Junk drawers, cabinets and outdated spices!

by Kerry Harris | May 23, 2017 | 2 comments

I have sat down at the computer a dozen times over the last 2 weeks to update the blog and I just haven’t had the words. So much has happened. Some good but some really bad. There has been healing and cleaning out of old junk, but there has also been loss. Today I will talk about the healing. I’ll mention the loss but, to be honest, I still can’t find the words.

First, an update on Sam. He is doing great!. It has been almost 5 weeks since the accident, and his healing is nothing short of a miracle. We have come from standing in an emergency room hearing he has 23% burns over the top right half of his body and face and may require skin grafts to last weeks 30 second visit by the plastic surgeon saying, “Yep, looks good. It all should heal. See you in 2 weeks.” (That truly was the extent of the conversation.) There is still a spot on his arm that still is a little iffy but it has been shrinking with his twice daily debridements. We know all of this is because thousands of people have been praying for him all over the world and we are so thankful.

Not only are his burns doing well but his attitude and spirits have been another miracle. Once again, this will deserve a later post, but things have not always been smooth sailing among the four Harris’. Sam has struggled and in a nut-shell, we had to ask him to move out of our house 3 years ago. It took him some time to find his footing and to mature, but in the last 6 months we have seen some real “adulting” and we were cautiously optimistic. So when the accident happened, both Jeff and I, were on pins and needles waiting to see how he would react. React to the pain, set back, and to the fact that he would be living under our roof again, with our rules and with his momma acting as his nurse. Any one of those things would be enough to cause friction but he has handled it like a champ! He has been pleasant, funny, entertaining, and patient. Don’t get me wrong, we are all counting the days to when he will be “adulting” on his own again but this has also been a great time of family healing with all four of us under one roof.

Even though the last 5 weeks has been a time of healing, we have experienced a great loss. My cousin-friend Renee lost her battle with MDS (Myelodysplastic syndrome) on Mothers Day. The loss to our family and her friends is not something I can put into words at this time. It’s still to fresh and unreal to wrap my head around. How can this amazing mother, sister, daughter, cousin and friend, who is tough as nails, not have kicked this disease to the curb? Why can others get to do that but not her? She was so full of life and mischief. She was the perfect blend of love and sass! (If you doubt me read her blog at https://chemosabesite.wordpress.com) I would have thought cancer would take one look at her and run the other way out of fear and intimidation. Unfortunately cancer is mean and knows no boundaries. I will be writing more on my amazing cousin and her outlook on life in a later post so stay tuned but until then please check out her blog and consider becoming a bone marrow match. Check out Be the Match and consider getting tested or donating. https://bethematch.org

On a totally different note, today is our 25th anniversary. To honor the commitment we made before God and our family and friends all those years ago, I cleaned out 2 cabinets yesterday. Woohoo! We party hard! I know you all are so jealous of the fabulous life we lead. Ha! Seriously though, I really did clean out the cabinets and I threw away spices I received from my bridal shower 25 years and 3 houses ago. Why you ask? Two reasons, really. The first is very practical. They were a mess and it was driving both of us crazy. (One of us may have commented about it several times.) I know everyone has a junk drawer or cabinet but several of our drawers and cabinets had become that way and neither of us can stand clutter.

Now for the literary and profound reason that will tie it all together. Drum roll please………cluttered drawers and cabinets can very quickly become a metaphor for our life and for marriage.

Stay with me here. The drawers and cabinets in our life become cluttered because we are in a hurry and shove stray items, left out, in a place where we don’t have to see them because we don’t have time to take care of it right then. Or we collect spices over the years and we never bother to do an inventory to see if they are expired or if we have replaced them with a new one. It’s clear right? Just like life and marriage. We rarely take the time to clean out the junk in our relationships. We sweep it in the drawer or shove it in the back of the cabinet. We only look for the missing item when something breaks or when we make a special meal that requires marjoram. (What actually has ever used marjoram?!) I know I’ve ventured out on a tangent but this is what I’ve learned over 25 years of marriage with an amazing husband. WE ALL HAVE JUNK! And at some point we have to deal with that stuff. We have to take an inventory and go through our outdated spices. We have to throw out the old hurts, fix what is broken, and celebrate how far we have come. What better time to do that than an anniversary.

Jeff and I got married 25 years ago. We were young and naive about life and marriage. We had no idea what was in store for us. We just knew we loved each other and we wanted marry our best friend. We were so clueless! 25 years later, we are not as young and not as naive. Life has taken us to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, but we still love each other and are still best friends. We are still clueless about why life is the way it is, most the time, but here is some harsh truth and reality that will save your years of therapy. Jeff is NOT my prince charming, here to save me, from the evil in this world. This is NOT a fairytale. And furthermore, I DO NOT complete Jeff, like Jerry Maguire would have us believe. Life is not a romance movie either. I am only saved and Jeff is only complete through the grace and love of God and His son, Jesus. There is no magic fairy Godmother that produces a new outfit and mode of transportation, and most the time, there is not a ball. Life and marriage is messy, mundane, crazy, boring, hard, sweet, sad, full, lonely and chaotic, all at the same time. It brings both joy and tears on any given day. The only way I have found to deal with all of this is to put God first in my life, and get down on my knees in prayer. That includes my marriage, kids, and friendships. And then I clean out the junk left by unrealistic expectations of what I thought life should be like. I grab the hand of the imperfect guy I married, and we move on to the next mess.

No Tech!

by Kerry Harris | May 4, 2017 | 3 comments

It’s hard to believe it has been almost two weeks since Sam’s accident and a week since we have been home. Is it possible to have both time flying and standing still? Each day is filled with debridement and dressing changes along with cutting, preparing and setting up the next set of bandages.  When you’re through cleaning the tub and washing the towels after each debridement there is hardly time for the cooking and cleaning. This is our new normal for now.

We had our first visit to the burn clinic Tuesday. His burns look good and are thinning out. They no longer seem concerned about the ones on his torso and left leg but are still keeping an eye on the one on the bottom side of his bicep. It is layered with dead skin but is showing some thinning. Time, and twice a day debridements, will tell. As the skin thins and exposes raw and new skin, there is quite a bit of pain. So imagine Sam’s excitement when the doctor wrote him a new pain med script but cut it down to 1 every 6 hours and told him he shouldn’t be in too much pain but he can take 800 mg of ibuprofen. Hmmmm…….he had just asked him about the one spot under his arm that is dead skin and has no feeling so we are going to give him the benefit of the doubt that that was the one spot that shouldn’t feel pain. The rest is raw skin with nerve endings firing to rebuild what is damaged. Don’t get me wrong, we want him off pain meds too, but isn’t there an option in between ibuprofen and oxycodon. Our other observation is that the nursing staff at the clinic is NOT the same as the burn unit staff. They were nice but NOBODY is as good at dressing a wound at the nurses on the burn unit. We will just leave it at that.

All of the above makes our days move really fast, but at times if feels like time isn’t moving fast enough. The hustle and bustle of every day normal life was stopped for us 2 weeks ago. Everything, any of us, had on our individual schedules had to be changed or reevaluated. Meetings at Jeff’s office had to be moved. Projects in the studio postponed. Schedules as Sam’s work adjusted. Interviews for potential leaders at BSF changed or handled by the current teaching leader. Plan’s with friends cancelled. Tickets for 2 for husband and wife became tickets for me and a friend. A 5 day planned trip to Nashville for Jeff to attend a writing workshop and for me to hang with friends, has been changed to a 3 day trip just for Jeff. The majority of our calendars are blank which seems entirely foreign to us. We are trying to just enjoy not being ruled by appointments and calendars, but when you are used to going, going, going, you start to get a little stir crazy.  So we are gradually adding things back in. For Sam, that included Duke, his dog, that came to “live” with us last night. He has been at Taylor’s mom’s house for over a week. And Today I’m going to BSF (Bible Study Fellowship). I can’t remember, in the last 15 years, missing 2 weeks in a row like this. I’ve still been doing my bible study but missing leaders meeting and class day has been hard.

What else do you do with time on your hands? You go over to your grandparents house and try to explain how to stream an iPad app show onto the TV screen using the apple TV. Sounds easy, right? No! I have to mentally walk myself through the process when I watch Amazon Prime or on a Sunday, when we watch church from home, and I use my iPad and iPhone constantly. Now my 83 year old Dad has an iPad, iPhone and laptop that he is pretty good and navigating. We have taught him social media and how to group text. He doesn’t need much instruction because he was the IT guy at the Toledo Blade for years, but admits technology is moving too fast for him to keep up. My almost 80 year old mother, on the other hand, has an iPad but only uses it to read when her kindle is out of battery or she needs more light. She is still using a flip phone but only turns it on when she runs to the store and leaves my dad home alone. Let’s just say Sam instructing her was quite entertaining. He was patient and she was a pretty good student. Dad and I watched from our respective corners and chuckled. As an IT guy, Dad had worked for years with two different types of people. High Tech and Low Tech. Unfortunately my Mom is neither. She is No Tech. She cares nothing about computers and has never learned how to use one. We have even tried to entice her with online shopping. She got around that by telling Dad what she was looking for and he did the leg work. The only exception she made was when the kindle was invented. Being a lover of books and reading the idea of having a device where every book was at the push of a button, got her. She has literally worn out two earlier versions of the kindle. She even may have sprained her thumb turning the pages when she got her first Kindle. So what got her so interested in streaming an app? People magazine! They have online interviews of some of their articles on the PEN app, (she actually thought it was a TV station) and an article on Scott Hamilton caught her eye, so she was eager to learn. She even took notes. Step 1. Turn on the TV, Step 2. Turn on the iPad, Step 3. Find the Pen app. All written down in her trusty notebook that holds all her passwords. She is a hackers dream and an IT guy’s nightmare. Before we left, Dad suggested she add a final step to her notebook: Step 4. Call Sam!