The Perfect Tree

     In the corner stands our Christmas tree in its manicured, if miniature, majesty. I can practically look the angel tree topper in the eye. This tree tapers to a perfect point as if shaped in a giant pencil sharpener. All the ornaments match, unlike the early years of handmade ornaments made of popsicle sticks or gold painted macaroni, or all the mismatched ornaments I collected for my children at craft shows and dollar stores through the years. Rather than reflecting the beauty of the tree, those cheap ornaments reflected my children's interests at the time--cats, fishing, music etc. I bought those ornaments with the idea that they would hang them on their own trees when they left home. The youngest is 27. So far, no takers. I managed to drown out the memories of eggnog, Christmas carols and our children bickering as they fought over spindly branches to decorate, by streaming a Jim Gaffigan comedy video. I laughed until I cried--so I wouldn't cry.
     This year's Christmas tree is well shaped, but it is not perfect. The perfect tree has mismatched ornaments clumped together on spindly branches, hung by the sticky fingers of arguing children. Angels should not be on top of the tree, they should be around it.

Too Much of a Good Thing

    I have mentioned before how discouraging it is to announce a surgery, pregnancy, job loss, etc. and have some well meaning, but clueless, friend tell a horror story about the knee that never healed, 72 hour labor, or person that never again found a decent job, but an overly optimistic response is also discouraging. The happy stories of the miraculously fast recovery, two contraction delivery, or job that made someone a millionaire, are equally hard to hear. One of the kind couples who brought food in after my surgery, told me about a friend who was back at her office job two weeks after a double knee replacement. Well, good for her! I, on the other hand, still got tired from eating. Overly optimistic outcomes make you feel like you must be doing something wrong, like you are not trying hard enough.
     In my case, I had the same surgery with the same surgeon at the same hospital, and same rehab exercises, with two entirely different outcomes. The right knee was more stable, less bruised and swollen at two weeks than the left knee was at four months. The plan of God is not a one-size-fits-all formula. He has different outcomes for similar situations for purposes known only to Him. That is one of the reasons I find health breakthroughs so annoying. Even Christians get caught up in the health fads. If Facebook and Dr. Oz had been around during Israel's wilderness wanderings, they would have been touting the health benefits of the wood that purified the water at Marah. The healing power was not in the wood, it was in the purpose and power of God for that specific incident.
    So when I respond to someone's news like that mentioned above, I'm going to aim for realistic, middle ground encouragement. Even encouragement can be too much of a good thing. 

High Pain Threshold

      Having a high pain threshold has come in handy many times in my life--15 years of a dislocating kneecap, 3 unanesthetized childbirths, 25 years of chronic migraines, but sometimes that blessing is also a problem. I do not think I was born with high pain tolerance, I credit my knee with that. When I was nine years old, I was playing in a sawdust pit with a friend. She called me and I stood up and turned to her while my foot was still buried in the sawdust, tearing the knee tendons. In my home that was not the kind of event worth the price of a doctor visit, so I just learned to walk, or limp, it off. From that time until I had it surgically repaired at age 24, my kneecap would dislocate spontaneously when my leg straightened too much, like when running flat out. Kneecaps going AWOL can be an extremely painful process and I believe that is when I developed a my tolerance for pain.
     Physical therapists have been surprised that I am silent during procedures that make most of their clients groan. It is not that I cannot feel what they are doing, it is just not intense enough for me to rate it as pain. One deep tissue massage was painful enough for me to not seek to repeat it, but I had to be told that most patients scream. My obstetrician could not tell what stage of labor I was at because I was not making any noise (although I would have if I thought it would help). During the Botox injections I tried for migraine relief, it was not until the doctor was encouraging me as if I were in labor that I realized the process was supposed to be painful. And when I talk to people about having cortisone shots in my knees, I get the impression those are considered painful too.
     The problem aspect of my pain threshold was brought home to me after my recent knee replacement. A few days after release from the hospital while my husband was at church, I thought I was getting sick to my stomach. It was not until I was halfway through my rehab exercises that I realized what I was actually experiencing was knee pain. That left me with forty agonizing minutes to wait for the meds to kick in. Several days later I had to repeat the experience when I mistook pain for tiredness. I am thankful for the discomfort my condition has spared me, but there are times when not recognizing pain is a real pain.

Placement Dyslexia

     I believe there are many forms of dyslexia besides the mixing up of letters. I have an acquaintance who is directionally dyslexic, she cannot figure out how to get from one place to another unless she leaves from the same point of origin every time. To get to my house from the church, she would have to return home first because she only knows how to get to my house from hers. Another friend has recognition dyslexia, she cannot recognize close friends if she is in the car, even if they are honking and waving as they wait side by side at a stoplight. And I thought one of my sons was temperature dyslexic because he would head for school in five below temperatures in a T-shirt, but preferred wearing in a hoodie in 87 degree summer heat.
     My husband is placement dyslexic, he has unerring instinct for putting things in the wrong place. If he comes home from work with an oily aircraft part in his hand, he will instinctively set it on the table cloth so he won't get the wood table dirty. He will bypass ten coat hooks in the laundry room to hang his jacket on a dining room chair. If we are transporting food to a potluck, he will automatically set the juicy, greasy or elaborately garnished item on the sloping car seat instead of the flat car floor. Not only will that make the dish more likely to spill, but assures it will spill on the upholstered seat, which is hard to clean, instead of the floor mat, which I can easily replace. He picks up jars by the lid, and gets furious when the lid is not on tight, but it would not occur to him to pick up the jar instead.
     And although my husband will happily pet a strange dog or cat, he limits touching humans to me and a select group of female family members. It would never occur to Reed to hug a male family member. His only exception is when someone he knows is injured, in that case he somehow manages to touch that person wherever they are sore numerous times, male or female. But I probably should wrap this up, Reed has chosen to eat his cookies and milk on the small table holding the fifty Christmas letters I have just printed along with the stamped, addressed envelopes, and I want to make sure they don't get ruined the milky way. The placement could be worse though, he might have decided to eat them on my computer.