at all. I think surprises are fun, but I'm really not as flexible and spontaneous as I think I should be.
3. When I was 7 years old, my family had a house fire three days after Christmas. My older brothers were both staying away from home that night, and I had a friend sleeping over with me. I heard some commotion and saw light, so I was already awake when my parents came to tell us we had to get out of the old farm house. I grabbed my new Cabbage Patch doll that I had just received for Christmas, and with my parents and our dog we headed outside. The fire had started in the coat room where most likely a spark from the electric heater had ignited a nearby coat or other object. We lived about 5 miles from the nearest town of approximately 1,200 people, and by the time the volunteer firemen arrived the fire was raging. My memory is a little foggy on this, but it seems to me they just about had the fire put out when it reignited somewhere and got out of control. Meanwhile, the water and the hoses froze in the cold Montana winter. We all helplessly watched as the fire devoured our home and everything inside it. I probably should have been afraid, but I remember feeling secure with my mom and dad and simply in awe of the enormous flames. One of my brothers had received a new "boom box" that made bright, colorful sparks like fireworks when the fire got to his room. My poor friend who had stayed the night had some trouble getting over the incident, and I know my parents must have been beside themselves despite their calm demeanors. (Actually, I'm sure my mom was beside herself as I would have been, but I can't say that about my dad. He seems to take almost everything in stride and has always been one to shrug his shoulders at calamity, knowing it will all work out and saying, "God is in control.") We had to stay with friends for a few months, and people from church brought food and clothes for us and toys for me. The things I missed the most were my canopy bed with the rainbow material and matching bedspread and my baby book, which I remember looking at over and over as a little girl. My mom had a beautiful collection of beautiful and rare dolls and never had the heart to collect dolls again. We went back to the site of the house and found some pieces of porcelain tea cups and china plates that we were able to glue back together and some coins that were badly charred. Almost completely intact was a porcelain statue of Noah lifting his hands to the sky, just about to release a dove from one hand. My parents still have that piece in their china cabinet as a reminder of God's faithful provision and promises during a very difficult time.
6. As a child, I preferred having a couple of very close friends versus being popular or friendly with a lot of people. I was always extremely conflicted, though, about which friend was my "best" friend because I thought that could only be one person. I even told my childhood best friend a couple of times that I had a new "best" friend for short time periods (as if I were breaking up with her!) in the name of being honest about my feelings toward another friend, but I got crazy jealous when she seemed at all like she might favor another friend over me. I don't know how she put up with me! I wish now that I had realized it was okay to have multiple best friends, but I guess it all turned out all right because she and I are still close friends despite the several hundred miles that separate us.
7. I was so afraid to learn to swim as a child that three summers in beginner lessons and bribes of money and candy from the instructors couldn't make me budge from the shallow end or the edge of the deep end, so they finally told my parents to stop wasting their money. As a teenager I was boating and water skiing with some friends, and the boat died. We drifted to about 200 feet from shore when one of my friends decided to jump in and swim to shore. She asked me to join her, and in my teenage insecurity I didn't want to tell her that despite getting up on water skis on my first try, I couldn't actually swim and would never have gotten in the deep water without a life vest. That's how I learned I actually could swim as long as my face didn't go in the water, but it wasn't pretty. I didn't overcome my fear of the water until my husband and I moved to Florida and he badly wanted to get certified to SCUBA dive. Somehow he convinced me to take the class, and all went well until we got into the shallow end with our gear to test it out and get comfortable. The top of my head was still above water as I knelt down, but I had a panic attack and was paralyzed with fear for about a minute. My husband says my eyes got wide as saucers, and the next thing I remember is that the instructor was tapping on my mask and motioning me to breathe. I took a deep breath and proceeded with our practice dives without a problem. My husband and I practiced at the Air Force base pool, but it was no use trying to get me to swim a full lap on my own. (My husband still likes to tell people that he couldn't figure out why I was moving so slowly and using so much energy until he went under water and saw that I was circling and pumping my legs as if I were riding a bike instead of swimming.) I was sure I would fail the class because of that swim test, but when it came time for the moment of truth, we were told at the last minute we could swim with our fins, masks, and snorkels, and I actually passed. Thanks to my husband, I discovered how wonderful and beautiful swimming underwater could be. I am quite content, however, with the memories of my open water ocean dives. I love snorkeling and even enjoy swimming now, as long as I can plug my nose or keep my face out of the water, but I don't plan to SCUBA dive again. Sorry, hubby, but thanks for helping me overcome my fear.
8. When I was 12, each student in my 6th-grade class had to choose one state to study in depth and report our findings to the class. I chose Maine simply because it seemed like an interesting and memorable location. We also chose one city or town from the big Atlas and wrote letters to the 6th-grade class at a school there. I noticed two towns that had the word "farm" in them, and I chose the smaller one because the size was close to the size of the town where I lived. I eagerly awaited responses to my letter, and I was so excited to read the stack of letters I received from the 6th graders at Farmingdale Elementary. I wrote several letters back to some of the girls, and a couple wrote to me again one or two times. In fact, I had many pen pals over the years -- girls I met at summer camps and such -- and I was the type of pen pal who would write about three letters without a response before I finally gave up. There was one pen pal, however, who always wrote back. She was one of the Farmingdale, Maine students, and she became a friend I could confide in safely, tell everything to, and trust with all my heart. One summer we tried to out-write each other, and if memory serves me I think the longest letter was something like 40 pages long (20 front and back). When we were 18, she got married, and I flew to Maine to be in her wedding. It also happened to be the first time we met face to face. She came to see me in Montana a few months after my wedding (too hastily planned to allow for her to come for the event), and for a couple of years our husbands' military careers took us places close enough to see each other a few times. When we moved to North Carolina, she and her husband happened to be stationed in West Virginia, and for a couple of years we had the remarkable and wonderful experience of seeing each other often. We don't write letters or even e-mails much anymore, but we do text almost daily, and we have developed the habit of sending each other voice memos to stay in touch. Not surprisingly, they are sometimes several minutes long, and some people might think it would be easier to call each other. We are accustomed to one-sided conversations and responses that might take some time, though, and as moms of little boys it is usually much easier to leave a message via voice memo than to try to have a conversation. It's just one of those things I'm guessing only pen-pals of 24 years would understand.
9. When I was 16, I memorized the book of Proverbs one chapter at a time. I attended a Christian school, and we had a national convention where we got a medal and $100 for memorizing that book of the Bible. (I am sure I didn't realize at the time that the greater gift was hiding the wisdom of God's Word in my heart.) That was also the year I got 2nd place in the woodwinds division for playing "Calvary's Love" from memory on my flute. One might assume I got a big head from this, but I realized I wasn't very good at sight reading music when I attempted to participate in the band comprised of musicians from all over the country at the same national competition. I just happened to be able to memorize pretty well, and I practiced a lot, which made up for a lack of much real talent.
10. All of my children were born after their due dates (one of them at 42.5 weeks), and two of my three children were born in my bathtub. It is always fun when I tell people the bathtub part in person because most of them just have to ask a question such as, "Was that on purpose?" or "Did you plan that?" or "Were you by yourself?" Anyone who knows me even a little bit would tell you I'm not the type of person who accidentally has a baby in my bath tub, that I rarely enter into any endeavor with out a plan, and that I'm nowhere near confident enough to deliver my own child without panicking. So, yes, our home births were totally planned; yes, we had a midwife; and yes, I second-guessed whether I was really in labor with my first home birth (since my first labor and delivery was induced in a hospital, everything felt so different at home ... and I second-guess pretty much everything -- true story). Each of my children's births was amazing and wonderful to me, but that first home birth is certainly memorable since I labored entirely by myself in the bathtub in the middle of the night and entered some kind of labor trance in which God sustained me and common sense failed me. I managed to wake my husband when I kicked the wall hard enough in the middle of a really painful contraction, which was a good thing for many reasons -- the most obvious being: 1. I had recently found I was no longer physically able to raise myself up out of the bath tub. 2. Although I assumed labor was just getting started, in fact my contractions were a minute and a half long with 30 seconds between them. The head midwife couldn't arrive for 45 minutes, but another midwife who worked with her lived only 5 minutes away. When she arrived, she seemed a bit preoccupied with her tools and such rather than being attentive to me, so my husband asked if she was going to check me. Imagine our shock when she informed us she didn't need to because the baby was crowning! I really thought that was at least a couple of hours away, but sure enough, just 8 minutes after she arrived I was holding my baby in my arms. I made sure to contact the midwives with plenty of time to spare with my third baby, partly because my husband had threatened to go for a long drive and not come back for several hours ... or days .... if I even thought about asking him to "catch" the baby. (This is the guy who wouldn't cut the umbilical cords and to this day wants to throw up when he thinks about our sons' births.) I still provided them with another interesting tale to tell their friends and trainees since I overheated myself (with hot bath plus a space heater in the bathroom) and gave them both a bit of a scare. Overall, my home births were beautiful, marvelous experiences that I don't regret and wouldn't trade for any other method or location of giving birth.
I wasn't sure if the facts about me were supposed to be "random" (as some people stated), "interesting," or both, so tried to include some of each. Random technically means "lacking a definite purpose" and in a colloquial sense can mean peculiar, strange, nonsensical, unpredictable, inexplicable, or unexpected. I'll let you decide which ones were "random," and which, if any, were interesting. As always, thanks for reading. I would love to learn some new things about you, too!