when something horrible wallops you in the face.

You're floating on a still lake and suddenly a boulder falls from a great height, right next to you. The concussion leaves you gasping as the huge wave rolls over you, but you hardly know what's happening as you're thrown back. You sputter and blink and furiously paddle in some direction you think is away from the danger, but how do you know?

The gut reaction is instinctive, but how do you process the rest? How many days do you wonder what just happened, what other people saw, what you could have done to prevent it or minimize damage?

Or maybe the wave that hit you wasn't the first horrible concussion, but the next ripple out? You weren't exactly there. You didn't quite see it. But you know someone who did, and you know that what's awful for you must be worse for them.

But you don't know how awful it is, just that you can't stop thinking about it, that its impact will never leave you, that all you can do is just wish you could take the pain from someone less able to handle it and shoulder the burden for them.

You don't get to pick and choose. You just have to go on, ducking your head when a curious outsider wants to know "what it was like" or whether you feel more strongly or less strongly that boulders should be given access to gravity and allowed to drop into lakes like that. Leaving your sunglasses on when you go in the store so no one can see that even though you weren't there, even though someone you love wasn't under the boulder when it dropped, you still hurt. Getting calls from those on the shore and having to hold back tears every time because you know there was somebody's somebody under the boulder as it fell, and you're reminded that the boulder fell on purpose even if it didn't fall on your somebody.

No, boulders shouldn't be able to drop into lakes like that. But sometimes they do anyway, without much warning and without consideration for the ripples they might inflict on the innocent. You watch the ripples fan out farther and farther until they reach the banks of the lake, where they just echo and echo and echo, inviting pointless speculation and commentary on where they might have originated and why.

You stand there watching the spectators, hearing all the noise and nonsense, and you just want to scream, "you don't know! You don't know what it means, what it has cost us in the middle of the lake!"

But what's the point? If you tell them, what would it matter? Every community with a story like this has to weather it alone. If they're lucky, like we are, they'll be supported by others who have the same story and had to watch the effects of a boulder dropping into their own quiet lake.

No, if you haven't been there and experienced the fallout close at hand, you just can't know. But for those of us who have--if we're wise--we'll let the experience flow over us and become part of us, and find a new compassion for the humanity around us.

Because we can't ignore it, we can't pretend it didn't happen, and we can't justify it happening to anyone, ever. It's horrible. It didn't happen for a good reason. But it happened to us. We have to own it.

God knows we can't experience everything, and couldn't handle it if we did. But we can choose to feel it, to embrace it, to own it, so that when it happens to someone else we can find that connection in grief that allows us to feel it with them, share the load, and help them know they are not alone. If we can find connection or meaning in the suffering, then we have done something.

Most of us just outside the drop zone can't do much, but we can do that. And that's enough.

What will your reaction to life's curveballs say about you?

My grandfather passed away not long ago. His passing, which was not unexpected, has struck a chord that resonates in every area of my life. We weren’t close, so although I do grieve his passing, it causes me more reflection than pain.

Now that he’s gone, I’m hearing lots of stories of his generosity and gung-ho attitude in business and friendships. He was a war veteran, an entrepreneur, an “old sodbuster,” as he always put it. But I’ve spent more time with a different side of him.

Several years ago, Grandpa started sending me his memoirs as he wrote them. He had many interesting stories, but as I read over them again for his memorial, I detected little black splotches of bitterness on the colorful painting of his life. Sometimes their origins are discernible - a mother who married and mothered too young and lived to resent it, a childhood in constant need that gave way to an adult determination to succeed and never be without again, no matter the cost. Sometimes I don’t know where those black splotches come from.

We sometimes have a vague idea of what we want people to say in our obituary. That we were loving or a good friend or really generous or a great listener. But it’s a rare moment when we evaluate the life-changing moments we’ve experienced and make a choice about how our lives will go from here. I find my mind popping up with questions at unexpected moments: did Grandpa want his life to look like that? did he do this or that on purpose, or was it just the path of least resistance? what were his main priorities in life? did he choose them purposefully, or did the circumstances of his life dictate them?

This leads to more questions: how will I handle the curveballs life throws? Grandpa couldn’t control the circumstances of his childhood - he grew up in the midst of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. The rest of his life, from my perspective, seems to be largely a reaction to the poverty he experienced then, both in his focus on financial success and also in his generosity to the people around him. 

In my own life, I can identify the big events and see how they have added to my life’s painting. My parents’ divorce, for example, was a huge blow to my security as a child. For years that insecurity plagued me in the form of misplaced pride (an inability to admit I was wrong for fear that my dignity would be lost) and a way of choosing friends who I felt were beneath me somehow, so I always had something to teach or offer them. Small black splotches in the grand scheme, perhaps, but black splotches all the same.

I’ve had twenty years to figure out how to live past that event, and it took ten of them for me to choose not to let it dictate the path my life would take. At some point, I saw the value of confidence - not only for myself, but for the positive impact I believe it has on everyone I meet. I can’t make people’s lives better if I’m so internally focused that I choose friends for their perceived failures or take small slights as personal affronts to my dignity. 

The difficult events of my life have changed me, no question. But out of them I have a choice - let them define me, or recognize them as learning experiences that give me better tools to love the people around me. They may be black splotches I didn’t want on my painting, but I have a life to live, and Grandpa’s life and memoirs are a reminder that I have the power to blend out those stark splotches instead of let them be repeated throughout the pattern of my life. 

This post was first published at http://www.nrtoday.com/news/featured/11037659-113/splotches-adrienne-black-grandpa.

Why every wife needs a wife

I met my wife, Jaymee, more than two years ago over fish and chips at the coast. We were both newly married, and our husbands had just met at UCC, the youngest and newest instructors on campus. Within ten minutes of discussion that culminated in fertility observations and other such personal details, I knew the foundation was laid for a beautiful new marriage in my life.

The relationships we have with women are not like the ones we have with men. Women understand other women in ways men never can, and sometimes you just need that supportive ear to be a sounding board for whatever feminine trials are facing you.

One thing I truly believe about marriage is that it is better if the wife has a wife. Mine sometimes hears the notes that ring false in my voice when other ears don’t, and will ask about them every single time. Why? Because she’s a woman. And sometimes I let those false notes slip because I wish someone would care and come pick them up like a subtly-dropped handkerchief. 

Because men, if we’re honest, are built of different material. Square, solid, straightforward—for the most part, what you see is what you get. Women are like those puzzle balls whose pieces are obviously part of a whole, but it’s anyone’s guess how they fit together. Because it’s a puzzle ball. My wife remembers that I’m made of indeterminate shapes, because she is too. And while my husband is someone I can depend on for the straightforward challenges of life, he sometimes forgets that on occasion I will say something but mean something else. 

When I have lots of menial little issues plaguing me and offer them to my husband, he—wonderful problem-solver that he is—starts chewing on them in the back of his mind, working up a solution in an effort to make me happy. It’s a wonderful quality about men, but for the little things, that just isn’t what I need. I need a wife to hear me and then move on—maybe because I need to hear me and move on. After unloading all my little issues on her, she feels like she’s been helpful even though they’re already forgotten, and I feel heard and validated. That way I can go back to my real job refreshed.

I can count on Jaymee to take my side on yesterday’s battle with the checkout clerk, or to understand my latent road rage when people never seem to realize the speed limit on Stewart Parkway is 40 rather than 30. And while there are moments when I want someone to fix those problems, she doesn’t. 

She just hears them. 

She gets it; she cares like I care, even if only for a moment. She smoothes the rough edges when I’m out of patience to compromise at home; she hears the doubt, frustration, and insecurity in those rare moments when it’s too much for the man on the home front to handle. She has the tools of feminine understanding easily at hand, and can let go of my troubles as soon as she’s heard them while still making me feel supported.

I’m not sure if the lesson here is that men can only take so much, so we should all find wives to manage the emotional challenges, or that I have so much on my mind that I need not one but two spouses to manage my plethora of internal issues. 

I respect the man who has chosen to spend his life with me, and because he has already taken up the responsibilities of my physical, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing, I can honor that sacrifice by letting the less important frustrations—those subtly-dropped handkerchiefs, if you will—fall into the very understanding and capable female hands of my indispensable wife.

This post was first published at http://www.nrtoday.com/news/featured/10747759-113/wife-adrienne-husband-moms.

inaugural post: no one will tell me how to build my family.

My mom told me a story once about why she had five children. "Some people had an opinion after I had two (a girl and a boy). 'Shouldn't that be good enough?' they said, and couldn't believe my arrogance when I told them I planned to have lots more," she told me. 

"They said, not kidding, 'How dare you have more kids when there are already too many people in the world?' I made it simple: I told them that tomorrow's society was going to need leaders and my kids were going to be those leaders for their kids."

This is the same woman who, when people asked her what she planned to name her kids, replied, "Well, if it's a girl we were thinking Whitney Wanda DeWhitt, and if it's a boy, probably Dwayne Dwight DeWhitt."

The point is, it was none of their business either how many children she had or what she chose to name them. 

I'm not here to argue that our society gets in each other's faces too much when it comes to parenting; I stand with the best of them in having an opinion and not always calling up the self-discipline to keep my trap shut. 

However, I do stand firm in my desire to have lots of children. Because you know what? She was right. 

Her offspring, in a large capacity or a small one, are leaders in their communities. One or two of them may even change the world on a grand scale. 

Why? Because she knew from the beginning the kind of sacrifice and example it would take to mold each of these very unique individuals into the the best human being he or she could be. 

I want to be that kind of parent. I want my children to see me humble myself when I'm in the wrong, follow through on my promises, do the right thing even when it hurts, hold fast to my faith when everything falls apart, and choose love when no love is shown to me. 

My mother isn't a saint. She has failed plenty in life by a lot of people's standards. But there is no other mom I would choose to emulate. 

She is one of those quiet successes whose friends from college look at her and think, "Yeah, she knew what she was doing as a parent; why didn't we follow her lead?"

Look, I don't have some scheme to compare myself to friends in 25 years and see whose kids turned out the best. Every life must speak for itself. 

But I want to look at my life then and be proud of the job I've done. As I build habits into my new role as a mother, I want to remember the watchwords I saw so evidently in my own mother: commitment, consistency, patience, humility, faith and love.

This post was first published at http://www.nrtoday.com/news/9466531-113/adrienne-kids-love-mom.