Who Am I?

The real test of a person’s character isn’t how you act when you are happy, it’s how you behave when you are HURT, FRUSTRATED or UPSET. (- a paraphrased quote from Cody Bret that I recently ran across). A crisis will reveal what is already there it doesn’t create a person. Those seemingly insignificant daily choices and habits are what mold a person into who they are. So here’s what happened ….

The other day I was just having one of those mornings…. I hadn’t gotten any decent sleep in several days because my sweet 7 month old was going through a growth spurt. Sleep deprived mommy, yikes. I woke up to early with the baby and honestly the morning was going pretty well. We have been right in the middle of the peek of harvest season on our homestead and this year the goal is to pack away as much delicious food as possible. It is good but exhausting work. Not only is it harvest season but it is also back to school. In our family we choose to homeschool year round and include lots of practical skills, so taking “breaks” from lots of bookwork is not uncommon. I had already talked it over with the kids and we decided keeping up with our light summer schedule would be best until after the food had been put up for winter. This particular morning we had a glorious lull in the ripening of food so we discussed what we needed to prioritize. House chores? Homeschool? Rest? BEES! Oh my goodness I had forgotten we needed to button up my 11 year olds hive for the winter and decide if we were going to get any honey this year.

If you have known our family for any amount of time at all you will know how much my son LOVES his bees. He became a bee keeper about 3 years ago, but his love of bees started at a very young age. So as we were discussing the morning and remembering the bees of course his answer is YES!! Let’s do the bees.

Now, you have to understand and perhaps you can feel it in our YouTube videos that while my son absolutely loves the bees…. I have very different feelings…. you see I have had to overcome a significant amount of fear while being his hive helper. My sisters and I grew up in the woods and had experienced several occasions where we were attacked by hives of bees. Well technically speaking they were wasps.

Yes more than one time.

We were chased.

By thousands of angry wasps…. stinging…. angry… buzzing wasps.

Some bees live in ground hives in our area and often times while we hiked around the brush we would unknowingly kick in their front door. I mean who can blame them for being angry?? The bees were left to repair their hives and I was left with a lasting trauma. What can I say?

Okay, so now that you have a feel for how I am under the surface at every hive inspection you will see deeper Into the videos we are producing. Ha Ha Ha.

So we decided on this dewy late summer morning that we would get into this hive, which has been a less than delightful experience this year and do one last button up before the fall cold settles in. As my son’s excitement grew so did my anxiety. I shoved it down. I waited for the baby to nap and then we suited up.

We had our plan, get in, check it out, fix it up and get out. Simple enough. Or so I thought.

I am so pleased at my son’s level of interest and I whole heartedly support his beekeeping endeavors. This is one of the many reasons we choose to homeschool. This is his hive and I let him make most of the decisions that need to be made. I think we know just enough about bee keeping to get us into some trouble. Let’s just say it’s been quite the learning experience. My son gets very excited about teaching people, including me, about his bees that he forgets what he’s doing and supposed to be focusing on while we are in the hive.

Smoking the entrance of the beehive.

While there are thousands of bees crawling all over the frames of the hive, buzzing and flying around he’s busy saying things like, Oh! Mom, look at this! Wow! See how they are cleaning this cell? Awe look one is hatching! Zero fear in him as the bees are walking all over his hands… meanwhile I’m thinking to myself yes, honey that’s nice can we be done now? I do appreciate the incredible design and all the effort God put into the tiniest little honeybees but I’d prefer to appreciate it at a distance.

Inspecting frames

So the baby is napping. We get out to the hive all suited up. I tell my son I’m on the clock and we need to be fairly quick at this and we get into the hive. The hive is HOT! (If you know anything about bee keeping you probably know what this means… the bees are not calm… they are angry) Again. Hand in face. I won’t go into all the details but let's just suffice it to say this has been one rough year for bee keeping in North Idaho. Okay, let’s just check out the frames and get out, I say to him. While the bees are pinging our suits, angrily buzzing around my son is contentedly inspecting each frame as if there is nothing out of the ordinary. My fuse is burning at both ends. I am realizing just how tired I am from my sleepless nights. We keep going deeper into the noisy hive. I get even more stretched thin…. and then it happens. I hit my wall. I am done. We finish up the inspection. Which did not go well. My son is frustrated and discouraged and going on and on negatively about his hive and that’s when my 11 year old son and I get in our first real verbal argument.

Fake smile… hahaha … but proof that fears can be overcome.

Don't get me wrong every parent has moments when they have to parent and we’ve had plenty of those. But this was different. This was more like business man to worker. The, I QUIT! Kind of argument. All my self control went out the window and I lost it. And I really did tell him I quit. It’s a little funny in retrospect. (Only because of what followed) I got back to our shop, ripped off the bee keeping gloves and unzipped the suit. I stomped into the house and of course right then and there the baby wakes up. Sigh.

I go in to take care of my little one. Breath. Just breathe, I tell myself. His little snuggly self is all cuddled up and calms me down.

What in the world just happened?

I decide mommy needs a time out. I get the baby settled and leave him in the charge of his big sister for a few moments and I get into the shower.

God! Uh… I need to talk to you. What is going on?

Instantly I see that sentence in my minds eye…

The real test of character is not who you are when you are happy, it’s how you behave when you are hurt, frustrated or upset.

Gut punch.

While most of the time I have found that the correction of the Holy Spirit is gente and kind sometimes it hits deep and hard. Especially for old nasty wounds in the heart that have been left to fester.

God where is this coming from? I ask.

Suddenly in my mind’s eye I flash back to when I am just a little girl and I see my parents arguing. My sister and I had been drug into the middle of it once again and I hear the words “this is your fault”.

I knew. It was like a portal into my past, my present and my future all at once. I knew what I needed to do. How to heal the hurt for that little girl, how to repair the damage with my son and how to turn the generational curse into a generational blessing.

I heard a question my husband had asked me just the night before ringing in my ears. We had been not quite sure what was causing the sleepless nights for the baby. Was it teething? Or could it be his tummy hurting from something he ate? We were deliberating this question late one night while the baby was crying harder than usual. In his desperation to help the baby he said “can you just forget the herbs for a minuet and let’s just give him Orajel?” We continued our discussion… and eventually came to the conclusion there was nothing really wrong it was a major mental growth spurt. The question made me question my validity as an herbalist. I started to question my training, my experience… but it wasn’t until the next morning when the question came back to me I fully understood. It was not about that.

You see, the crisis in ones life shows us the “fruit” so to speak, that we are producing by our daily choices. The Bible talks about this often. A person can apply this to so many areas of their life.

Is it the studying that makes a person an herbalist? Or is the difficult moments when sickness takes hold when you have a choice to make… fall back on the pharmaceuticals you are used to taking or try something different. Put the knowledge into practice and use the herbs? This is uncomfortable while making the transition from something you grew up doing. A long standing habit takes time to undo and turn into a new normal.

When you decide to get healthier and you're doing great until you get sick and fall back on 7up and saltine crackers… then all you want is junk food again when you come out of it. It takes a diligent person to be ready for the change. Set yourself up for success. Have the new healing foods ready. Make the chicken broth and stock it up in the freezer. Then the change is easier to embrace when you are not feeling your best.

How about when you choose to date someone and they finally start showing their true authentic self to you? Do you fold the cards and back out because you see something challenging or do you press on and love that part of them?

When your plans fall through and nothing goes the way you thought it would. Do you fall back on those old habits?

When you loose your job suddenly. Does this change who you are?

When you choose to homeschool and someone questions your choices… or you totally lack support. Do you give up and put your kids back into the public school system?

I recently watched this instagram video and the man in the video proposed a question.

“Is what I do who I am?”

Is what I do my purpose on this earth? For example If I am a singer and I loose my voice is my existence no longer valid? Have I lost my purpose for living? Absolutely not! Who you are is your character. It is who you are while what you are doing. That is your purpose. My oldest son has been wrestling with this question for several years now. The thought of growing up and leaving home, trying to figure out who he is seems to be a daunting question for him. This clarified it and brought him so much peace.

So if who you are while you are frustrated or hurt or scared or in the thing becomes your purpose. Oh man. A person can literally do anything with their life and just shine or not! And boy howdy do I have some more refining work to do in my own life.

I had a choice to make in this moment. Was I going to refine my inner self and press forward or was I going to let this portal moment to my past heal me?

I chose healing. Not just for me, but for my family. I know better than to let wounds fester once you know they are there it’s best to deal with the issues and not let them go. I’ve had plenty of real life lessons on that front. Not only did I decide to heal my own self I chose to do it in the presence of my children. If I could show them this process in real time with real emotion oh man, what an opportunity for them to learn. This is relationship. This is healing. This is powerful.

Okay God, I prayed. what is the root of this issue? Why did I freak out about the hive inspection? What is the trigger? What is the lie I’ve believed?

Nailed it. It was a lie. That my dad made me believe.

I was responsible… for his marriage…for his finances…for his emotions…

For everything.

All the time.

Everywhere.

My dad made his issues into my issues. My responsibility. The words hit my heart like a flashlight on the darkest night shining out like a beacon of hope. A ray of sunshine that breaks through the fog. It made me feel the pain of the moment. The weight of the lie. And I could see clearly what that little girl in me experienced not just in that single argument that I never belonged to be in, but the many others that followed over the course of my 17 years in that house. The thing that I’d carried all this time. All my nearly 40 years on this earth. A weight of responsibility that was never mine to hold.

What was I going to do with this?

I chose in that moment to forgive my dad. Out loud. In front of my children. So that they could forgive. Jesus came to this earth as an example to show us the way. And that is what parents are meant to do for their children. Show them the way. It was brutal. There were tears. But as soon as I said the words the pain that had seared into my heart for so long lifted as if it had never existed in the first place. It was a beautiful moment…. but I wasn’t done…. there was more forgiveness to take place.

I looked at my 11 year old son and I asked for forgiveness. I had taken on his hive as my own responsibility. I didn’t want to see it fail. I forgot that I was only meant to be the helper. I had tried to be, but that’s not what I’d been doing. I was full of fear because I had taken on something that was not mine to carry. My spirit was screaming at me to listen and I ignored it all summer long. He looked back and me and said “Its okay mom” …. more refining…

I taught him to say that… when someone asks for forgiveness to say it’s okay. But here’s the thing it wasn’t okay. What my dad did to me wasn’t okay. What I did to my son wasn’t okay. Things that need to be forgiven are NOT OKAY! Forgiveness isn’t meant to make them so. It’s meant to heal. To acknowledge that the thing that happened was not okay, but that God is bigger than that thing! That He has the power to overcome it. That He has the power to heal it. That He has the power to pay the price of the debt of death and make a new way. A way to life. The Bible teaches us to train your child in the way they should go…

My son, it is not okay I said. We say “I forgive you.” This is powerful language. And he chose to forgive me in that moment. We healed. We repaired our relationship. We reconciled.

For as long as I can remember I have said “it’s okay” instead of I forgive. To feel the God given power never felt right to me. I know that Satan doesn’t want us to feel powerful. He doesn’t want us to say those words, to have a way back to the light. It was like a lightning bolt in the spirit real as my son said those words. Incredible.

This is who we are. This is the life we are called to live. All the other things are a bonus. Who am I? I am a woman who lives in the light and who is ever changing and growing.

On this day I chose to teach my children how to watch for this kind of thing happening in their own selves and in others with this simple method.

When someone doesn’t act in their usual manner are they anxious, is there chaos, or shouting or are they stressed out? Chances are someone or something is dancing on their trigger button. What do we do to correct it?

• First identify: Where am I not being true to my own authentic self?

• Second identify: I am trying to take on something that is not mine to carry or have I believed a lie?

• Third right the wrong: Extend forgiveness to yourself or others or both. Apologize: seek forgiveness.

  • Saying “it’s okay” is not forgiveness.

• Fourth adjust boundaries. It’s okay to change the rules.

  • If I had not taken on the responsibility of the bees I would have chosen to say I’m not up for a hive inspection today. I was so tired and not in the right frame of mind to manage my own emotions. We could have rescheduled or one of his siblings could have stepped in to help.

If you’d like to dive into more on forgiveness you can check out this in depth blog article I wrote a couple years ago. I am so thankful for all of the wonderful people that God has put in my life over the years who’ve taught me these things. It’s not easy to rediscover who you are, but it is so so good.

At the end of my talk with my children I asked them to pray and see if they heard anything about who they were. It was time to put a practical spin on what we’d just done in the spirt. I asked them to write down all of the responsibilities in our home. I told them we’d come together and see what they’d come up with. Then we’d take all of those things and divi them out so that I was no longer taking them all on alone. In stead of mom starting each day off with “this is what we are going to do today”. We would change it to mom saying “what’s on your plate today? (Thank you Caroline from homesteading family for putting the notion out there many years ago in a Youtube video about managing the house hold and giving children jurisdictions)

Harvesting apples. Can you find the child in the tree?

Asking this question, what’s on your plate today? teaches my children to manage their own things and take on the responsibility fully. It honors the new boundary I’m creating for myself of not taking on the whole world so to speak. Teaching the kids to be mindful of their own time and their own responsibilities will help them to not follow in my old footsteps, but also help them to be aware of the other things going on in the household. Often times we share family responsibilities such as harvest season, but this language gives the kids some control and helps them feel like a contributing member of the family.

I have been profoundly affected by what has transpired over the past week or so. I am so thankful.

Do you have a similar story? I would love to hear your perspective on who you are or a story about forgiveness.

Until next time, learn and grow

• Esther