Life As I Now Know It™: A Year (or two) In the Life of a Single Working Mom

One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2018 was to write at least 36 blog posts over the course of the year. (The number 36 is not as random as it appears; I'll be 36 this year, and approximately 3 posts a month just seemed like a reasonable number.) It's now late February and I'm off to a roaring start. I've posted a GRAND TOTAL of....

One.

I've been giving myself quite a hard time about this. Writing is my passion, second only to reading, and neither of these loves have gotten very much attention from me in the past year or two. I've recently become a fan of Audible, which is allowing me to get a lot more "reading" in, and while part of me hates spending $15 a month on something entirely digital, I have used the subscription more than I ever expected. I spend a lot of time on the road between work travel and long-distance-boyfriend travel, so thanks to audiobooks, I've been able to keep up with my book club and have enjoyed a number of books on my list that I'd otherwise have never found time to read.

Disclaimer: Though it may sound like it, this post has not been sponsored by Audible. Though I'd absolutely take their money if they offered so...

But writing still remains something I cannot do while in the car on long trips. I often think of things I'd like to write about, but between work, kids and aforementioned long-distance boyfriend, I have a very hard time carving out the time I need to put thoughts into words.

I was lamenting about this yesterday to The Boyfriend who is also a writer and somehow finds the time in his busy schedule to crank out intelligent blog posts on a pretty regular basis. He reminded me that as chaotic as his life is, mine is outrageous. We began tracing backwards what my life has been like for the last year and a half or so, and he's right. My ability to find time or even headspace to write might be affected by the following series of events. I'm going to take you back to the last point in time where I actually managed to squeeze in some writing: the month and year I published my book. (It's on Amazon. Go buy it and read it. It is an amazing source of income for me, y'all. It brought in a whopping $45.76 last year! I AM LITERALLY PAID TO WRITE, GUYS. *Insert laughing-so-hard-you're-crying emoji*.)

July 2015
I published my book that I'd been working on for a year and a half. Amidst trying to finalize the publishing process, I was applying for jobs. That same month, I began working at AFMC after having been out of the traditional work force for 7+ years.

July 2015 - Oct 2016
I'll just throw the entire year in together as one lump sum time period, since it was a major year of transition from stay-at-home-mom to working mom. I had to relearn everything, from how to work in a professional setting again to how to feed my kids when I don't get home until after 6 every day. It was quite the year. And around July 2016 I applied for another job and went through a series of 4 intense interviews before taking my new job and setting into motion the gyroscope that would become Life As I Now Know It™.

Oct 2016
I began working for the American Red Cross as the regional communications director for all of Oklahoma and Arkansas on October 10th. Immediately I went from a (albeit very busy) 9-5 job to a round-the-clock on-call constantly-traveling one. I began traveling approximately 40% of the time, and this caused an excruciating strain on my marriage and brought on a number of things, which eventually brought everything to a head, leading to...

Nov 2016
Scott and I started talking about divorce.

Jan 2017
Scott moved out.

(Meanwhile, back in December, my one communications staff member, who found himself in the awkward position of having to train his boss, quit for an amazing opportunity elsewhere, leaving me with two months experience and no team.)

I was also still traveling a significant amount of time for my job, when...

Feb 2017
The executive director in my home Red Cross chapter very suddenly retired due to illness. The chapter was two months away from its annual fundraiser, and as communications director it fell on me to help pull the event together in her absence. I decided to apply for the executive director position (it would certainly require less travel), so I didn't mind the extra work, but it meant that I was still doing my full time two-state communications job as well as a chapter executive job.

April 2017
I was selected as the executive director. Then just about two weeks before the fundraiser, the previous executive director passed away suddenly. With this new development, we had to redesign a significant part of the fundraiser to address this sad, sudden change. Now, I was not only taking over from a woman who had retired after having been a pillar in this community, leading this chapter for over 22 years, I was now taking over after this woman's death. With the help of the Board of Directors and several volunteers and staff, we pulled off the fundraiser, and I officially started my new job.

But there was still no new communications director, so I had to continue dual roles for a short while. At the end of April, I went to Jonesboro to help the Northeast Arkansas chapter with their annual fundraiser. While in Jonesboro, the tornadoes, storms and floods that later became known as the 2017 Spring Storms, began sweeping across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois, and I found myself in my first ever Level 4 Disaster Relief Operation (DRO). I'd only been with the Red Cross for six months.

May 2017
I was deployed to Pocahontas, AR as the Public Affairs (PA) Lead where I spent a week covering media surrounding the massive flooding. Actually, I started out in Tulsa, OK, where we though the majority of the damage would be. After a day in Tulsa, I was sent to Pocahontas instead, where the actual major damage had occurred all the way up to St. Louis, MO.  After that week, I came back to Little Rock to work in the headquarters. I was now trying to learn my new job as ED, cover my old job as communications director, train the new communications staff member I'd just hired, and help run the PA, as well as assist as Government Liaison, for a DRO. Oh, and I was still doing the almost full-time parenting thing, minus Thursdays and every other weekend.

Oh, and I was informed at this time that I was also supposed to be well into planning for the Annual Board Meeting for June, an event I had no experience in and had just over a month to plan and execute.

June 2017
I somehow pulled off the Annual Board Meeting. I began taking over board meetings too and working with my new officers and board members.

July 2017
Scott officially got his own place, and the kids started going back and forth between houses every other week. It was quite an adjustment. (But it's been going well.) I began having more free time to myself, but also began absorbing more of the reality of my new situation.

At work, I began vigorous planning for our next big event, Sound the Alarm, where nationally the Red Cross aimed to install over 100,000 smoke alarms in homes over a four week period. In my chapter, our goal was to install 1,000 alarms.

Aug 2017
At the start of August (though technically it was the very tail end of July) I began dating the lovely, gorgeous, intelligent man who would eventually become The Boyfriend. Who, of all places, just happens to live in Mississippi. Thus I became entangled in a long-distance relationship.

I also bought a car. (This becomes relevant in just a moment.)

On August 17, Hurricane Harvey made landfall. I was still reeling from the Spring Storms and the Annual Meeting and trying to get a grasp on what all my new job entailed, and now, as an ED, I was responsible for deploying my part of what we call a DFRAP ("dif-rap"), a Disaster Fundraising Action Plan. I had three TV stations request our help in running a telethon to help raise money for hurricane victims. After a 14 hour day of non-stop televised telethoning, a truck slammed into me on the Arkansas River bridge on my way home (a hit and run, no less), nearly totaling my brand new car, on the night I was supposed to go see Ben Folds perform in Little Rock. For the next 6 weeks I drove around in a rental while my new car was in full-body surgery.

Then on August 30, Hurricane Irma made landfall.

Sept 2017
I was deployed again, this time to Fort Meyers, FL, where I spent almost two weeks. While I was in Florida, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.

Sound the Alarm was mercifully postponed until the spring.

Meanwhile, of course, I was still dating said Mississippi boy, who at this point had started undergoing a major crisis of his own. We joked (wryly) that I was providing disaster relief everywhere I turned.

Meanwhile, of course, I still had three children back home who are terrified that I was going to get killed in a hurricane, even though the hurricane had already come through. (Of course, Maria was heading my way while in Florida ...)

Oct 2017
The Las Vegas shooting occurred. The California wildfires raged. The trifecta of hurricanes continued to require an enormous amount of manpower. My chapter was practically empty with the number of staff and volunteers deployed all over the country providing disaster relief.

But I returned from my Florida deployment and was ready to finally get back to learning my new job as ED. At this point, we had hired a new communications director, and I was officially done helping with that role.

Then, on October 2, an announcement was made to my chapter - the Red Cross in my chapter jurisdiction would cease collecting blood as of December 31st.

The Red Cross had been collecting blood in central Arkansas for over 60 years. This was a massive change that affected everyone greatly, and as the "fearless leader" (please note the self-deprecating quotation marks) I got to be the ringleader for managing the media, the Board, and the employees concerns surrounding this astronomical change.

Nov - Dec 2017
Things quieted down, to a degree. I began intense planning for the annual fundraiser that was already looming around the corner again. Sound the Alarm was rescheduled for April. And in December, blood collection operations began coming to a close, and it was a very emotional experience. But for the most part, I got to breathe a little and enjoy a really lovely Christmas with my family.

Jan 2018
It was a good thing I got a two month breather, because with the start of the new year came a new announcement. We received the news that within the next several months Arkansas and Oklahoma would split apart as a region, and Arkansas would be joining up with Missouri. This was yet another astronomical change. Meanwhile, fundraiser planning was still in full swing and Sound the Alarm planning was supposed to be in full swing.

Oh, and things with Mississippi Boy got real over Christmas, and I introduced him to Scott and the kids in January. Major transitions at work. Major transitions at home. Transitions, transitions everywhere.

Feb 2018 - Present
With blood collections handed over to Arkansas Blood Institute (where I highly encourage central Arkansas folks to go to give blood now, though if you are in the northern part of the state or in most other parts of the country, you can still donate through Red Cross), the question of what would happen to our building loomed over us. It was decided earlier this month, that we will remain in our building but everyone's offices will be relocated to a central area of the building instead of spread out as we had been. We are in the process of packing up our offices right now and moving them to new offices before the end of the month.

That sounds like small potatoes in light of everything else, but it has been another stressful transition.

Meanwhile, the Celebration of Heroes Luncheon fundraiser is in two weeks. (Tickets still available! Email us if you want to attend and support the work and mission of the Red Cross!)

Meanwhile, I am still working with our local team to organize the newly scheduled Sound the Alarm for April 28th. (We still need volunteers, so go sign up!)

Meanwhile, we are in the thick of working out the imminent transition from the Oklahoma-Arkansas region to the Missouri-Arkansas region.

Meanwhile, I'm still getting calls constantly about what happened to blood collections.

Meanwhile, it is now the start of tornado season.

Meanwhile, I'm still dating this lovely man long-distance and parenting my three wild cherubs every other week, trying to find the perfect work-life balance that supposedly exists somewhere in the universe where full-time working single moms are still able to find time for romance and spending quality time with their children.

Meanwhile, the official divorce date for me and Scott is coming up in the very near future. (Scott, by the way, is the best ex a girl could ask for. He is a really great man, folks. But even in a divorce as amicable and agreeable as ours, divorce takes a lot of planning and it's stressful AF.)

Meanwhile, amid planning the Heroes Lunch and Sound the Alarm, I also have my Annual Board Meeting looming in the not too distant future, and several week-long training sessions out of state, and then hurricane season is looming after that, and then next year's fundraiser is after that and then tornado season again after that and then ...

***

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if I don't get 36 posts cranked out this year, I should probably give myself a break about it.

What Does Diversity Bring to the Table?

I hate getting into arguments. As a middle child and a people pleaser, I try to steer conversations away from controversial topics if I sense they will get heated. I don't like offending people, and my empathy easily extends to those I both agree and disagree with. I will happily engage in lighthearted debate with friends, and with some people I'll even engage in earnest debates, if I know them well enough to be confident there will be no hard feelings. But with strangers or people who might get easily upset, I avoid hot topics like the plague.

This isn't always a positive thing. Sometimes it means I let things slide that I shouldn't. I often hear mildly racist, sexist or homophobic comments, and to avoid conflict, I perhaps keep my mouth shut too often. Especially in polite company, where I don't want to come off as argumentative. But the other night, after hearing someone (a rich white male) rhetorically and contemptuously ask, "What's the point of diversity? What does it bring to the table?", I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I launched into all the reasons why diversity is necessary, especially in my work with the Red Cross, where it is imperative that all communities are represented and no one is forgotten or overlooked. Surprisingly, but not so surprisingly, the conversation took an ugly turn at that point, and some of the most egregious racist and white privilege rhetoric was spewed, and needless to say the conversation did not end well. No regrets though. Sometimes arguments just can't and shouldn't be avoided.

So why is diversity important? For what I do, diversity is of utmost importance if we want to be sure we are accomplishing our mission to serve all people regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ability, income or geography.* That point was driven home to me in an illuminating way this morning in a meeting with the Arkansas State Independent Living Council (ARSILC).

The meeting had actually been arranged to discuss diversity and inclusion days before the aforementioned interaction. My goal for this meeting was, in retrospect, very narrow though. I wanted to talk about how to include more people with functional and access needs in workplace employment and volunteerism. But before my volunteer counterpart and I could even start talking about hiring practices, the executive director for ARSILC dove into the importance of creating an emergency preparedness action plan for people with disabilities. She began talking about all kinds of disabilities, from mobility needs to hearing and seeing impairment to developmental delays and autism. As she continued detailing all the ways in which existing disaster preparedness education could be developed to include those with disabilities, I became increasingly aware how narrow my perspective on people with "functional and access needs" really was.

For all my talk about diversity and inclusion - making sure diverse populations are being represented "at the table" so we can better serve all people - the thought of how we are serving those with disabilities never really came to my mind. Sure I'd gone so far as to consider and evaluate our hiring practices, but I hadn't actually thought about the people we serve during times of disaster - the adult with Down Syndrome who lives independently with the assistance of caregivers during a tornado or the children in wheelchairs or with hearing impairment when a smoke alarm goes off in the middle of the night due to a house fire. How are we including those people in our plans and preparedness outreach? Have we brought The Pillowcase Project to the schools for the deaf and blind? What about Pathfinders? We do provide special smoke alarms for the hearing impaired, but have we made a targeted effort to make sure those who are deaf or hearing impaired know of this free service? Should we get hit with a huge disaster of Hurricane Harvey proportions (an earthquake along the New Madrid fault line, for instance), have we considered how people with disabilities fit into our emergency action plans? When food is air dropped into a disaster zone, have we thought about how the elderly or other people with mobility issues are going to get to access that food?

I am ashamed to admit that these thoughts had never crossed my mind. Surely they have crossed the minds of others within the organization, but from our every day practices locally, this has certainly not been a priority as far as I can tell.

And this is just one example of what diversity brings to the table. Having representatives from communities and populations that I and others like me have limited or no access to means we can make sure no one is being forgotten. A few months ago, I had a similar conversation with the owner of Hola! Arkansas on how we can better reach Hispanic and Spanish-speaking populations to make them more aware of our services and provide better disaster preparedness education to them. During my recent deployment in Florida, I worked with Spanish- and Creole-speaking populations where the need for bilingual volunteers became vividly apparent. Without exposure to and representation from people unlike ourselves, we can easily become entrenched in our own perspectives only. And in some industries more than others, that entrenchment can be detrimental and have very real life-altering consequences.

The most shocking thing that was said to me during that argument the other night was "And why do you care?" Being that I'd shaped the context of the argument around the mission of the Red Cross - providing humanitarian services, something surely everyone would agree upon - I was dumbfounded that this was even asked. I could barely conceive of an answer more basic than to reply, "Because they're people!" Diversity and inclusion aren't just trendy buzzwords. In my line of work especially, they don't just refer to hiring x number of black people, LGBT people and people of various religions (which by the way is a faulty understanding of affirmative action, which is not about "quotas", but that's another topic for another day). They refer to making sure all people have the same access to the life-saving preparedness education and disaster response services we provide. It's about caring for all human beings, no matter what they look like, where they come from or how they act. It's about basic humanitarianism, plain and simple.

Placing a focus on diversity and inclusion isn't about checking a politically correct box for us at the Red Cross; it's about literally saving lives. Even if there were nothing else diversity could "bring to the table", that alone would be enough. (Of course, that's not all that it brings - pulling together varied and colorful people from all walks of life and all backgrounds makes every company, organization and individual better and more successful, not to mention how profoundly it can enrich the lives of everyone involved.) I'm thankful that more and more people are starting to understand all the brilliant and illuminating things diversity brings to the table. And with those that don't see that yet, I guess I'll be engaging in more awkward conversations.


*The seven fundamental principles of the American Red Cross (and the International Committee of the Red Cross - ICRC) are perhaps what make me most proud of the organization I work for and how we pursue our mission to prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies. As an atheist in the Bible belt, I'm very passionate about impartiality and neutrality in particular! Maybe those are a subject of another blog post. 

What Red Cross Stats Don't Show

"Help is here!"

[Full disclosure: I am employed by the American Red Cross.] 

I’m not a numbers person. Once you get past totals I can visualize – 20 or 50 – I stop comprehending the scope of what large numbers are meant to represent. So when I report that to date the American Red Cross has served over 3.8 million meals and snacks to victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria*, all I know is that’s a lot. But I can’t really process what that looks like. I don’t think any of us can.

Last week I spent 9 days in Ft Myers, supporting the Red Cross relief efforts in Southwest Florida after Hurricane Irma made landfall on September 10th. I spent a lot of time tracking down daily stats like “over 1 million overnight stays in shelters” and “provided more than 118,000 mental health and health services”. I knew our 4 large-scale outdoor kitchens that we run in partnership with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief were turning out “tens of thousands of meals a day”. I could see the enormous ovens cooking giant vats of mashed potatoes and green beans, and I could certainly smell the tantalizing scent of roast beef from the McGregor Baptist Church parking lot, where Kitchen 2 was set up. Kitchen 2 had the capacity to produce 20,000 meals per day. That sounds like a lot! But even seeing the hundreds of red cambros, the insulated boxes that keep the food hot for hours at a time, lined up on pallets in front of multiple emergency response vehicles (ERVs), I still couldn’t visualize what kind of number we were really talking about.

While in Ft Myers, I ran into another volunteer from my home region, Oklahoma-Arkansas. Rick Umstead had deployed to Ft Myers as an ERV driver. His job was to serve lunch and dinner to neighborhoods that were significantly affected by Hurricane Irma. He and his partner Dave from Colorado would arrive at Kitchen 2 around 8am and give ERV 2121 a good clean – mopping, disinfecting, tidying and restocking supplies like plastic cutlery and “clamshells”, the Styrofoam boxes used for handing out meals. Around 10am, the ERV drivers would begin loading their trucks with cambros for lunch, enough food for about 500 meals per ERV. They would then drive off on their respective routes, whether to neighborhoods identified as needing assistance or to one of the many Red Cross shelters being managed in Southwest Florida. Rick and Dave would deliver their 500 meals and would not return to the kitchen until their cambros were empty.

By the time Rick and Dave returned from the lunch run, usually around 3-3:30pm, it was time to unload the empty cambros and reload the truck for dinner. By 4 or so they’d be back on their way again, serving another 500 meals, often not returning until 10 at night. Upon return, they unloaded the empty cambros again, cleared out the ERV, and headed off to bed, knowing the next day they’d be back at the kitchen at 8am, ready to do the same thing all over again. Kitchen 2 had at least 6 or more ERVs in operation every day, with at least two volunteers per vehicle. Rick and Dave, like many other ERV drivers, had committed to spending two weeks in Ft Myers doing this work. Some volunteers committed more.

To me, 500 meals twice a day per ERV sounded like a lot, but how many meals is that really? I got to find out on Thursday, when I asked them if I could join them for their dinner routes. “If you ride with us, we’re putting you to work!” they said. And that’s exactly what I intended to do!

I rode in the back of the ERV in the seat by the serving window. (It has a seatbelt, in case you’re wondering.) We drove about half an hour away into a neighborhood in Lehigh, where we began our slow progression through the neighborhoods, beeping the horn and calling out over the loudspeaker, “Red Cross, food and water! ¡Comida y agua!” I put on a pair of clean plastic food handling gloves to serve the clamshells and bottles of water out the window, while Rick filled each compartment with food and handed the clamshell to me to finish and close. After a short while, we got a system going – he’d spoon out the main meal items, pass the clamshell to me, and I’d add the condiment packets, cutlery packets and dessert, then pass out through the window to families who came out of their homes – most still without power and many damaged by fallen trees and hurricane-force wind – to get a free, hot meal and a cold(ish) bottle of water.

I was struck by the various reactions of the people we served. Some were hesitant to accept a free meal, as if not sure it was really free. A few people shared their stories with me, and a few even cried as they thanked us. Many were modest and only requested meals for their children, not themselves. Some thought they had to pay us. Many families only spoke Spanish in this neighborhood (while in other neighborhoods, there would have been many Creole speakers too), so I learned to say things like “¿Cuántos?” (“How many”?), “Es gratis” (“It’s free”) and “Tenemos mucha comida” (“We have lots of food”) to explain that there was plenty for the adults in the household too. I quickly learned to trust my instincts and insist sometimes on handing out the extra meals and waters to those who would rather go without than appear greedy. Some felt they needed to explain why they were needing more meals than it appeared they should. I told them we’d give them whatever they needed. All were grateful.

After handing out what felt like at least a hundred meals, I looked at the clock. We’d only been at it for an hour. There were still five cambros of food left, and we were nowhere near done. We had only hit less than half the neighborhood, and it wasn’t the only neighborhood on our route. I continued to add the condiments, cutlery and desserts to clamshells and hand them out the window for another hour or so. Then we swapped jobs, and I began ladling out the food. Trying to get the proportions right ended up more an art than a science. I wanted to make sure we had enough to complete all 500 meals but not be so conservative that the meals were skimpy and we’d end up with anything left over. I filled clamshell after clamshell, each time trying to get it just right. It was tiring work!

Though it was getting dark, we didn’t want to leave any neighborhood until we were sure everyone had been served. We ended up finishing our routes a little earlier than Dave and Rick had the previous nights; having an extra pair of hands seemed to help move the process along a little faster. We finally returned to Kitchen 2 a little before 9pm to unload the empty cambros, clean the serving utensils, through away the trash and get ERV 2121 ready to do the same thing again the next morning.

500 meals suddenly had real meaning to me. It’s a lot. And that was only dinner; Dave and Rick had already served another 500 lunches only hours before I joined them and had been at this already for seven days straight. Their next day was to be their first day off since arriving in Ft Myers.

Like so much in disaster relief, nothing is as simple as it appears from the outside. “Tens of thousands of meals a day” is a lot, but what gets lost in those grandiose numbers is the individuality of where each of those meals went. Did seven meals go to a family of migrant workers in Bonita Springs who had been without air conditioning or refrigeration for almost two weeks? Did four meals go to a single mother and her three small children sleeping in a shelter in Immokalee after their home flooded? Did one meal go to the lady who was scheduled for a lung bypass surgery just days after the hurricane hit and now had no power in her home? Did three meals go to three children while the parents watched hungrily on, afraid to ask for the extra two meals to avoid taking too much?

And what about the volunteers? When we say there are more than 2,380 volunteers responding right now to Hurricanes Irma and Maria, we lose the individuality of each volunteer and what they gave up to be there. Some are retired and have left their spouses, grandchildren and perhaps ailing parents for two weeks. Some requested PTO from their employers to spend their vacation time volunteering. Some, like me, left small children at home with the other parent or with another caregiver to spend time serving in the disaster zone. One man I met runs his own business and turns down contracts during hurricane season so he can spend most of the late summer and fall months responding to disasters. Each volunteer that deploys to work on a disaster relief operation works late hours for days on end fulfilling their small part of the bigger Red Cross mission to alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies. Sometimes those jobs are tedious; sometimes they are frustrating; sometimes they don’t go as smoothly as we’d like them to. Sometimes, those jobs are emotionally overwhelming, seeing from the ground level just how enormous the needs are. For me, seeing the flooded and storm damaged homes in person, talking to the mother whose young family has suddenly become homeless, holding the hand of the elderly lady as tears fall down her cheeks, or handing the bottle of cold water to the child whose eyes glitter with gratitude made very real and personal the disaster I’d only experienced through segments and soundbites on the evening news.

Big numbers serve a purpose. They illustrate to donors where their money is being spent. They quantify the work being done on a large scale. But they miss individuality of each person served, each person who received one of those 3.8 million meals or who slept in a cot during one of those 1 million overnight shelter stays. Disaster relief is complex, much more so than I’d ever realized before, and sometimes the response feels like more of an art than a science. Focusing on statistics with big numbers makes it easy to ignore the complexity or forget each individual who receives one of our services. But what I realized during my short time in Ft Myers is that what matters most to the people we serve is that someone showed up during their darkest hour and provided that meal or that shelter to sleep in or a hand to hold, and that is something that the Red Cross can’t measure in numbers.

*All stats referenced are actual Red Cross service delivery stats as of 9/24/17.

This story is cross posted on the Arkansas Red Alert and Oklahoma Red Alert blogs.

Choose Your Own Title

There were numerous things I could've titled this blog post.

The $25k Nose Ring
The Post That Poses the Risk of My Parents Not Talking to Me For the Next Six Months
Nothing Good Happens After Midnight
My Cosmic Boyfriend

I feel like I should take a vote on which title works best.

Twenty-two year old Lori wearing a really expensive nose ring

Tonight, I'd like to start with a little story. Follow me on this journey back to 1997, when I was 15 years old.

I wanted a nose ring so bad, but I was 15 so my parents justifiably said Not A Chance, You Have Enough Holes In Your Head, that sort of thing. So I bought myself a little magnetic nose ring that looked like a stud on the outside and had a magnetic backing that went inside the nostril. I looked hip AF, y'all.

Until that fateful afternoon, while taking a test in Mrs Norman's AP English class, when I sniffed too hard and sucked the magnetic backing all the way up my nostril. I began to snort and sputter in the middle of a silent testing classroom atmosphere and became the sudden object of everyone's delighted interest. It was certainly more interesting to watch me hyperventilate than to answer essay question's about Young Goodman Brown, but I did not look very hip that day.

I still wanted a nose ring though. I went away to college and met the coolest girl ever one Sunday at church. Her name was (and still is, presumably) Kanyon. She was a year or two older than me and had the most adorable silver hoop in her nose. I knew then that it wasn't a stud I wanted in my nose but a hoop like Kanyon's. (I'm willing to bet Kanyon is probably still one of the coolest girls alive, wherever she is.)

But I was 18 or 19, and my parents said No Way, You'll Look Like a Bull, And Besides, If You Pierce Your Nose We'll Stop Paying For Your College, that sort of thing.

But I still wanted that nose ring. One afternoon, my college BFF Amanda and my roommate Jonathan decided they were going to get pierced. Amanda wanted an eyebrow ring and Jonathan wanted a double helix. I accompanied them to get their piercings and was green with envy. I wanted my nose done so badly!

A few days later, just around my 20th birthday, I got to chatting about wanting a nose ring with my friend Amber after our poetry class. (I'll always remember her beautiful poem about artichoke hearts. No seriously, it was beautiful.) She was like, "Let's go do it for your birthday!" and I was like, "Okay let's go do it!" So Amber and I went to get my nose pierced.

I LOVED it.

Guess who didn't love it though? My parents. They said You Look Like a You Got A Fish Hook Stuck In Your Nose and By the Way We Are Going To Stop Paying For Your College Because We Warned You And Now We Have To Be Consistent Because That's What Good Parents Do.

And y'all, they did.

(Are you starting to catch on to some of my potential titles now? The $25k Nose Ring.)

That was my sophomore year of college. The following two years were suddenly entirely up to me to finance. So I did. I increased my student loans to the max. I got two jobs, one working at JR's Lightbulb Club and Dickson Theater as the door girl and one working for the University of Arkansas Development Office.  (It was while working in development that I had my first experience with the professional implications of having a body piercing. I was originally asked to take it out since I'd be interfacing with major gift donors, but after sharing my story with the Vice Chancellor of Development, she agreed that it was indeed a pricey piece of jewelry and settled with me changing it out for a stud.)

Let's journey through the remainder of my 20s and into my mid 30s, back to the present. I've been paying off these student loans for fifteen years, which by the way, is nothing compared to what students only five or so years after me began looking at. The kids who came up behind me have gotten royally screwed on college tuition. Anyway, here I am, 35 years old, still wearing my nose ring and still paying off my student debt.  But there's a happy ending to this story. I looked up my loan repayment plan a few weeks ago and discovered that I only have THREE months left before my student loan is entirely paid off!

By the end of 2017, I will have officially paid off this nose ring. And you know what? I'm still going to wear it. Because I LOVE it. Even if I do Look Like a Bull or a Hooked Fish or a Jezebel or Oh I Don't Know, Rebekah By the Well?

Thirty-five year old Lori still wearing a really expensive nose ring

Okay now. I'm going to get a little more serious now. In telling that nose ring story I had another purpose. One less jovial.

I'll tell another story briefly. Journey with me back to the end of August 2017. (Yeah, like two weeks ago.) On August 29th, I got in a car accident, a hit and run, and my brand new car, only purchased two weeks prior, got smashed on the driver's side, and though I was mostly uninjured, it has caused me a lot of pain and angst over the past week. Meanwhile, Hurricane Harvey was in the process of devastating Houston, Beaumont and many other parts of Texas. I was in the process of raising money for the Red Cross's response to the hurricane, which was the worst hurricane to hit landfall in over a decade, and the largest natural disaster the Red Cross has ever responded to. The car accident was really bad timing, meaning for the week that followed, I was unable to do my job effectively during an extremely crucial time. Yesterday was the first day I felt fairly normal again, despite the pain.

Today, barely a month later, Hurricane Irma swirls and heads for the continental US (and has already decimated small Caribbean islands in its path), and many of us at the Red Cross are gearing up for more disaster deployments, including myself. I've been doing everything possible to get my pain under control and get my work taken care of so I can be ready to go if or when they give me my 24 hour notice. Being a single mom now, that's no easy uncertainty to plan for. (Giving a shout out to Scott and my mom right now for both being extremely flexible with me right now regarding the children!) Amidst all of this though, and after an extremely draining day of work, I witnessed a car accident on my way home this evening right in front of me on the same freeway my accident occurred on just last week. I was one car behind the accident, and the thought of almost being in a second accident within ten days of each other has left me terrified to get behind the wheel again. What is this, Final Destination? Is death following me now?

That's the joke I made to my mom on the phone tonight. But her response wasn't so flippant. "No, this is God trying to get your attention. He's saying, 'I've been wrapping on your door for a long time, and you haven't been listening!'"

Of course I know where she's coming from, and I know she made this comment with the purest of intentions. I know she's only concerned for my eternal security. (And let me say again, she's being so helpful with childcare! This is The Post That Poses the Risk of My Parents Not Talking to Me For Six Months. I'm treading on thin ice here by posting this. I'm cruisin' for a bruisin', I'm itchin' for a switchin'.) But if she's right, does God really have such terrible timing? I mean, car accidents and deployments and devastating natural disasters, oh my! Is all of this necessary to just get my attention?

I mean, I guess he could he have just revealed himself to me six years ago when I begged and pleaded and cried out to him for faith. But maybe that wasn't part of his divine plan.

It's past 1pm now. Hence Nothing Good Happens After Midnight. I have this theory that nothing good happens after midnight, and that goes for blogging. I tend to lose my filter after midnight, tend to make less than prudent decisions, sometimes say or do things I wouldn't do before midnight. So I need to be careful what I say here. I used to feel more free to talk about my lack of faith in any religion or gods, but that was before I realized just how badly being an atheist can damage my credibility or even my career. (However, I continue to be open about my beliefs, or lack thereof, because I just don't see why anyone should have to hide who they are, particularly because of what religion they are or aren't. If other people are allowed to speak freely about their faith, surely the faithless should have the same opportunity to speak freely? But now I've just chased a squirrel. Coming back now.)

Back to the divine plan. I just don't understand this logic at all, of why God would need to send bad things my way in order to get my attention. I don't think I really understood it as a Christian either. Why would God need to use grandiose overtures to entice me back into the fold? Can't he just do it the normal way? I spent three years begging him to restore my faith. Was there any reason he couldn't have done it back then? Maybe there is some kind of super special glory he'll get from refusing to answer my cries for three years, leave me to become an atheist for three years, then suddenly hit me with a car accident (and the threat of another) in order to bring me back to him. In the midst of hurricanes, no less.

I just don't get it. This accident kept me from being able to really do my job well during the most critical week of my professional career thus far, and more importantly, during a time when thousands of people are hurting and really need as much relief and support as possible and would benefit from me and all the rest of the Red Cross family being at our best for them. Just seems kind of --- mean.


So I'll assume for a moment the existence of God - the Christian God - is a given. And that he is trying to get my attention so he can save my soul. Because he loves me, right?

But wait, did he not love me six years ago? When I was in a place of being open and receptive to his existence and influence? Why wait until now? For whatever reason though, he loves me now and only wants to save my soul from eternal damnation.

Which he designed.

As punishment for not having faith in him.

Faith which he alone gives or withholds.

He wants to put me in dangerous and precarious situations in order to scare me into faith so he can save me from the punishment he designed for me should I not get scared enough to find faith in him that only he can give anyway. I just don't get it.

Let me take you on one last journey. This is into a hypothetical, nonexistent time in my past. Maybe it's an alternate reality. Anyway, in this parallel, not-real universe, I was dating this guy who really, really loved me. But he had this propensity for constantly testing my love for him in return. He would tell me bad things about myself but remind me that he loved me so much, he could fix those bad things and make me better. I knew he was right; I was pretty shitty, but wow, the way he could fix all those shitty things about me was inspiring! He would also sometimes put me in danger - but never real danger, because he was looking after me the whole time - to see if I could really trust him enough to take care of me. And every time he did that, I really did come out safe in the end, and he really did use that to prove how much he loved me and would always save me from harm.  I was so in love with this guy, and he was so in love with me back.

There were some hard times. He often gave me the silent treatment. I was never entirely sure if it was because of something I'd done wrong or if he was just trying to test my love again. Most of the time he'd eventually break the silence, but not until after I'd begged and cried and pleaded with him with all my might. Then he would soften, lift me up off my knees, and hold me. It made everything okay again when he did that. I knew he loved me. This guy, y'all, was the most loving, perfect boyfriend I've ever had. His name was Jesus, and he was My Cosmic Boyfriend.

Oh, did I say this was a nonexistent, hypothetical scenario? I apologize. It wasn't.

My Cosmic Boyfriend ultimately wanted to save me from eternal ruin. He always knew what was best for me, despite my own petty desires. Kind of like when I was 15, and my parents understandably felt that getting a nose ring was not appropriate for me at that time. My Cosmic Boyfriend threatened me with hell if I didn't obey him. My parents threatened me with no more college tuition. My Cosmic Boyfriend needed to be consistent with his word, just like my good old mom and dad. He had threatened me with hell, so he kind of had to go through with it at that point, since he'd already said it and all. Consistency is key.

The story of my nose ring and my parents is kind of funny to me, in a OMG I Still Can't Believe They Actually Went Through With It kind of way. It's funny to me in a This Is A Great Story To Tell At Parties kind of way. And though it had some long-standing, less than humorous ramifications - fifteen years of student loan repayment during the brokest years of this millennial's life - it's really in the grand scheme of things not the worst a child should have to endure. A punishment, yes, but nothing serious.

Not like the eternal punishment of hell for not being able to force myself to believe in something I simply could no longer believe in, no matter how hard I tried. We aren't talking fifteen years of faith repayment, but an eternity. In hell of all places.

For all the joking about my parents and the nose ring, I know how much my parents love me. They have always protected me and wanted what's best for me. They went over and above to make things happen for me all through my childhood that they certainly were not required to do, just because they loved me. They provided for me, they kept me out of danger, they played the tricky tightrope of letting me learn from my own mistakes while always being ready to catch my fall. They never tested my love for them, because that would never have even occurred to them. They loved me unconditionally. They have always loved me without reserve, even now, as the atheist daughter, the One That Turned Away, the one that breaks their hearts daily as they fear for my soul. I don't fault my mom at all for how she perceives the events of the past few weeks; she loves me and wants me to see the God she sees and at the end of the day, she only wants to see me there.

My earthly parents get what love is. My Cosmic Boyfriend, not so much. If My Cosmic Boyfriend was a regular human boyfriend, everyone I know would be begging me to leave him and escape our abusive relationship. But since he's Cosmic, his ways are higher than my ways, and trying to get my attention with car accidents and hurricanes is no different than pulling my ponytail and tying my shoe laces together. Harmless boys-will-be-boys pranks. It's all just meant to show me he likes me after all. And it's all just meant to save me from the eternal ruin he has planned for me if I don't return his phone calls or agree to wear his ring. True love, right? The stuff of Disney princesses.

I just don't think that's the kind of love I deserve. I think I deserve better. If my parents know it would be cruel to orchestrate a car accident or a hurricane in order to get me to answer the door, surely an omnipotent, loving God would see the cruelty in that too. It might have been a cute story if he just made me take out a few loans to pay for the sin of disobedience, but the story becomes not quite so cute when you realize the wages of sin is death and his punishment of choice is eternal damnation.

Northeast Arkansas Mega Blitz Home Fire Campaign

On Day 1 of my job with the American Red Cross, back on October 10th, 2016, I listened in on a call with a bunch of people I didn't know regarding a topic I knew nothing about. I was jotting notes furiously in my brand new work journal, not sure if what I was writing down was relevant information or not.

That call was the first discussion Pam Knapp-Carver, the Executive Director of the American Red Cross serving Northeast Arkansas, had with the region regarding her idea for a "Mega Blitz" Home Fire Campaign, a campaign created by the Red Cross to reduce the number of home fire fatalities and injuries by 25% in 5 years. The Mega Blitz Pam envisioned was inspired by a similar event done previously in Cincinnati. Her idea was to install 1000 smoke alarms in northeast Arkansas, and she needed all the support she could get from the region to make this a reality. As the new Regional Communications Director, she needed my help to take care of the publicity.

On Day 1 as Regional Communications Director, I was working on this project. Soon I was meeting with Pam regularly, through phone calls and visits to Jonesboro, meeting with representatives from the A-State Red Wolves to get them on board as partners, planning and brainstorming all kinds of tiny details, working with our disaster team, working with my communications volunteer Pat up in Mississippi County for media releases, visiting with KAIT8 for interviews and media coverage, coordinating with external partners, begging at times for things we wanted, commiserating with Pam on numerous occasions - you name it. We worked on this for months.

(And while I helped a lot, Pam and Dean and Kandy and all of the northeast Arkansas volunteers and staff deserve WAY more credit for all the work they put into this event!)

Then, after all this work, just a week before the event took place, I accepted a new job within the Red Cross - as Executive Director for the Greater Arkansas chapter. But I had one last communications job to complete: Pam's Mega Blitz.

My first project to my last project - this event brought my whole (short) time as RCD full circle.

And what a great event it was!

I took part in one "mini blitz" earlier in the year, installing smoke alarms in a small town called Brookland, then today went from team to team in Jonesboro taking photos and posting on social media.

We had a goal of installing 1000 smoke alarms, and at last count, we were over 1100. I could not be more proud of Pam and her team for how amazingly they pulled this thing off! There were a few hiccups here and there, but the key thing is that service delivery was not inhibited. We have made northeast Arkansas 1100x safer over the past few months. What an accomplishment!

We are now planning to do this same thing in Little Rock in October - a year after we started planning for this one in April. If we could pull off this one in six months, I think we can pull it off again in the next six months. With Pam helping me this time!

To view the tally and the hundreds of pictures posted of the mini blitzes and today's Mega Blitz, check out the website.

And for one last little "full circle" piece of the puzzle - early in the planning stages, I called Skip Tate, the Regional Communications Director in Cincinnati, to ask for advice. He sent me tons of great documents and resources they had created for the event. Several months later, I got to meet Skip at the Advanced Public Affairs Team (APAT) training conference in Washington, DC. Since joining the Red Cross, I have met so many amazing people, Skip and Pam and so many others, who have all become part of my ever-expanding Red Cross family. And when you work or volunteer in disaster and spend hours and days and weeks together, tirelessly working in trying conditions, you really do become family!

I don't believe in luck or fate or everything-happening-for-a-reason, but becoming a part of the Red Cross is one of the best things that's ever happened to me. It's the most taxing, exhausting job I've ever done (daresay more exhausting than even parenting), but like parenting, the rewards make every second worth it. I love the Red Cross and its mission more than I could possibly express.

To watch a few moments of us live in action, view this clip from KAIT Region 8 News.

Sunday Sermon: Give Blood and Save a Life

The first place I ever gave blood was in the Fine Arts Auditorium at my high school, when I was a junior or senior. I felt proud to be a part of something that felt bigger and more important than me. I went on to give blood any time there was a blood drive, usually on the high school or college campus.

After college, I didn't get the chance to donate for a while due to a series of temporary deferments - tattoos, piercings, pregnancy. I mistakenly believed I couldn't give while breastfeeding as well, though that turns out to have been untrue.

It hadn't occurred to me to give blood again until I moved back to the US in 2013. In April 2014, a series of tornadoes swept through Arkansas, leaving a path of destruction through the nearby town of Vilonia. My neighbor and good friend Amy had close friends in Vilonia, so the relief efforts became personal to me. She and I went to the disaster site to help clear the wreckage, and we collected donations of clothing and other supplies for the victims of the tornado. It occurred to me then to also give blood.

I had two kids not in school yet, so I prepared Lolly with a fully charged tablet and a bag of snacks and toys for Jaguar, put the stroller in the trunk, and drove the kids to Little Rock so I could donate blood. When I got to the blood donation center, I was handed a clipboard with forms and a checklist of criteria to meet. I started to fill in the forms when I saw some information I had not expected; because of my time living in the UK, I was deferred from giving*. For life.

Trying to stay composed, I returned the clipboard to one of the workers and took the children back to the car. I turned on the ignition but before I could back out of the parking space, I burst into tears. I sobbed into the steering wheel, devastated that I would never be able to give blood again for the rest of my life. Deferred for life. I cried for a solid five minutes before composing myself and driving back home.

Now I work for the American Red Cross, and every day I feel sadness over my inability to donate blood. I was good at donating; I could give a pint fast with no side effects, no dizziness. I've learned since working here about platelet donations too, and my heart hurts knowing I could absolutely give that kind of time to give platelets (it's more time consuming, so platelet donations are harder to come by).

The Red Cross has issued an emergency appeal for blood and platelets due to a severe winter shortage. With holidays and bad weather, fewer people are able to get out to donate and blood drives can often be cancelled due to weather. This year, with Hurricane Matthew, many blood drives were cancelled. Right now, blood is being distributed to hospitals faster than it's coming in.

Another thing I've learned in my new job is the need for blood to be already "on the shelf" in case of an emergency. After donation, there is 24 hours before the blood is ready to be given to another person. When disasters like tornadoes or Hurricane Matthew occur, blood needs to be ready and waiting right then. People tend to flock to donation centers after disasters, which is fantastic, but those blood products are not available until a day later.

Blood and blood products help emergency victims, cancer patients and all kinds of people with other life-threatening illnesses or undergoing surgeries. When I had my c-section, with the risk of hemorrhage I was under (the placenta was going to have to be cut through to get Fifi out), the surgeons had blood waiting for me right there, should I need it.

It breaks my heart that I am not able to do my part anymore in donating blood. So I implore all of you reading this, in whatever country you are in - if you are able to donate blood or platelets, please do! Roll up a sleeve and save a life. Do it on my behalf. My friend Elizabeth, during the Vilonia tornado, heard my story and donated blood for me. It made me cry all over again. If you decide to give blood after reading this, please let me know. I may not be able to give my own blood, but if I can urge multiple people to go in my place, I'll have done more than only I could have done to start with.

That's my sermon for this Sunday morning. Let's save lives and give now. If you can't give blood yourself, ask someone else to donate in your place. I truly believe that together, we can make a difference around the world and save innumerable lives.

For a list of blood drives in Arkansas, visit the Arkansas Red Alert blog. For other blood drives across the US, visit redcross.org/give-blood.


*While writing this blog, I did some additional research into eligibility criteria, and I am starting to wonder if the information I was given that day was incorrect or has since changed. I will be finding out first thing Monday morning when I arrive to work! Our office is also a blood donation center, so I'm going to be getting some clarification!