Happy almost 2010, readers. We're not exactly partying here - there's freezing rain outside and I have to work in the morning. We're watching movies with friends. What better time to blog?!?
Kudos to one of my favorite authors (and a Facebook friend, but of course), Dena Dyer for addressing her own depression on her blog - and for encouraging people to GET HELP.
I'm a little late stumbling across this post, but it's relevant any time of year!
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Thursday, December 31, 2009
My Testimony - Walking Away
When I was 13, I experienced my first trial of faith.
The father of the children I babysat next-door, a very kind man named Craig, disappeared in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania in a snowstorm on January 15, 1993. I found out about it through a friend calling to see if I'd read the newspaper. Everyone told me that God answered prayer, that all I needed was to ask and believe, and I would receive the answer I so wanted.
For over two months, I prayed. I wholeheartedly believed that Craig would be returned safe and sound at first, but as time went by I began to doubt he was still alive. Finally, in March, people on snowmobiles came across the wreckage, and the body of Craig. Down deep, I wondered if my own lack of faith had anything to do with him dying. During the two months he was missing, I started attending church with family, after two years of them inviting me. Their church became my "home church," the first church I ever attended regularly. I went with them most Sundays throughout the early part of my teens.
His wife was so positive and did radio and speaking appearances and talked about how good God was, and how He promised to provide for orphans and widows. It was the first time I ever questioned the goodness of God. I did not understand how she could be so certain of her faith when God so clearly didn't bring her husband home alive. At the same time Craig's death propelled me to start attending church, it also made me start to reflect on my own life, and wonder... where was God when I needed Him?
Well, by the eighth grade, I had it in my had that I wanted to be on the radio. Not really sure why - that goal was pretty short-lived. But I did manage to charm enough deejays that I found myself showing up on morning and evening request shows as a semi-regular guest. I was all of 13 years old at the time. My dad always accompanied me to the stations and I guess people were impressed with a kid who had so much gumption. I started a makeshift radio station at my middle school - which consisted of playing cassette tapes during lunch in the cafeteria - but that didn't last long, either.
In the meantime, I was making friends with the deejays... really good friends. Too good of friends, in some cases. Most of them were really nice people (with the exception of one morning host who mildly tolerated me) but a few of them were pervs. I met more than one perv, but there was one in particular - a guy who was fairly well-known in the area - that I became quite close to. He had a son my age (he was about 32 at the time) but he rarely ever saw him, and he used to tell me that he related better to kids than he did to people his own age.
I was a pretty stupid kids, too. Did I mention that? If someone said that to me now, I'd freak out, but at that age I "got it." I felt like we had some weird cosmic connection - he preferred kids, I preferred adults. It was perfect. But the conversations quickly turned sexual. He tried to convince my best friend at the time to let me sneak out of her house in the middle of the night to go meet him. My friend - always the smarter one - said absolutely not.
That relationship carried on until the summer before my freshman year of high school, when I told my mother I was going down the street to the library. It seemed fishy to her, so she called the library and found out they were already closed for the day. She encountered me walking up the road, demanded I get in the car, and demanded that I spill my guts. I told her the truth through sobs. I don't know what happened after that. I know my dad called and threatened the guy, but that's as much as I know. I never saw or heard from that deejay again.
I didn't know it was the start of a pattern in my life.
As a freshman in high school, I wanted to change. I was a Christian, actively telling people about the Gospel but sleeping with older men and not living out what I preached. I went to "See You At The Pole" that year and met a girl who was a senior, and we started a school-wide Bible study that met during club periods. We also started a daily morning prayer group that met in the cafeteria. I led both of them, taught lessons, led prayers, and as I got older and both groups continued to grow, I "trained" the younger kids to lead once I and the other leaders graduated. I attended youth group every Wednesday and went to church with my neighbors on Sundays.
I wore Living Epistles t-shirts and listened to Christian music and was doing a great job on the outside with the surface-y stuff.
That year my family got our first computer. The internet was new and most people didn't have it. I had America Online and Prodigy, which were online services minus the World Wide Web. (That didn't come with the package until a year or two later.) Back then, you didn't pay a monthly fee, either, you paid by the minute. Like a lot of other kids, I was fascinated by the online world and I started racking up outrageous phone bills and my parents wanted to kill me, put me up for adoption, or at least give me to my aunt in California! At first, I chatted about my faith in the Christian chat rooms and I got involved in the Friends of Amy (Amy Grant fan club) section of AOL, but it was through the advent of the internet that the aforementioned pattern in my life began to emerge.
I chatted with guys - always online, usually much older - and met them in parks or office complexes. Sometimes it was on the basis of just getting to know each other, but usually it was with the full knowledge that something physical was going to happen. It's a shameful part of my life and one that went on up until I met my husband, but I tell it anyway because I meet so many kids who meet up with strangers online and believe they are safe. Maybe people will look down on me for that, I don't know, but I'm going to keep talking about it. I went for the men versus the boys because I thought they were more mature. Too bad they were pedophiles, but I didn't think that way as a teenager.
I was also starting to drink. My parents always had a full supply of alcohol in the house. I took bits here and there, adding water to fill up the bottles. I started drinking with my friends, too. I must admit, my high school BFF and I still get a laugh out of remembering the night we spilled sweet vermouth on the white carpeting in her bedroom and how hard we worked to get it out before her parents got home from work. I didn't need a friend to help me drink, though. I did just fine on my own, all alone.
And some of those men I met online brought drugs. I smoked a lot of pot and dabbled in a few others here and there. The only thing that kept me from becoming a hardcore drug addict was the fear of how my parents would react when they realized what was going on. To be honest, I was so deep in despair by that point, the thought of becoming a drug addict actually appealed to me. I didn't care. I hated myself and I hated my life and I thought God had given up on me, so what did it matter?
Finally, I did stop meeting men online. When I was 14, I met a 25-year-old EMT online and he took me to the county park, where he asked me to do things to him that I wasn't comfortable with doing.
I refused.
He raped me in a pile of leaves and drove me home.
By my sophomore year, I had attempted suicide twice (and would attempt it again in the coming year) and I had started cutting myself with a box cutter I kept in my backpack. I'd sit in class (on the days I didn't skip school) and slice myself under the desk. I constantly wrote about and talked about suicide. I was flunking all of my classes and I'm pretty sure the only reason I passed from one grade to the next was because my teachers didn't want to deal with me a second time around. I'm a professional writer and yet I was flunking the lowest level of English every year in high school because I absolutely DID NOT CARE about anything in my life.
The feelings I had as a child of being different, of something being wrong with me, came flooding back to me as a high school student. Yes, I'd been molested. Yes, my family was troubled. It was more than that, though. In the 10th grade, I started seeing a counselor and attending a support group for girls that had been sexually assaulted, and I told my counselor that I felt like I was "riding waves." For a few days or a few weeks, I'd feel like I could take on the world. I'd throw myself into my studies, I'd stop cutting and stop writing about suicide, and I fell in love with God all over again. I read the Bible all the time and prayed and hadn't a single doubt in my mind that He loved me.
But after a few days - a few weeks max - the waves would crash over me again. I'd stop caring. I'd give up on following God. I'd go back to harming myself and wanting to die. That was just how my life was - up and down, up and down. The highs were incredibly breath-taking and the lows felt like the pit of Hell. No matter what I did, I could not find a happy medium. I was a chronic insomniac. I rarely fell asleep, and when I did I woke up many times during the night until I finally gave up. I was exhausted and miserable.
In the 11th grade, I attempted suicide one more time... but it was more for attention than actual suicide. I began taking Zoloft, an antidepressant, and it quelled my depression just enough to stop the cutting and attempts on my life. By my senior year, I wasn't sleeping around or harming myself, and I actually had fun that year, but I still wasn't walking with God. I made zero attempts to live the Christian live; I just lived. I believed in God and I wanted to love God... but I was so frustrated with the roller coaster my faith had been in the past, I simply wasn't willing to try anymore.
I thought that attending a Christian university would help me get my spiritual life on track. I wanted to go to school in Nashville, TN to become a songwriter. I chose a private Church of Christ in the suburbs and settled on campus in July 1997 and joined a youth ministry service group and campus Bible study in the hopes of "getting into God." Unfortunately, the extremely legalistic theologies taught at the school and I found myself deeply confused.
I had stopped taking my Zoloft shortly after I arrived in Nashville - at first I forgot it, then I couldn't be bothered to refill it. As my beliefs became more muddled, my depression began to creep back up on me. My insomnia worsened, and a good friend at college spent countless hours trying to talk me out of suicide. I began drinking heavily and taking a lot of risks, like driving with people who were drinking behind the wheel and even sniffing and huffing CD cleaner. I also started meeting and becoming physical with men again. There were good times too - meeting my musical heroes and going to concerts I never would have had access to anywhere else. But nothing could quell the despair that was overtaking me once again.
I flunked out of college that first year. I rarely went to class and I attended chapel even less - a major no-no at my school. By the time I left school and moved back in with my parents, I wasn't sure what I believed about God or if I believed at all. I wrestled with what I THOUGHT I believed versus what they taught me in chapel. I took my old job at a nursing home back, wrote songs, and drank.
By 1998, I was further from God than I'd ever been.
********************************************************
In the next segment, I'll talk about my journey back to God. Pin It
The father of the children I babysat next-door, a very kind man named Craig, disappeared in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania in a snowstorm on January 15, 1993. I found out about it through a friend calling to see if I'd read the newspaper. Everyone told me that God answered prayer, that all I needed was to ask and believe, and I would receive the answer I so wanted.
For over two months, I prayed. I wholeheartedly believed that Craig would be returned safe and sound at first, but as time went by I began to doubt he was still alive. Finally, in March, people on snowmobiles came across the wreckage, and the body of Craig. Down deep, I wondered if my own lack of faith had anything to do with him dying. During the two months he was missing, I started attending church with family, after two years of them inviting me. Their church became my "home church," the first church I ever attended regularly. I went with them most Sundays throughout the early part of my teens.
His wife was so positive and did radio and speaking appearances and talked about how good God was, and how He promised to provide for orphans and widows. It was the first time I ever questioned the goodness of God. I did not understand how she could be so certain of her faith when God so clearly didn't bring her husband home alive. At the same time Craig's death propelled me to start attending church, it also made me start to reflect on my own life, and wonder... where was God when I needed Him?
Well, by the eighth grade, I had it in my had that I wanted to be on the radio. Not really sure why - that goal was pretty short-lived. But I did manage to charm enough deejays that I found myself showing up on morning and evening request shows as a semi-regular guest. I was all of 13 years old at the time. My dad always accompanied me to the stations and I guess people were impressed with a kid who had so much gumption. I started a makeshift radio station at my middle school - which consisted of playing cassette tapes during lunch in the cafeteria - but that didn't last long, either.
In the meantime, I was making friends with the deejays... really good friends. Too good of friends, in some cases. Most of them were really nice people (with the exception of one morning host who mildly tolerated me) but a few of them were pervs. I met more than one perv, but there was one in particular - a guy who was fairly well-known in the area - that I became quite close to. He had a son my age (he was about 32 at the time) but he rarely ever saw him, and he used to tell me that he related better to kids than he did to people his own age.
I was a pretty stupid kids, too. Did I mention that? If someone said that to me now, I'd freak out, but at that age I "got it." I felt like we had some weird cosmic connection - he preferred kids, I preferred adults. It was perfect. But the conversations quickly turned sexual. He tried to convince my best friend at the time to let me sneak out of her house in the middle of the night to go meet him. My friend - always the smarter one - said absolutely not.
That relationship carried on until the summer before my freshman year of high school, when I told my mother I was going down the street to the library. It seemed fishy to her, so she called the library and found out they were already closed for the day. She encountered me walking up the road, demanded I get in the car, and demanded that I spill my guts. I told her the truth through sobs. I don't know what happened after that. I know my dad called and threatened the guy, but that's as much as I know. I never saw or heard from that deejay again.
I didn't know it was the start of a pattern in my life.
As a freshman in high school, I wanted to change. I was a Christian, actively telling people about the Gospel but sleeping with older men and not living out what I preached. I went to "See You At The Pole" that year and met a girl who was a senior, and we started a school-wide Bible study that met during club periods. We also started a daily morning prayer group that met in the cafeteria. I led both of them, taught lessons, led prayers, and as I got older and both groups continued to grow, I "trained" the younger kids to lead once I and the other leaders graduated. I attended youth group every Wednesday and went to church with my neighbors on Sundays.
I wore Living Epistles t-shirts and listened to Christian music and was doing a great job on the outside with the surface-y stuff.
That year my family got our first computer. The internet was new and most people didn't have it. I had America Online and Prodigy, which were online services minus the World Wide Web. (That didn't come with the package until a year or two later.) Back then, you didn't pay a monthly fee, either, you paid by the minute. Like a lot of other kids, I was fascinated by the online world and I started racking up outrageous phone bills and my parents wanted to kill me, put me up for adoption, or at least give me to my aunt in California! At first, I chatted about my faith in the Christian chat rooms and I got involved in the Friends of Amy (Amy Grant fan club) section of AOL, but it was through the advent of the internet that the aforementioned pattern in my life began to emerge.
I chatted with guys - always online, usually much older - and met them in parks or office complexes. Sometimes it was on the basis of just getting to know each other, but usually it was with the full knowledge that something physical was going to happen. It's a shameful part of my life and one that went on up until I met my husband, but I tell it anyway because I meet so many kids who meet up with strangers online and believe they are safe. Maybe people will look down on me for that, I don't know, but I'm going to keep talking about it. I went for the men versus the boys because I thought they were more mature. Too bad they were pedophiles, but I didn't think that way as a teenager.
I was also starting to drink. My parents always had a full supply of alcohol in the house. I took bits here and there, adding water to fill up the bottles. I started drinking with my friends, too. I must admit, my high school BFF and I still get a laugh out of remembering the night we spilled sweet vermouth on the white carpeting in her bedroom and how hard we worked to get it out before her parents got home from work. I didn't need a friend to help me drink, though. I did just fine on my own, all alone.
And some of those men I met online brought drugs. I smoked a lot of pot and dabbled in a few others here and there. The only thing that kept me from becoming a hardcore drug addict was the fear of how my parents would react when they realized what was going on. To be honest, I was so deep in despair by that point, the thought of becoming a drug addict actually appealed to me. I didn't care. I hated myself and I hated my life and I thought God had given up on me, so what did it matter?
Finally, I did stop meeting men online. When I was 14, I met a 25-year-old EMT online and he took me to the county park, where he asked me to do things to him that I wasn't comfortable with doing.
I refused.
He raped me in a pile of leaves and drove me home.
By my sophomore year, I had attempted suicide twice (and would attempt it again in the coming year) and I had started cutting myself with a box cutter I kept in my backpack. I'd sit in class (on the days I didn't skip school) and slice myself under the desk. I constantly wrote about and talked about suicide. I was flunking all of my classes and I'm pretty sure the only reason I passed from one grade to the next was because my teachers didn't want to deal with me a second time around. I'm a professional writer and yet I was flunking the lowest level of English every year in high school because I absolutely DID NOT CARE about anything in my life.
The feelings I had as a child of being different, of something being wrong with me, came flooding back to me as a high school student. Yes, I'd been molested. Yes, my family was troubled. It was more than that, though. In the 10th grade, I started seeing a counselor and attending a support group for girls that had been sexually assaulted, and I told my counselor that I felt like I was "riding waves." For a few days or a few weeks, I'd feel like I could take on the world. I'd throw myself into my studies, I'd stop cutting and stop writing about suicide, and I fell in love with God all over again. I read the Bible all the time and prayed and hadn't a single doubt in my mind that He loved me.
But after a few days - a few weeks max - the waves would crash over me again. I'd stop caring. I'd give up on following God. I'd go back to harming myself and wanting to die. That was just how my life was - up and down, up and down. The highs were incredibly breath-taking and the lows felt like the pit of Hell. No matter what I did, I could not find a happy medium. I was a chronic insomniac. I rarely fell asleep, and when I did I woke up many times during the night until I finally gave up. I was exhausted and miserable.
In the 11th grade, I attempted suicide one more time... but it was more for attention than actual suicide. I began taking Zoloft, an antidepressant, and it quelled my depression just enough to stop the cutting and attempts on my life. By my senior year, I wasn't sleeping around or harming myself, and I actually had fun that year, but I still wasn't walking with God. I made zero attempts to live the Christian live; I just lived. I believed in God and I wanted to love God... but I was so frustrated with the roller coaster my faith had been in the past, I simply wasn't willing to try anymore.
I thought that attending a Christian university would help me get my spiritual life on track. I wanted to go to school in Nashville, TN to become a songwriter. I chose a private Church of Christ in the suburbs and settled on campus in July 1997 and joined a youth ministry service group and campus Bible study in the hopes of "getting into God." Unfortunately, the extremely legalistic theologies taught at the school and I found myself deeply confused.
I had stopped taking my Zoloft shortly after I arrived in Nashville - at first I forgot it, then I couldn't be bothered to refill it. As my beliefs became more muddled, my depression began to creep back up on me. My insomnia worsened, and a good friend at college spent countless hours trying to talk me out of suicide. I began drinking heavily and taking a lot of risks, like driving with people who were drinking behind the wheel and even sniffing and huffing CD cleaner. I also started meeting and becoming physical with men again. There were good times too - meeting my musical heroes and going to concerts I never would have had access to anywhere else. But nothing could quell the despair that was overtaking me once again.
I flunked out of college that first year. I rarely went to class and I attended chapel even less - a major no-no at my school. By the time I left school and moved back in with my parents, I wasn't sure what I believed about God or if I believed at all. I wrestled with what I THOUGHT I believed versus what they taught me in chapel. I took my old job at a nursing home back, wrote songs, and drank.
By 1998, I was further from God than I'd ever been.
********************************************************
In the next segment, I'll talk about my journey back to God. Pin It
Goodbye, '09
I've lived through some hard years, but none quite like 2009. It was hard all the way around. But you know what's interesting? Wherever there was pain, you could clearly see God counteract it with joy.
1. Jay died... but the end of his life taught me volumes about how to live for God, and the 4 years he was sick served as a testimony to me and many others to God's faithfulness. Also, attending the memorial service allowed me to see family I hadn't seen in years.
2. Josh, my nephew graduated from high school and left for the Navy. I was so used to having him here almost every weekend. I love him like my own son, and now suddenly he was gone... but he fulfilled a dream he'd had since he was a little boy, and he grew up to be an amazing guy who is also my hero.
There are situations that I am in the thick of that, right now, seem like nothing but suffering. Health problems within my family, a teenage niece in drug rehab... but if I do my best to remember how God calmed the storms in my life at other points during the year, it's a lot easier for me to hang onto hope and believe that somehow my current pain will glorify God.
Even so... this has been a year of incredible loss for myself and many others. I'm glad to bid it adieu. I'm hoping that while 2009 was a year of letting go, 2010 will be a year of grasping onto new, better things.
Happy 2010 to you and yours. Just think - this time 10 years ago you weren't sure if you were even going to be alive tomorrow. Ha! Pin It
1. Jay died... but the end of his life taught me volumes about how to live for God, and the 4 years he was sick served as a testimony to me and many others to God's faithfulness. Also, attending the memorial service allowed me to see family I hadn't seen in years.
2. Josh, my nephew graduated from high school and left for the Navy. I was so used to having him here almost every weekend. I love him like my own son, and now suddenly he was gone... but he fulfilled a dream he'd had since he was a little boy, and he grew up to be an amazing guy who is also my hero.
There are situations that I am in the thick of that, right now, seem like nothing but suffering. Health problems within my family, a teenage niece in drug rehab... but if I do my best to remember how God calmed the storms in my life at other points during the year, it's a lot easier for me to hang onto hope and believe that somehow my current pain will glorify God.
Even so... this has been a year of incredible loss for myself and many others. I'm glad to bid it adieu. I'm hoping that while 2009 was a year of letting go, 2010 will be a year of grasping onto new, better things.
Happy 2010 to you and yours. Just think - this time 10 years ago you weren't sure if you were even going to be alive tomorrow. Ha! Pin It
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
My Testimony - "Religious Nuts"
By the sixth grade, I was a deeply depressed, God-hungry Amy Grant fan. The sexual abuse of my childhood had just ended and I was flunking school. I wasn't sure if I believed in God, but an old fifth-grade teacher prompted me to take a leap of faith.
She was a pretty young teacher, about the age that I am now, with a gentle disposition and the patience of a saint. As a fifth-grader, I clung to her like glue. I had maybe two friends, who were also school nerds that got picked on every day, and I either huddled in a corner with them at recess, pretending to be homeless (what a fun game!) or I sat alone, making snot balls out of rubber cement slathered on my hand. I was the only girl in a bra at the time, and I was a little butterball. That teacher, however, always saw the good in me and I loved her.
In the sixth grade, I went back to elementary school to visit her all the time, and during one such visit she announced that she was pregnant with her first child. For the first time, I decided to ask for a little divine intervention for someone other than me and my own demise and I started asking God to take care of her and her baby, and make sure that they were both healthy, happy and OK. When her son was born later that year, it was like a faith shot in the arm. I was still young enough to have some childlike faith, and I gave God the credit for everything working out nicely.
The summer after sixth grade, new neighbors moved in next-door. They were a couple in their mid-thirties with three kids. The oldest was a bit older than me, but the two youngest were still small. Hoping to land myself a babysitting gig, I quickly introduced myself and it wasn't long before I was swimming in their pool and - as planned - watching the two youngest. I loved them dearly; I was always welcome in their home. They never turned me away. Over time, I opened up to them about my struggles and their house became my home-away-from-home. When my family was in turmoil, I ran across the yard to join theirs, and I knew the door was always open.
Eh.. Just one little problem.
They were... religious.
Every time I saw them, they invited me to church with them, and sometimes they talked about God as if He lived there in their house, eating their Fritos and sharing the toilet and such. I wasn't sure what to make of that. I wanted to be with them constantly, and yet I felt the need to run home to pull the blinds and lock the doors and huddle on the staircase until they went away, or at least until they stopped talking about God. Mama done warned me about them religious nuts, did she not?!?
That God fella was hot on my trail, apparently, because that same summer, my parents agreed to send me out to San Jose, California to visit my aunt and cousins for two weeks. As it turns out, I was related to some religious nuts, too. My cousin, Jay and his wife, TJ had two young daughters at the time and they were so much fun to be with. Jay had a crazy sense of humor and his wife was cool and gorgeous and I loved playing with their kids. I tagged along with TJ and the girls one day to Vacation Bible School and found that I wanted to cry the entire time... in a good way. The more I listened to stories about Jesus, the more fascinated I became. I asked them to take me with them again, and I accompanied them several times during my stay, and made friends with the children's pastor, who was a very kind man who made me feel comfortable and welcome.
While in California, I went out and purchased Amy's "Heart In Motion" album on cassette. If you're a teenager and you don't know what I mean, look up "cassette tapes." They were horrible creatures that forced you to "fast-forward" and "reverse" - you couldn't just select a track and play it. And if you left them in your car in the sun, they'd melt. Those were the bad old days. In any case, I bought the album on tape and nearly wore it out listening to it. Poor Jay and TJ - I asked them to play it in their car every time we went somewhere, and they kindly did.
Jay was very forward about his faith, but not in a way that would have offended a non-believer. I recall a conversation in which we were sitting on the floor in his living room playing Super Mario Bros. on his Nintendo system (again, kids, look it up) and I asked him a series of questions about his life. I wanted to know if he and TJ were going to have more kids, if he was going to go back into music (he was in a popular Bay Area rock band in the 80s), all of which he answered with, "If it's God's plan for my life." Both of them talked to me about Jesus in detail, but that's the conversation that really sticks out in my mind, nearly 20 years later.
God help my parents - I came home from that trip talking up a storm about God. My parents didn't have a problem with me believing in God, because THEY believed in God in their own way. They just found it odd that a kid who never went to church was suddenly rambling on about God and asking for her own Bible. They said my cousins' beliefs were "weird" and that religion was a deeply private thing you didn't talk about with others.
As a burgeoning Amy Grant fanatic, I started listening to her older music after I became such a huge fan of "Heart In Motion", which led me to listen to other Christian music. I found the local CCM station - WJTL - and began falling in love with the music of Michael W. Smith, Petra, Newsboys and others. The more I listened, the softer my heart seemed to become. I still didn't know if or what I believed, but I wanted the stuff they were singing about. The idea of unconditional love, there for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, along with unending forgiveness was incredibly appealing to me. Who WOULDN'T want that? The question is, are you willing to believe in those things in the form of an omnipotent God you can't see?
Listening to Christian radio also introduced me to Dawson McAllister Live, a call-in show for people (at the time) 18 years of age and younger. Kids were calling in with all kinds of problems, many of them like mine - kids with family problems, sexual abuse survivors, teenagers with depression, etc. I started tuning in every Sunday night. On the show, they always mentioned their toll-free hotline for kids who needed someone to talk to, known as the "Hopeline," and I jotted down the number for future reference, though I never really intended to call it.
The people on the radio kept talking about becoming a Christian and "accepting Jesus" into your life. I had no idea what they meant, but I wanted to do that... whatever it was. I asked my parents what they thought that meant - my mother called her girlfriend, who told her I was on the cusp of joining a cult. Hmm, no help there!
Now, I feel like a goof going on about Amy Grant because I'm a grown woman and I know I sound like I'm sitting here with electrical tape holding my glasses together with Amy Grant posters all over the walls of my efficiency apartment. In other words: I sound like a dork. But this is how God worked in my life, so I have to tell the story exactly the way it unfolded.
There is a song on Amy's 1988 album, "Lead Me On" called "Saved By Love." I'm not going to post the lyrics here because I know Amy's manager and I don't want to break some kooky copyright law by doing so. (Eh hem.) The title is pretty self-explanatory. I don't know what it was about that song exactly, but one day, when I was 12 years old, it absolutely broke my heart for the Lord and I found myself on my knees in front of my bed, weeping and asking God to save me. I didn't know if I was asking the right thing or if I was asking it the right way... I just told God I wanted what my neighbors and my cousins and Amy Grant had.
When I stood up, I felt different... but I was still a little paranoid that I hadn't done something right when I prayed.
So I pulled out Dawson McAllister's Hopeline number, dialed it, and got a sweet-sounding lady named Ginny on the other line. She asked me if I was a Christian, and I said yes. She asked me how I knew I was a Christian, and I said I knew it because I had never killed anybody and I was born in America. ::::sigh:::: Long-story-made-short... she finally explained to me what being a Christian and "accepting Jesus" meant. And it had nothing to do with an American or being murder-free. She asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart (in the official capacity, I suppose?) and without hesitation, I said yes. In fact, I yelled it. She asked me if I was sure, and I yelled it even louder.
I asked Jesus into my heart.
It was May 4, 1992... the day before my 13th birthday.
In the next segment, we'll discuss my journey AWAY from God... Pin It
She was a pretty young teacher, about the age that I am now, with a gentle disposition and the patience of a saint. As a fifth-grader, I clung to her like glue. I had maybe two friends, who were also school nerds that got picked on every day, and I either huddled in a corner with them at recess, pretending to be homeless (what a fun game!) or I sat alone, making snot balls out of rubber cement slathered on my hand. I was the only girl in a bra at the time, and I was a little butterball. That teacher, however, always saw the good in me and I loved her.
In the sixth grade, I went back to elementary school to visit her all the time, and during one such visit she announced that she was pregnant with her first child. For the first time, I decided to ask for a little divine intervention for someone other than me and my own demise and I started asking God to take care of her and her baby, and make sure that they were both healthy, happy and OK. When her son was born later that year, it was like a faith shot in the arm. I was still young enough to have some childlike faith, and I gave God the credit for everything working out nicely.
The summer after sixth grade, new neighbors moved in next-door. They were a couple in their mid-thirties with three kids. The oldest was a bit older than me, but the two youngest were still small. Hoping to land myself a babysitting gig, I quickly introduced myself and it wasn't long before I was swimming in their pool and - as planned - watching the two youngest. I loved them dearly; I was always welcome in their home. They never turned me away. Over time, I opened up to them about my struggles and their house became my home-away-from-home. When my family was in turmoil, I ran across the yard to join theirs, and I knew the door was always open.
Eh.. Just one little problem.
They were... religious.
Every time I saw them, they invited me to church with them, and sometimes they talked about God as if He lived there in their house, eating their Fritos and sharing the toilet and such. I wasn't sure what to make of that. I wanted to be with them constantly, and yet I felt the need to run home to pull the blinds and lock the doors and huddle on the staircase until they went away, or at least until they stopped talking about God. Mama done warned me about them religious nuts, did she not?!?
That God fella was hot on my trail, apparently, because that same summer, my parents agreed to send me out to San Jose, California to visit my aunt and cousins for two weeks. As it turns out, I was related to some religious nuts, too. My cousin, Jay and his wife, TJ had two young daughters at the time and they were so much fun to be with. Jay had a crazy sense of humor and his wife was cool and gorgeous and I loved playing with their kids. I tagged along with TJ and the girls one day to Vacation Bible School and found that I wanted to cry the entire time... in a good way. The more I listened to stories about Jesus, the more fascinated I became. I asked them to take me with them again, and I accompanied them several times during my stay, and made friends with the children's pastor, who was a very kind man who made me feel comfortable and welcome.
While in California, I went out and purchased Amy's "Heart In Motion" album on cassette. If you're a teenager and you don't know what I mean, look up "cassette tapes." They were horrible creatures that forced you to "fast-forward" and "reverse" - you couldn't just select a track and play it. And if you left them in your car in the sun, they'd melt. Those were the bad old days. In any case, I bought the album on tape and nearly wore it out listening to it. Poor Jay and TJ - I asked them to play it in their car every time we went somewhere, and they kindly did.
Jay was very forward about his faith, but not in a way that would have offended a non-believer. I recall a conversation in which we were sitting on the floor in his living room playing Super Mario Bros. on his Nintendo system (again, kids, look it up) and I asked him a series of questions about his life. I wanted to know if he and TJ were going to have more kids, if he was going to go back into music (he was in a popular Bay Area rock band in the 80s), all of which he answered with, "If it's God's plan for my life." Both of them talked to me about Jesus in detail, but that's the conversation that really sticks out in my mind, nearly 20 years later.
God help my parents - I came home from that trip talking up a storm about God. My parents didn't have a problem with me believing in God, because THEY believed in God in their own way. They just found it odd that a kid who never went to church was suddenly rambling on about God and asking for her own Bible. They said my cousins' beliefs were "weird" and that religion was a deeply private thing you didn't talk about with others.
As a burgeoning Amy Grant fanatic, I started listening to her older music after I became such a huge fan of "Heart In Motion", which led me to listen to other Christian music. I found the local CCM station - WJTL - and began falling in love with the music of Michael W. Smith, Petra, Newsboys and others. The more I listened, the softer my heart seemed to become. I still didn't know if or what I believed, but I wanted the stuff they were singing about. The idea of unconditional love, there for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, along with unending forgiveness was incredibly appealing to me. Who WOULDN'T want that? The question is, are you willing to believe in those things in the form of an omnipotent God you can't see?
Listening to Christian radio also introduced me to Dawson McAllister Live, a call-in show for people (at the time) 18 years of age and younger. Kids were calling in with all kinds of problems, many of them like mine - kids with family problems, sexual abuse survivors, teenagers with depression, etc. I started tuning in every Sunday night. On the show, they always mentioned their toll-free hotline for kids who needed someone to talk to, known as the "Hopeline," and I jotted down the number for future reference, though I never really intended to call it.
The people on the radio kept talking about becoming a Christian and "accepting Jesus" into your life. I had no idea what they meant, but I wanted to do that... whatever it was. I asked my parents what they thought that meant - my mother called her girlfriend, who told her I was on the cusp of joining a cult. Hmm, no help there!
Now, I feel like a goof going on about Amy Grant because I'm a grown woman and I know I sound like I'm sitting here with electrical tape holding my glasses together with Amy Grant posters all over the walls of my efficiency apartment. In other words: I sound like a dork. But this is how God worked in my life, so I have to tell the story exactly the way it unfolded.
There is a song on Amy's 1988 album, "Lead Me On" called "Saved By Love." I'm not going to post the lyrics here because I know Amy's manager and I don't want to break some kooky copyright law by doing so. (Eh hem.) The title is pretty self-explanatory. I don't know what it was about that song exactly, but one day, when I was 12 years old, it absolutely broke my heart for the Lord and I found myself on my knees in front of my bed, weeping and asking God to save me. I didn't know if I was asking the right thing or if I was asking it the right way... I just told God I wanted what my neighbors and my cousins and Amy Grant had.
When I stood up, I felt different... but I was still a little paranoid that I hadn't done something right when I prayed.
So I pulled out Dawson McAllister's Hopeline number, dialed it, and got a sweet-sounding lady named Ginny on the other line. She asked me if I was a Christian, and I said yes. She asked me how I knew I was a Christian, and I said I knew it because I had never killed anybody and I was born in America. ::::sigh:::: Long-story-made-short... she finally explained to me what being a Christian and "accepting Jesus" meant. And it had nothing to do with an American or being murder-free. She asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart (in the official capacity, I suppose?) and without hesitation, I said yes. In fact, I yelled it. She asked me if I was sure, and I yelled it even louder.
I asked Jesus into my heart.
It was May 4, 1992... the day before my 13th birthday.
In the next segment, we'll discuss my journey AWAY from God... Pin It
Monday, December 28, 2009
My Testimony - My Religious Background
I always wanted to start my story off the way Ellen DeGeneres started her book, "My Point...And I Do Have One." Here goes nothing.
I was born, bred and lightly sauteed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I burst into this world on May 5, 1979. I am the youngest of three children and the only girl. My parents were older when they had me (Mom was 37, Dad was 43... which, back then, was pretty old to be having a baby) and my brothers are ten and twelve years older than me. My maternal grandmother came to live with us when I was 2. My grandfather had Alzheimer's and, at the time, it was a relatively new disease and many nursing facilities didn't take Alzheimer's patients. Yet they were able to find a nursing home for him nearby, so Grandma moved in to be closer to him and to help take care of us kids.
According to my mom, we had a religious family. If by "religious" you mean we went to funerals, then maybe that's an accurate description. My mother and her side of the family belong to the Mormon faith. My dad is an Episcopalian, and his side of the family is a combination of Episcopalian and Catholic. I recall going to church once in my life, when I was very young. It was my mother's Mormon ward, and I loved Sunday School and didn't want to leave and screamed and kicked when my mother and grandmother came to get me. During the service, we received communion (known in the Mormon church as receiving "Sacrament") and I really liked the bread. Nobody explained to me what the bread meant, so I assumed it was just a nice snack for the congregation. I took a piece and my brother took the basket from me and I yelled, "WAIT... DON'T TAKE IT, I WANT MORE!!!!" My father shushed me and I remember being good and PO'd that I wasn't able to snatch a handful before the basket was passed on.
That pretty much covers my childhood church experience.
Of course, my mother had visitors from her church periodically. She had friends from the Relief Society stop by at times, and the bishop would visit. When I was a child, I loved all of them and I loved their visits because they always brought me something. I used to sit in the living room while they did a Bible study (or maybe it was a Book of Mormon study, I really don't remember) and we'd pray. My mother participated because SHE was born, bred and lightly sauteed in the LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Church and it was the thing to do. I participated because it fascinated me.
I don't know how much you know about Mormons... but they don't drink alcohol or coffee or smoke, all of which my family did. Quite a bit, actually. So when the Mormons showed up, the coffee pot got shoved under the sink where the liquor was hidden, the smokes got stashed away, and my folks went through a bottle of air freshener at a time to get rid of the awful stench of sin.
Other times, church people were not welcome at all. Religion in my family was very much a mood-based sort of thing. I had a job to do, and I did it well: if I was outside and I saw the Mormon missionaries coming (it's hard to miss a couple of hot-looking teenage guys in black pants, white shirts and black ties carrying Bibles) I ran inside to warn my family. If they were not in the mood to be bothered spiritually, we all ran around closing the drapes, locking the doors, and we huddled together on the staircase in silence until the knocking on the front door ceased.
Ah, good times.
Now, my mother always told me the reason we didn't go to church was because she was forced to go to church growing up. They lived in Provo, Utah, where everyone was white and everyone was Mormon, and if you didn't go to church every time the doors were opened, something was considered wrong with you. Apparently, it didn't matter if my mother and her siblings were attacked by a pack of pit bulls and mauled within an inch of their lives - they went to church, and by golly, NOBODY COMPLAINED.
In an effort not to force church on her children, she just didn't take us at all.
It wasn't that my family didn't believe in God, it was just that everyone was afraid of overdoing it... so I supposed they underdid it.
However, that doesn't mean I got no religion growing up. My parents also enrolled me in a Christian preschool which I actually remember very well. I used to walk around singing "Jesus Loves Me" all the time and I played with wooden figurines in the likeness of Bible heroes. I'm pretty sure I accepted Jesus as Savior during that time of my life, though I don't remember it. I was totally down with Jesus, though, and it stuck.
A lot of the religion I got as a young child came from - believe this or not - my older brother's girlfriends. A few of them were Catholic, so when my oldest brother brought them home from college for Christmas (I remember 2 of them), they always wanted to go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Fortunately for me, those girls thought I was cute so they let me tag along. I loved all of it - the liturgy, the Latin, the somberness of it all. I always had a longing for God, even before I knew the first thing about Him. I just felt like He was real and I wanted to know for sure.
At the same time all of this was happening, I was being sexually abused by a neighbor on a daily basis. My grandfather died when I was 4 and my grandmother began drinking a lot and slipped into senility. I often found her passed out on the floor, at the bottom of the stairs, or mumbling incoherently in her recliner. My uncle - my mother's brother - started stealing money from our family (about a half a million dollars) and my mother sank into depression. I started eating to soothe my broken heart and by the fifth grade I was officially "Fatso." I was bullied mercilessly by kids in the neighborhood and at school.
By that point, I wasn't so "down" with Jesus anymore. I wasn't sure I believed in God at all. I spent a lot of time alone in my room, just sitting on my bed and thinking about eternity, the size of the universe, how we got here, and whether or not we went anywhere when we died. Everyone thinks about that sort of thing, but I'm pretty sure it's not normal for a 10-year-old to think about it daily, or to the point of becoming suicidal...
It was around that age I knew something was wrong with me. I know that the problems in my life were enough to make anyone depressed, but it was just... different. I didn't know if I really believed in God or not anymore, but I did start praying - that God would kill me. I started asking God to take my life because life was too sad to live anymore. And I begged him, if He was real, to have mercy on me for not knowing what to believe.
I started to get a better idea of who God was when I entered the sixth grade... Pin It
I was born, bred and lightly sauteed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I burst into this world on May 5, 1979. I am the youngest of three children and the only girl. My parents were older when they had me (Mom was 37, Dad was 43... which, back then, was pretty old to be having a baby) and my brothers are ten and twelve years older than me. My maternal grandmother came to live with us when I was 2. My grandfather had Alzheimer's and, at the time, it was a relatively new disease and many nursing facilities didn't take Alzheimer's patients. Yet they were able to find a nursing home for him nearby, so Grandma moved in to be closer to him and to help take care of us kids.
According to my mom, we had a religious family. If by "religious" you mean we went to funerals, then maybe that's an accurate description. My mother and her side of the family belong to the Mormon faith. My dad is an Episcopalian, and his side of the family is a combination of Episcopalian and Catholic. I recall going to church once in my life, when I was very young. It was my mother's Mormon ward, and I loved Sunday School and didn't want to leave and screamed and kicked when my mother and grandmother came to get me. During the service, we received communion (known in the Mormon church as receiving "Sacrament") and I really liked the bread. Nobody explained to me what the bread meant, so I assumed it was just a nice snack for the congregation. I took a piece and my brother took the basket from me and I yelled, "WAIT... DON'T TAKE IT, I WANT MORE!!!!" My father shushed me and I remember being good and PO'd that I wasn't able to snatch a handful before the basket was passed on.
That pretty much covers my childhood church experience.
Of course, my mother had visitors from her church periodically. She had friends from the Relief Society stop by at times, and the bishop would visit. When I was a child, I loved all of them and I loved their visits because they always brought me something. I used to sit in the living room while they did a Bible study (or maybe it was a Book of Mormon study, I really don't remember) and we'd pray. My mother participated because SHE was born, bred and lightly sauteed in the LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Church and it was the thing to do. I participated because it fascinated me.
I don't know how much you know about Mormons... but they don't drink alcohol or coffee or smoke, all of which my family did. Quite a bit, actually. So when the Mormons showed up, the coffee pot got shoved under the sink where the liquor was hidden, the smokes got stashed away, and my folks went through a bottle of air freshener at a time to get rid of the awful stench of sin.
Other times, church people were not welcome at all. Religion in my family was very much a mood-based sort of thing. I had a job to do, and I did it well: if I was outside and I saw the Mormon missionaries coming (it's hard to miss a couple of hot-looking teenage guys in black pants, white shirts and black ties carrying Bibles) I ran inside to warn my family. If they were not in the mood to be bothered spiritually, we all ran around closing the drapes, locking the doors, and we huddled together on the staircase in silence until the knocking on the front door ceased.
Ah, good times.
Now, my mother always told me the reason we didn't go to church was because she was forced to go to church growing up. They lived in Provo, Utah, where everyone was white and everyone was Mormon, and if you didn't go to church every time the doors were opened, something was considered wrong with you. Apparently, it didn't matter if my mother and her siblings were attacked by a pack of pit bulls and mauled within an inch of their lives - they went to church, and by golly, NOBODY COMPLAINED.
In an effort not to force church on her children, she just didn't take us at all.
It wasn't that my family didn't believe in God, it was just that everyone was afraid of overdoing it... so I supposed they underdid it.
However, that doesn't mean I got no religion growing up. My parents also enrolled me in a Christian preschool which I actually remember very well. I used to walk around singing "Jesus Loves Me" all the time and I played with wooden figurines in the likeness of Bible heroes. I'm pretty sure I accepted Jesus as Savior during that time of my life, though I don't remember it. I was totally down with Jesus, though, and it stuck.
A lot of the religion I got as a young child came from - believe this or not - my older brother's girlfriends. A few of them were Catholic, so when my oldest brother brought them home from college for Christmas (I remember 2 of them), they always wanted to go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Fortunately for me, those girls thought I was cute so they let me tag along. I loved all of it - the liturgy, the Latin, the somberness of it all. I always had a longing for God, even before I knew the first thing about Him. I just felt like He was real and I wanted to know for sure.
At the same time all of this was happening, I was being sexually abused by a neighbor on a daily basis. My grandfather died when I was 4 and my grandmother began drinking a lot and slipped into senility. I often found her passed out on the floor, at the bottom of the stairs, or mumbling incoherently in her recliner. My uncle - my mother's brother - started stealing money from our family (about a half a million dollars) and my mother sank into depression. I started eating to soothe my broken heart and by the fifth grade I was officially "Fatso." I was bullied mercilessly by kids in the neighborhood and at school.
By that point, I wasn't so "down" with Jesus anymore. I wasn't sure I believed in God at all. I spent a lot of time alone in my room, just sitting on my bed and thinking about eternity, the size of the universe, how we got here, and whether or not we went anywhere when we died. Everyone thinks about that sort of thing, but I'm pretty sure it's not normal for a 10-year-old to think about it daily, or to the point of becoming suicidal...
It was around that age I knew something was wrong with me. I know that the problems in my life were enough to make anyone depressed, but it was just... different. I didn't know if I really believed in God or not anymore, but I did start praying - that God would kill me. I started asking God to take my life because life was too sad to live anymore. And I begged him, if He was real, to have mercy on me for not knowing what to believe.
I started to get a better idea of who God was when I entered the sixth grade... Pin It
Friday, December 18, 2009
When Ignorance Births Scandal
Before I launch into this post, let me say this: as long as Christians continue to be human, there will always be scandals. Some scandals are, indeed, scandalous. TV evangelists will have affairs, commit fraud, steal money, hire prostitutes. Sometimes, however, scandals erupt not because of outwardly evil deeds, but out of an abundance of ignorance.
Let's tackle the second kind of scandal - the kind born of ignorance.
Now, this particular topic is not new, though I am just learning of it this week. It is a topic of great importance to me because I deal with mental illness on a daily basis. The Mercy Ministries Australia home for girls in Sydney is shutting down reportedly due to lack of funds and decreasing public support. However, it has also come to light that some of the tactics used to "treat" girls in the program - girls with eating disorders, sexual abuse issues, and severe mental illness - were quite cruel.
I am unabashedly a pentecostal believer. If you're a Catholic or a Presbyterian, coming to my church would probably land you in the ER with heart palpitations. No, we don't wrestle snakes and people don't knock each other in Jesus' name every Sunday morning, but we get our worship on with a rock praise & worship band, dancing, shouting, words of prophecy, sometimes speaking in tongues. It took the Mormon child in me a while to get used to it, but now I'm on board. So I fully believe in demonic oppression and spiritual warfare. When you're overloaded with blessings, you come to realize it can't be a coincidence. Likewise, when you're struck over the head with bad news over and over again like a 2x4, you also start to realize... hmm, this isn't a coincidence, either. If you believe in good, you have to believe in evil, and vice versa.
The problem is that a lot of Christians (not just the pentecostals) believe that any kind of mental and/or emotional issue is strictly a work of the enemy, nothing more than a spiritual flaw. I will not argue that there IS a demonic element to some of these issues. Take, for example, a woman who was sexually abused as a child who is struggling through life, just trying to survive. Her heart is enrobed in emotional turmoil - relationship problems, low self-esteem, body issues, sexual dysfunction, etc. Maybe she's anorexic or bulimic, or she cuts herself or has attempted suicide.
No one could ever convince me that these are not, in some way, spiritual issues. God created us to have mutually fulfilling relationships; to have confidence in ourselves based on the knowledge that we are created in His image and that if HE is for us, no one can be against us; to love our bodies for the same reason, and to enjoy a rich sexual life within the biblical mandate of marriage. In other words, WE WERE CREATED TO HAVE ABUNDANT LIFE. I know from personal experience that sexual abuse teaches you to believe just about every lie the devil could ever come up with. You believe it was your fault, that there is something deeply wrong with you, that you are not entitled to anything good... the list goes on and on. Abuse teaches you to believe THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what the TRUTH is.
These are lessons that survivors must un-learn in order to live the abundant life God intended for them. They must re-learn who they are, and study who God meant them to be. And, yes, I have seen extreme tactics such as casting out demons work on people. I am not opposed to the idea.
The problem is, we are wrong in assuming that there is no physical element involved. Staying on the topic of child abuse (since it is an excellent example), studies have shown that abuse can directly impact the PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN BRAIN. When I worked with teenagers and their babies at a group home some years ago, I went through training to learn about the impact a troubled upbringing or neglect can have on developing brains. It can literally define how the frontal lobe develops.
WE are the ones in need of spiritual intervention when we neglect the physical health and well-being of others, denying them proper medical and psychological treatment, and instead focus on patients as a spiritual 'project.' As a Bipolar Disorder sufferer, I have had my share of well-meaning Christians say to me, in the mist of a depressive cycle, "Are you reading your Bible? Are you praying? Do you have some unresolved sin in your life?" All of these are valid questions that SHOULD be asked. However, often, when I mention medication or counseling, it becomes very evident that the person I'm talking to barely believes those issues are involved at all. As if a brain's chemical composition couldn't possibly be out-of-whack, or a chunk of my thinker couldn't possibly be damaged or malfunctioning. As if everyone with a mental illness isn't really ill, they're just great big, lazy sinners. As if, deep down, our only "problem" is that we don't pray hard enough, seek God enough, or believe fully. Which is entertaining if you think about it, considering NO ONE does any of those things "enough." It's like saying that someone with diabetes is actually being attacked by Satan for only spending 15 minutes in worship last night, or someone with breast cancer has a tumor because they missed church too often last year.
Sometimes, our physical ailments ARE the result of spiritual lack. Does it happen? Of course. The Bible is full of examples of it. Other times... more often than most of us believers want to admit... it is not a punishment for being spiritually inept. Sometimes - for reasons I will never, ever comprehend - God ALLOWS us to suffer because He will somehow be glorified through it, and/or because He wants us to grow as people because of the experience. That's right, chew on that for a bit - sometimes, God allows us to get sick. Look at the example of Job. He was a devoted servant of God who never gave up his faith, and yet God took everything from him. It had nothing to do with him being "bad" and deserving it. And more often than not, God gives us either a remedy or a way to make it easier to endure.
And when God gives us His wisdom and healing power in the form of a wise counselor, psychiatrist, psychologist, or medication, we need to take stock of OURSELVES if we turn it away.
1 Corinthians 15:34 says it all:
We are both body and soul, as God created us to be.
We are unwise and in need of spiritual inventory when we refuse to acknowledge and treat the entire package. Pin It
Let's tackle the second kind of scandal - the kind born of ignorance.
Now, this particular topic is not new, though I am just learning of it this week. It is a topic of great importance to me because I deal with mental illness on a daily basis. The Mercy Ministries Australia home for girls in Sydney is shutting down reportedly due to lack of funds and decreasing public support. However, it has also come to light that some of the tactics used to "treat" girls in the program - girls with eating disorders, sexual abuse issues, and severe mental illness - were quite cruel.
I am unabashedly a pentecostal believer. If you're a Catholic or a Presbyterian, coming to my church would probably land you in the ER with heart palpitations. No, we don't wrestle snakes and people don't knock each other in Jesus' name every Sunday morning, but we get our worship on with a rock praise & worship band, dancing, shouting, words of prophecy, sometimes speaking in tongues. It took the Mormon child in me a while to get used to it, but now I'm on board. So I fully believe in demonic oppression and spiritual warfare. When you're overloaded with blessings, you come to realize it can't be a coincidence. Likewise, when you're struck over the head with bad news over and over again like a 2x4, you also start to realize... hmm, this isn't a coincidence, either. If you believe in good, you have to believe in evil, and vice versa.
The problem is that a lot of Christians (not just the pentecostals) believe that any kind of mental and/or emotional issue is strictly a work of the enemy, nothing more than a spiritual flaw. I will not argue that there IS a demonic element to some of these issues. Take, for example, a woman who was sexually abused as a child who is struggling through life, just trying to survive. Her heart is enrobed in emotional turmoil - relationship problems, low self-esteem, body issues, sexual dysfunction, etc. Maybe she's anorexic or bulimic, or she cuts herself or has attempted suicide.
No one could ever convince me that these are not, in some way, spiritual issues. God created us to have mutually fulfilling relationships; to have confidence in ourselves based on the knowledge that we are created in His image and that if HE is for us, no one can be against us; to love our bodies for the same reason, and to enjoy a rich sexual life within the biblical mandate of marriage. In other words, WE WERE CREATED TO HAVE ABUNDANT LIFE. I know from personal experience that sexual abuse teaches you to believe just about every lie the devil could ever come up with. You believe it was your fault, that there is something deeply wrong with you, that you are not entitled to anything good... the list goes on and on. Abuse teaches you to believe THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what the TRUTH is.
These are lessons that survivors must un-learn in order to live the abundant life God intended for them. They must re-learn who they are, and study who God meant them to be. And, yes, I have seen extreme tactics such as casting out demons work on people. I am not opposed to the idea.
The problem is, we are wrong in assuming that there is no physical element involved. Staying on the topic of child abuse (since it is an excellent example), studies have shown that abuse can directly impact the PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN BRAIN. When I worked with teenagers and their babies at a group home some years ago, I went through training to learn about the impact a troubled upbringing or neglect can have on developing brains. It can literally define how the frontal lobe develops.
WE are the ones in need of spiritual intervention when we neglect the physical health and well-being of others, denying them proper medical and psychological treatment, and instead focus on patients as a spiritual 'project.' As a Bipolar Disorder sufferer, I have had my share of well-meaning Christians say to me, in the mist of a depressive cycle, "Are you reading your Bible? Are you praying? Do you have some unresolved sin in your life?" All of these are valid questions that SHOULD be asked. However, often, when I mention medication or counseling, it becomes very evident that the person I'm talking to barely believes those issues are involved at all. As if a brain's chemical composition couldn't possibly be out-of-whack, or a chunk of my thinker couldn't possibly be damaged or malfunctioning. As if everyone with a mental illness isn't really ill, they're just great big, lazy sinners. As if, deep down, our only "problem" is that we don't pray hard enough, seek God enough, or believe fully. Which is entertaining if you think about it, considering NO ONE does any of those things "enough." It's like saying that someone with diabetes is actually being attacked by Satan for only spending 15 minutes in worship last night, or someone with breast cancer has a tumor because they missed church too often last year.
Sometimes, our physical ailments ARE the result of spiritual lack. Does it happen? Of course. The Bible is full of examples of it. Other times... more often than most of us believers want to admit... it is not a punishment for being spiritually inept. Sometimes - for reasons I will never, ever comprehend - God ALLOWS us to suffer because He will somehow be glorified through it, and/or because He wants us to grow as people because of the experience. That's right, chew on that for a bit - sometimes, God allows us to get sick. Look at the example of Job. He was a devoted servant of God who never gave up his faith, and yet God took everything from him. It had nothing to do with him being "bad" and deserving it. And more often than not, God gives us either a remedy or a way to make it easier to endure.
And when God gives us His wisdom and healing power in the form of a wise counselor, psychiatrist, psychologist, or medication, we need to take stock of OURSELVES if we turn it away.
1 Corinthians 15:34 says it all:
Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.
We are both body and soul, as God created us to be.
We are unwise and in need of spiritual inventory when we refuse to acknowledge and treat the entire package. Pin It
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Acting Like The Tail
"The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom."
Deuteronomy 28:13
I don't know everything about life. I'm a Christian woman with opinions and some life experience to go with it, that's all. But I'm also a writer, so there is one thing I have learned, and that is criticism can be good for you.
Recently a friend of mine attended a Christmas program at her church, which considers itself especially gifted in their music ministry. My friend returned home and proceeded to give the program a less-than-favorable review. She never said it was terrible; in fact, she listed a number of positive aspects about the performance. Actually, she never really complained about the performance, but rather the sound quality.
In case you hadn't noticed lately... lots of Christians live in a bubble where everything is (fake) flowery and wonderful and there is no room for improvement because, after all, they've arrived!
Her criticism, ironically enough, was immediately met with... more criticism. One churchgoer told her she was being unnecessarily harsh and how dare she put down something the Lord clearly wrote and anointed?!? Surely, if GOD wrote and anointed it, it was perfect. Her pastor even got angry and insisted on speaking with her husband about my friend's conduct. A woman with a viewpoint - nope, can't have that either in the house of God!
As an author, I've gotten some great reviews, and some bad reviews. No doubt, the bad reviews sting. Just being the type of person I am, I got pretty ticked off about it at first. And as a staff writer at Infuze Magazine some years ago, I wrote reviews as part of my job there. Say the wrong thing, and people are ready to string you up - even the REALLY happy Christian people.
All of that taught me a few things about how to live life.
I learned, first and foremost, that being closed off to criticism is a little thing we call PRIDE. I know I don't read my Bible as often as I should, but I do know God hates pride. Pride says "I'm above it all" when, according to Jesus, we're beneath it all, and without His grace and His blood to clean us off and wipe us down, we're nuthin'. Jesus made us spotless in God's eyes, as far as sin is concerned. That doesn't mean we have it all figured out; if we DID, God wouldn't have left the Bible behind to guide us.
Which brings me to my second point - we are called to be the "head" and not the "tail." Meaning, we are supposed to lead. You see it too often in Christian music, artists imitating the culture instead of revolutionizing it. We're way behind, ironically, in leading. YES, God can write and anoint a Christmas program. YES, God can write and anoint a book. That doesn't always mean we write/perform/interpret it perfectly. God's perfect will is flowing through imperfect human hands. We will not always get it right.
If we cannot step back, take a long, hard look at ourselves and suck it up and admit that maybe we could have done something better, then WE ARE ALWAYS GOING TO BE THE TAIL.
The world expects more from us. There's something wrong if we blow them off and opt to believe that we are beyond reproach. If we want to be the head, we have to act like the head, and accept that sometimes we miss the mark and act like the tail.
The only person who ever "arrived" was Jesus. And if you think you or your church is perfect... then you have some more work to do. Pin It
Monday, December 14, 2009
Winter. Ech.
I wish Christmas could last forever. The sights, the sounds, the smells, my nephew visiting, it's all wonderful.
It's AFTER Christmas I'm dreading.
The cold, the bleakness, the wind... it's a Bipolar Disorder sufferer's nightmare. I love a heavy snowfall, but I hate 4 months of gray/white nothingness.
Did I mention our best friends are moving?
There's that, too.
When winter hits, it takes every ounce of energy I have not to just crawl in bed and set my alarm for... April or May. I feel it coming, too. Trying to keep my chin up and find things to look forward to. All I can see right now is a winter full of job-hunting, friends leaving, nephew going back to the military, icy roads, and that overall sense of "blah"... Pin It
It's AFTER Christmas I'm dreading.
The cold, the bleakness, the wind... it's a Bipolar Disorder sufferer's nightmare. I love a heavy snowfall, but I hate 4 months of gray/white nothingness.
Did I mention our best friends are moving?
There's that, too.
When winter hits, it takes every ounce of energy I have not to just crawl in bed and set my alarm for... April or May. I feel it coming, too. Trying to keep my chin up and find things to look forward to. All I can see right now is a winter full of job-hunting, friends leaving, nephew going back to the military, icy roads, and that overall sense of "blah"... Pin It
Merry Christmas, ACLU!
Got this little gem from my uncle up in Connecticut. :)
Pass this on to your church, co-workers, family, and friends. What do you have to lose but a postage stamp, what do you have to gain --- more than you will ever know.
What a clever idea!
Yes, Christmas cards. This is coming early so that you can get ready to include an important address to your list.
Want to have some fun this CHRISTMAS? Send the ACLU a CHRISTMAS CARD this year.
As they are working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday, we should all send them a nice,
CHRISTIAN card to brighten up their dark, sad, little world..
Make sure it says "Merry Christmas" on it.
Here's the address, just don't be rude or crude. (It's not the
Christian way, you know.)
ACLU
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York , NY 10004
Two tons of Christmas cards would freeze their operations because they wouldn't know if any were regular mail containing contributions. So spend 44 cents and tell the ACLU to leave Christmas alone. Also tell them that there is no such thing as a " Holiday Tree". . . It's always been called a CHRISTMAS TREE!
And pass this on to your email lists. We really want to communicate with the ACLU! They really DESERVE us!!
For those of you who aren't aware of them, the ACLU, (the American Civil Liberties Union) is the one suing the U.S. Government to take God, Christmas or anything Christian away from us. They represent the atheists and others in this war. Help put Christ back in Christmas. Pin It
Pass this on to your church, co-workers, family, and friends. What do you have to lose but a postage stamp, what do you have to gain --- more than you will ever know.
What a clever idea!
Yes, Christmas cards. This is coming early so that you can get ready to include an important address to your list.
Want to have some fun this CHRISTMAS? Send the ACLU a CHRISTMAS CARD this year.
As they are working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday, we should all send them a nice,
CHRISTIAN card to brighten up their dark, sad, little world..
Make sure it says "Merry Christmas" on it.
Here's the address, just don't be rude or crude. (It's not the
Christian way, you know.)
ACLU
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York , NY 10004
Two tons of Christmas cards would freeze their operations because they wouldn't know if any were regular mail containing contributions. So spend 44 cents and tell the ACLU to leave Christmas alone. Also tell them that there is no such thing as a " Holiday Tree". . . It's always been called a CHRISTMAS TREE!
And pass this on to your email lists. We really want to communicate with the ACLU! They really DESERVE us!!
For those of you who aren't aware of them, the ACLU, (the American Civil Liberties Union) is the one suing the U.S. Government to take God, Christmas or anything Christian away from us. They represent the atheists and others in this war. Help put Christ back in Christmas. Pin It
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Hey, Bill Maher...
Bill Maher. Gotta love the guy. Actually, I guess if you're liberal, then you probably do love the guy. I'm not a fan myself.
So, this is his lastest Maher-ism:
This little cop-out was uttered recently on "Larry King Live."
Heh. Funny you should mention it, Bill.
I can't fault you. I mean, if I weren't a Christian, I'd probably think something similar. I was raised on the notion that anyone who was "into church" was a religious nut. Ah, I'll never forget when Patty & Craig moved in next-door. Two of the nicest people you'd ever want to me. They opened their home to me, let me swim in their pool, had me babysit their kids, and yet because they invited me to church they were "nuts."
I guess if you're not into it, you just don't get it, and that's cool.
I've been a Christian now for 17 years. Not all of it has been flowers and butterflies and balloons. Most of it, because of my messy past, was rife with questions and doubts. Sometimes I walked away, then I came back, then I walked away again, then I came back, and on and on it went.
Yeah, Bill, it's funny you should mention faith and neurological disorders in the same sentence, because my own neurological problem is what has convinced me that God is real and that human beings are made to NEED and WANT God. See, I have Bipolar Disorder, which, in your world, is the reason I have faith in God. You know, it never worked like that for me. All those years I had BP and didn't know it, I WRESTLED with my faith mightily. Do you know when I stopped wrestling, Bill? WHEN I GOT MEDICATED.
Yup, you got it. When I saw a shrink and started getting medicated for my brain illness, that's when faith got a lot easier for me. Not that I've got it all figured out, because I don't and I never will. But the questions of how and why and why not... all of a sudden I could handle them.
Do you get what I'm saying here? My faith started to make sense and come alive AFTER I was treated for my neurological disorder.
Now, it's a free country and you're entitled to believe whatever you darn well please. I'm sure some people have had the exact opposite experience of mine. But I'm writing to you to tell you your logic doesn't work. Come up with a better way insult people of faith, because this jab won't cut it.
Have a merry Christmas... X-mas... whatever you call it. And good luck coming up with pat answers in the future.
This guy knows everything! He's like Santa Claus, only considerably less jolly... Pin It
So, this is his lastest Maher-ism:
"I think religion is a neurological disorder."
This little cop-out was uttered recently on "Larry King Live."
Heh. Funny you should mention it, Bill.
I can't fault you. I mean, if I weren't a Christian, I'd probably think something similar. I was raised on the notion that anyone who was "into church" was a religious nut. Ah, I'll never forget when Patty & Craig moved in next-door. Two of the nicest people you'd ever want to me. They opened their home to me, let me swim in their pool, had me babysit their kids, and yet because they invited me to church they were "nuts."
I guess if you're not into it, you just don't get it, and that's cool.
I've been a Christian now for 17 years. Not all of it has been flowers and butterflies and balloons. Most of it, because of my messy past, was rife with questions and doubts. Sometimes I walked away, then I came back, then I walked away again, then I came back, and on and on it went.
Yeah, Bill, it's funny you should mention faith and neurological disorders in the same sentence, because my own neurological problem is what has convinced me that God is real and that human beings are made to NEED and WANT God. See, I have Bipolar Disorder, which, in your world, is the reason I have faith in God. You know, it never worked like that for me. All those years I had BP and didn't know it, I WRESTLED with my faith mightily. Do you know when I stopped wrestling, Bill? WHEN I GOT MEDICATED.
Yup, you got it. When I saw a shrink and started getting medicated for my brain illness, that's when faith got a lot easier for me. Not that I've got it all figured out, because I don't and I never will. But the questions of how and why and why not... all of a sudden I could handle them.
Do you get what I'm saying here? My faith started to make sense and come alive AFTER I was treated for my neurological disorder.
Now, it's a free country and you're entitled to believe whatever you darn well please. I'm sure some people have had the exact opposite experience of mine. But I'm writing to you to tell you your logic doesn't work. Come up with a better way insult people of faith, because this jab won't cut it.
Have a merry Christmas... X-mas... whatever you call it. And good luck coming up with pat answers in the future.
This guy knows everything! He's like Santa Claus, only considerably less jolly... Pin It
Friday, December 11, 2009
Rick Warren & The Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Well, here we are again on one of my least favorite topics: Christian condemnation.
All of us are guilty of it, because even though accepting Christ as Savior creates a new being, we still continue to be human. Humans fail. It's the blatant, unrepentant condemnation I can't stand.
Kudos to Rick Warren, America's most prominent pastor second only to Billy Graham, for taking a firm stand against the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill, which proposes:
Shame on Uganda pastor Martin Ssempa - at one time Rick Warren's "point person" in the country - for backing such a bill. Pastor Ssempa spoke at my old church a few times and I was quickly energized by what seemed to be an unquenchable passion for the Ugandan poor, both in spirit and in wallet. However, this information has made me second-guess my respect for him.
Why?
Warren goes on to explain in the article why almost everything about this bill goes against the command of Jesus Christ to go out and love the lost and hurting:
Of course, there are thousands of evil laws enacted around the world and I cannot speak to pastors about every one of them, but I am taking the extraordinary step of speaking to you – the pastors of Uganda and spiritual leaders of your nation – for five reasons:"
Now, having sex - homosexual or otherwise - with someone when you know you are HIV-positive but they DON'T is wrong, and I believe should be criminalized. This is the only aspect of the bill I would support. In this country alone, such a thing can and has been used to charge people with attempted murder.
Otherwise, the bill closes the door to people seeking comfort, as well as medical and spiritual help. And even more disturbing is the notion that there are conservatives senators in this country which support it. Wow - nothing makes me want to remove myself from that label MORE.
We're so good at slamming the gavel but not so great at spreading the love.
Jesus must be incredibly hurt. Pin It
All of us are guilty of it, because even though accepting Christ as Savior creates a new being, we still continue to be human. Humans fail. It's the blatant, unrepentant condemnation I can't stand.
Kudos to Rick Warren, America's most prominent pastor second only to Billy Graham, for taking a firm stand against the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill, which proposes:
The bill, which is currently before the Ugandan parliament and has been expected to pass, would require a seven-year jail term for homosexual acts and three years for anyone who fails to report evidence of homosexuality within 24 hours of learning of such acts. It would also call for the execution of anyone who has gay sex with disabled people or anyone under 18, or when the accused is HIV positive. While many countries -- especially conservative Muslim nations -- criminalize homosexuality, the Ugandan law would be among the harshest. And it is one whose origins can be traced to Christian leaders in the United States and Uganda, as we reported earlier.
Shame on Uganda pastor Martin Ssempa - at one time Rick Warren's "point person" in the country - for backing such a bill. Pastor Ssempa spoke at my old church a few times and I was quickly energized by what seemed to be an unquenchable passion for the Ugandan poor, both in spirit and in wallet. However, this information has made me second-guess my respect for him.
Why?
Warren goes on to explain in the article why almost everything about this bill goes against the command of Jesus Christ to go out and love the lost and hurting:
Of course, there are thousands of evil laws enacted around the world and I cannot speak to pastors about every one of them, but I am taking the extraordinary step of speaking to you – the pastors of Uganda and spiritual leaders of your nation – for five reasons:"
"First, the potential law is unjust, extreme and un-Christian toward homosexuals, requiring the death penalty in some cases. If I am reading the proposed bill correctly, this law would also imprison anyone convicted of homosexual practice."
"Second, the law would force pastors to report their pastoral conversations with homosexuals to authorities."
"Third, it would have a chilling effect on your ministry to the hurting. As you know, in Africa, it is the churches that are bearing the primary burden of providing care for people infected with HIV/AIDS. If this bill passed, homosexuals who are HIV positive will be reluctant to seek or receive care, comfort and compassion from our churches out of fear of being reported. You and I know that the churches of Uganda are the truly caring communities where people receive hope and help, not condemnation."
"Fourth, ALL life, no matter how humble or broken, whether unborn or dying, is precious to God. My wife, Kay, and I have devoted our lives and our ministry to saving the lives of people, including homosexuals, who are HIV positive. It would be inconsistent to save some lives and wish death on others. We're not just pro-life. We are whole life."
"Finally, the freedom to make moral choices and our right to free expression are gifts endowed by God. Uganda is a democratic country with remarkable and wise people, and in a democracy everyone has a right to speak up. For these reasons, I urge you, the pastors of Uganda, to speak out against the proposed law."
Now, having sex - homosexual or otherwise - with someone when you know you are HIV-positive but they DON'T is wrong, and I believe should be criminalized. This is the only aspect of the bill I would support. In this country alone, such a thing can and has been used to charge people with attempted murder.
Otherwise, the bill closes the door to people seeking comfort, as well as medical and spiritual help. And even more disturbing is the notion that there are conservatives senators in this country which support it. Wow - nothing makes me want to remove myself from that label MORE.
We're so good at slamming the gavel but not so great at spreading the love.
Jesus must be incredibly hurt. Pin It
Thursday, December 10, 2009
All Clear For Now
Just a quick update about my breast lump...
Went in for an ultrasound today. They think it is fat necrosis, but there is some indication it COULD be a cyst. Sometimes fat necrosis mimics cancer and vice versa, so my surgeon may want to biopsy it (or she may not), but I need to come back in 6 months for another ultrasound, or sooner if something changes.
All in all, however, they said it doesn't look like anything too ominous.
Thanks for praying!!! Will keep you all updated. Pin It
Went in for an ultrasound today. They think it is fat necrosis, but there is some indication it COULD be a cyst. Sometimes fat necrosis mimics cancer and vice versa, so my surgeon may want to biopsy it (or she may not), but I need to come back in 6 months for another ultrasound, or sooner if something changes.
All in all, however, they said it doesn't look like anything too ominous.
Thanks for praying!!! Will keep you all updated. Pin It
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Uh, Duh!
Customers. You can't live with 'em, you can't live... Well, maybe I'll just stop there.
Actually, you know what? Since I started working at a card shop, I find the customers much less unnerving, which is not to say I don't ever get someone who is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, because surely I do. But it's a different atmosphere. People are there to buy smelly candles and ooey gooey greeting cards and snow globes that play "Santa Claus is Coming To Town." Most of them aren't rushing there straight from the office, ticked off and anxious from the day's events. They're at the mall and they've got some time to kill, which makes life easier for me.
In fact, yesterday was a pretty awesome day all because a lady and her son - I'd say about 6 or 7 years old - approached me and asked for help. The son wanted to buy his mom Christmas presents ($20 limit) but he didn't want her to see what he was buying. She asked me if I could walk him around the store and help him pick out a couple of gifts. Lucky for her, the store was dead at the time (OK, it's always dead - wonderful economy!), so we took about 15 minutes and made the rounds. We ruled out smelly candles. We ruled out journals, calendars, and address books. We settled on one of the snow globes that plays "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" and a coffee mug that said some mushy about mothers on it. AND, we did it all under $18!
I rang the kid up, wrapped up the gifts in tissue paper and stuffed them in boxes so his mom couldn't see, and then when they were plain out-of-sight... she came over and paid the bill. He even made me give HIM the receipt, so his mom couldn't "snoop," as he put it. Too cute!
BUT - as I mentioned - you do get the occasional id-jit (that's "idiot" for those of you who don't speak Redneck)and I also had one of those yesterday. A lady came up to the counter with a box of Christmas cards and wanted to know where to find the price. I told her to flip it over and look on the back. She said, and I quote:
In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit sarcastic. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to lay it on thick, but far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to offer a little sarcasm, right?
So *I* said, and I quote:
There was no flicker of recognition in her eyes, a silent acknowledgment that she had said something truly moronic. No, she nodded her head and it was clear that the thought had honestly never occurred to her before. How does one reach middle-age without knowing that in the United States, we pay American prices in the form of American money??? This makes me feel not so bad about failing algebra all those years ago.
Id-jits. What would my job be without them? It almost makes minimum wage worth it. (Almost.) Pin It
Actually, you know what? Since I started working at a card shop, I find the customers much less unnerving, which is not to say I don't ever get someone who is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, because surely I do. But it's a different atmosphere. People are there to buy smelly candles and ooey gooey greeting cards and snow globes that play "Santa Claus is Coming To Town." Most of them aren't rushing there straight from the office, ticked off and anxious from the day's events. They're at the mall and they've got some time to kill, which makes life easier for me.
In fact, yesterday was a pretty awesome day all because a lady and her son - I'd say about 6 or 7 years old - approached me and asked for help. The son wanted to buy his mom Christmas presents ($20 limit) but he didn't want her to see what he was buying. She asked me if I could walk him around the store and help him pick out a couple of gifts. Lucky for her, the store was dead at the time (OK, it's always dead - wonderful economy!), so we took about 15 minutes and made the rounds. We ruled out smelly candles. We ruled out journals, calendars, and address books. We settled on one of the snow globes that plays "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" and a coffee mug that said some mushy about mothers on it. AND, we did it all under $18!
I rang the kid up, wrapped up the gifts in tissue paper and stuffed them in boxes so his mom couldn't see, and then when they were plain out-of-sight... she came over and paid the bill. He even made me give HIM the receipt, so his mom couldn't "snoop," as he put it. Too cute!
BUT - as I mentioned - you do get the occasional id-jit (that's "idiot" for those of you who don't speak Redneck)and I also had one of those yesterday. A lady came up to the counter with a box of Christmas cards and wanted to know where to find the price. I told her to flip it over and look on the back. She said, and I quote:
"Well, it says it's eighteen dollars in the U.S. and twenty-five dollars in Canada, so which is it?"
In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit sarcastic. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to lay it on thick, but far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to offer a little sarcasm, right?
So *I* said, and I quote:
"Well, we're in the U.S., so you would pay the U.S. amount. If we were in Canada, you'd pay Canadian money."
There was no flicker of recognition in her eyes, a silent acknowledgment that she had said something truly moronic. No, she nodded her head and it was clear that the thought had honestly never occurred to her before. How does one reach middle-age without knowing that in the United States, we pay American prices in the form of American money??? This makes me feel not so bad about failing algebra all those years ago.
Id-jits. What would my job be without them? It almost makes minimum wage worth it. (Almost.) Pin It
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
You Just Never Know
If you ever read my old blog, you know that I loudly and proudly underwent breast reduction surgery this past July. It was my 30th birthday present to myself, and one I had been waiting for since I was in high school! I blogged about it in a series I dubbed "The Tata Diaries" and held very little back.
The whole thing went off without a hitch and I told would-be reduction recipients (you'd be amazed at how they come out of the woodwork after you have your own surgery) about how easy the recovery was. Very little pain, no major complications, and the ability to pick out bras OFF THE RACK, instead of on the bottom drawer of a case in the back of the lingerie department - the secret, scary place where the girlies with the extra-big boom-booms go.
Fast-forward to November. I'll admit it - sometimes I admire myself in the mirror and cop a little feel of myself in admiration of my new set. Hmm, except this time something felt weird. There was a lump... not just a pea-size lump, but a LUMP you could grab with your fingers, about the size of a dice. (Die? However you say it...)
I didn't think much of it, honestly. My old set was "lumpy" (or so sayeth my OBGYN - I never really knew the difference) so I figured it was either scar tissue or maybe I was suddenly able to feel a part of my breast that I couldn't feel when they were so large. Regardless, I blew it off for about a month, but it started to feel strange... almost like a deep, prickly itch. Hmm, I can't describe it. If you've never felt it, you're probably going to be lost. That's the best way I can put it.
So I relented and yesterday morning I went to see my surgeon.
She gave me a poke and said, "Oh yeah, there's definitely a lump there." Good news, in the sense that I hadn't made a jerk of myself by freaking out over an overly-exuberant nipple of something. Anyway, I told her about the prickly itch, and she laid me back on the table, felt me up, and asked me if it hurt when she pressed on the lump. I said no.
That's what concerned her.
It doesn't hurt to the touch. It's solid. It doesn't move when you push on it. She ordered an ultrasound for Thursday to rule out fat necrosis (when your fat tissue dies off after surgery.) But she doesn't think that's what it is.
I've done a lot of reading in the past 24 hours, so I know that if I have a tumor, an ultrasound is not likely to catch it. If I have a cyst, it likely will. I have no idea how or why it works that way, but that's what I've read, over and over.
I have age on my side, and genetics. My aunt had breast cancer years ago - they put her on Tamoxifen and she recovered and never had a problem again. She's the only person in my family who has had cancer - of any kind, not just breast cancer.
But I must say, I have plenty of other risk factors, simply because I'm an idiot.
I'm a little overweight. No one is renting construction equipment to extract me from my house just yet, but I could stand to drop some pounds. I am eternally struggling to quit smoking, and have been since I was 13. I am not in the habit of exercising regularly, despite a rec center membership. I love to eat, and we all know the crappier the food, the better the taste. I got my period before I was 12 - another risk factor. I was on birth control pills for over 5 years at a stretch.
Am I expecting to hear that I have breast cancer? No, not really.
But I'll tell you one thing - if I was asleep before this, I'm wide awake now. The bad habits gotta go. It has finally sunk in - I'm slowly killing myself. I finally admit it - I can't just stop smoking any old time I want. I have no excuse for not eating more fruits and vegetables. I'M AWAKE, I'M AWAKE!
So I have no idea what the outcome of this will be. I'm not scared, but I'm concerned. Not worried, just aware. I refuse to worry about something that could turn out to be nothing, and that's exactly what the enemy wants me to do - freak out. Besides, my mother and my husband are freaking out plenty for me! I say it's not worth freaking out over. Can't fix what you don't know, right? My life is God's.
I just want to get this over with... Pin It
The whole thing went off without a hitch and I told would-be reduction recipients (you'd be amazed at how they come out of the woodwork after you have your own surgery) about how easy the recovery was. Very little pain, no major complications, and the ability to pick out bras OFF THE RACK, instead of on the bottom drawer of a case in the back of the lingerie department - the secret, scary place where the girlies with the extra-big boom-booms go.
Fast-forward to November. I'll admit it - sometimes I admire myself in the mirror and cop a little feel of myself in admiration of my new set. Hmm, except this time something felt weird. There was a lump... not just a pea-size lump, but a LUMP you could grab with your fingers, about the size of a dice. (Die? However you say it...)
I didn't think much of it, honestly. My old set was "lumpy" (or so sayeth my OBGYN - I never really knew the difference) so I figured it was either scar tissue or maybe I was suddenly able to feel a part of my breast that I couldn't feel when they were so large. Regardless, I blew it off for about a month, but it started to feel strange... almost like a deep, prickly itch. Hmm, I can't describe it. If you've never felt it, you're probably going to be lost. That's the best way I can put it.
So I relented and yesterday morning I went to see my surgeon.
She gave me a poke and said, "Oh yeah, there's definitely a lump there." Good news, in the sense that I hadn't made a jerk of myself by freaking out over an overly-exuberant nipple of something. Anyway, I told her about the prickly itch, and she laid me back on the table, felt me up, and asked me if it hurt when she pressed on the lump. I said no.
That's what concerned her.
It doesn't hurt to the touch. It's solid. It doesn't move when you push on it. She ordered an ultrasound for Thursday to rule out fat necrosis (when your fat tissue dies off after surgery.) But she doesn't think that's what it is.
I've done a lot of reading in the past 24 hours, so I know that if I have a tumor, an ultrasound is not likely to catch it. If I have a cyst, it likely will. I have no idea how or why it works that way, but that's what I've read, over and over.
I have age on my side, and genetics. My aunt had breast cancer years ago - they put her on Tamoxifen and she recovered and never had a problem again. She's the only person in my family who has had cancer - of any kind, not just breast cancer.
But I must say, I have plenty of other risk factors, simply because I'm an idiot.
I'm a little overweight. No one is renting construction equipment to extract me from my house just yet, but I could stand to drop some pounds. I am eternally struggling to quit smoking, and have been since I was 13. I am not in the habit of exercising regularly, despite a rec center membership. I love to eat, and we all know the crappier the food, the better the taste. I got my period before I was 12 - another risk factor. I was on birth control pills for over 5 years at a stretch.
Am I expecting to hear that I have breast cancer? No, not really.
But I'll tell you one thing - if I was asleep before this, I'm wide awake now. The bad habits gotta go. It has finally sunk in - I'm slowly killing myself. I finally admit it - I can't just stop smoking any old time I want. I have no excuse for not eating more fruits and vegetables. I'M AWAKE, I'M AWAKE!
So I have no idea what the outcome of this will be. I'm not scared, but I'm concerned. Not worried, just aware. I refuse to worry about something that could turn out to be nothing, and that's exactly what the enemy wants me to do - freak out. Besides, my mother and my husband are freaking out plenty for me! I say it's not worth freaking out over. Can't fix what you don't know, right? My life is God's.
I just want to get this over with... Pin It
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Best Christmas Movies?!?
The fact that "Elf" and "A Christmas Story" got a higher rating then "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" might as well be a crime! I should have written THIS article...
Pin It
Friday, December 4, 2009
Religion... With A Side Of Condemnation.
Tell me if something seems amiss here, OK?
A Vatican cardinal says gays and transsexuals won't make it to Heaven, but...
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa... isn't he already condemning them?
The last time I read my Bible, it said the thing that keeps people out of Heaven is not accepting Christ as Savior. And I'm pretty darn sure it said there's no way to "behave" your way through the pearly gates.
Apart from that, I have a really hard time with people who feel that they can predict where someone's soul is going to go when they die.
And then there's this...
Hmm. I don't know. The jury is still out on this one. Pin It
A Vatican cardinal says gays and transsexuals won't make it to Heaven, but...
"Homosexuality is therefore a sin, but this does not justify any form of discrimination. God alone has the right to judge...We on earth cannot condemn, and as human beings we all have the same rights."
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa... isn't he already condemning them?
The last time I read my Bible, it said the thing that keeps people out of Heaven is not accepting Christ as Savior. And I'm pretty darn sure it said there's no way to "behave" your way through the pearly gates.
Apart from that, I have a really hard time with people who feel that they can predict where someone's soul is going to go when they die.
And then there's this...
"One is not born a homosexual. One becomes a homosexual. It is for various reasons, such as education, or for not developing one's own proper identity in adolescence; perhaps they are themselves not responsible, but acting against the dignity of the human body, certainly they will not enter Heaven. All that goes against nature and against the dignity of the human body offends God."
Hmm. I don't know. The jury is still out on this one. Pin It
Peace, Joy, And Other Things I Don't Deserve
A week of bad news is winding down. It has been like a sledgehammer - WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM!!!! I was feeling overwhelmed last night but did manage to drift off to sleep, only to be awakened by some really messed-up nightmares.
God answered a direct prayer this morning.
A friend of ours from our old church group offered to loan us his car for as long as we need it. His was the first email I read this morning, and my head just about exploded with joy and amazement. I later commented to a friend, "It's amazing what happens when you stop complaining and start praying."
Which is not to say that God is my vending machine. You don't stick a prayer in the slot and out pops your prize. You think this world is crazy? Imagine what it would be like if that's how easy prayer was and if that was how simple God's workings were. You'd have all sorts of crazy "prizes" popping out and the world would be a million times more chaotic than it is already.
After being smacked in the head by a sledgehammer all week, the number one prayer that has been answered can't be seen or measured in a human way: PEACE.
Turns out God was right all along - if we just do what He tells us to do, we'll find success. Now, lately, the word "success" has translated into job/financial issues for me, but as the story unfolds, I'm realizing it means much more. I'm finding that success means being able to live in a world of chaos without your life becoming uncontrollably chaotic. I'm finding that success means being able to keep your grip on the floaty raft when the tsunami comes in. You can't always fix a problem. Sometimes your best bet is to ride it out, survive it, and come out with a great testimony when you reach dry land.
I'm hanging onto the floaty raft of God's grace and mercies being the same even when everything else is unpredictable and totally sucks. How's that for being blunt?
The thing that really blows my mind is how little I deserve anything good.
Seriously, think about it. A lot of us would have very pitiful lives if we treated our fleshly friends the way we treat God. Friends aren't friends if you only talk to them when you need something. That's called having a sugar daddy, not having a friend. If you ditch your friends and isolate yourself every time something goes wrong, you're going to eventually hurt someone's feelings, but how often do we do that to God?
God is an all-weather kind of friend. We're not. Well, some are better at it than others, but none of us measure up to the kind of friend God is. We really don't deserve God-friendship.
So if you think life is terrible and you don't deserve the bad break you've been dealt, try looking at it from this perspective: you don't deserve the good stuff, either. And yet, you have it.
Life is not fair, and that's a real good thing. Pin It
God answered a direct prayer this morning.
A friend of ours from our old church group offered to loan us his car for as long as we need it. His was the first email I read this morning, and my head just about exploded with joy and amazement. I later commented to a friend, "It's amazing what happens when you stop complaining and start praying."
Which is not to say that God is my vending machine. You don't stick a prayer in the slot and out pops your prize. You think this world is crazy? Imagine what it would be like if that's how easy prayer was and if that was how simple God's workings were. You'd have all sorts of crazy "prizes" popping out and the world would be a million times more chaotic than it is already.
After being smacked in the head by a sledgehammer all week, the number one prayer that has been answered can't be seen or measured in a human way: PEACE.
Turns out God was right all along - if we just do what He tells us to do, we'll find success. Now, lately, the word "success" has translated into job/financial issues for me, but as the story unfolds, I'm realizing it means much more. I'm finding that success means being able to live in a world of chaos without your life becoming uncontrollably chaotic. I'm finding that success means being able to keep your grip on the floaty raft when the tsunami comes in. You can't always fix a problem. Sometimes your best bet is to ride it out, survive it, and come out with a great testimony when you reach dry land.
I'm hanging onto the floaty raft of God's grace and mercies being the same even when everything else is unpredictable and totally sucks. How's that for being blunt?
The thing that really blows my mind is how little I deserve anything good.
Seriously, think about it. A lot of us would have very pitiful lives if we treated our fleshly friends the way we treat God. Friends aren't friends if you only talk to them when you need something. That's called having a sugar daddy, not having a friend. If you ditch your friends and isolate yourself every time something goes wrong, you're going to eventually hurt someone's feelings, but how often do we do that to God?
God is an all-weather kind of friend. We're not. Well, some are better at it than others, but none of us measure up to the kind of friend God is. We really don't deserve God-friendship.
So if you think life is terrible and you don't deserve the bad break you've been dealt, try looking at it from this perspective: you don't deserve the good stuff, either. And yet, you have it.
Life is not fair, and that's a real good thing. Pin It
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Thoughts on Christmas, God, and Other Stuff
So this is Christmas, and what have you done?
Well, I've got my decorations out but no tree yet. My friend and I are like two little kids awaiting the first snowfall. Maybe Sunday??? I've lived here all my life, apart from that brief stint in Tennessee, and snow is elusive. There were a few years when it seemed like the snow would never end, but that's rare. Some people say a black cloud follows them everywhere they go, but I used to think the sun followed me, preventing snow from ever falling.
And here you thought the sun following you around all the time would be awesome.
Tomato, TO-MAH-TO.
Depends who you ask.
Last night was a bad night. I was about to write Christmas '09 off entirely. Our best pals possibly (probably) moving away, family crap I can't really write about, low funds and no job prospects... It's amazing what a hot shower can do for your spirit. I do my best thinking in the shower. Anyway, I came out thinking, OK, it's Christmas. I'm going to think about the wonderful things in my life, instead of the depressing stuff.
I'm going to be a godmother in the spring.
I'm going to be an aunt again in the spring.
I have a wonderful husband and a wonderful marriage.
I have a lovely home.
I have new boobs. (Sorry - had to throw that in there. Breast reduction really did make my year.)
I have a SAVIOR who loves me and wants to give me an abundant life filled with hope and PURPOSE.
When I frame it that way, the Christmas lights seem extra sparkly, you know?
What are you praying for these days? Me, I'm praying for breakthroughs. A breakthrough in finances, a breakthrough in work, a breakthrough for different people I love who are hurting. I am the quintessential stubborn Christian. When I should be praying, I am trying to force things to happen. When I should be silent, I'm flapping my gums. So I guess I should also be praying for a breakthrough in my prayer life and my self-control.
My cousin's death in September has made an interesting impact on me. On the one hand, I'm sad that he's gone and heartbroken that his family is without him. But the way he lived out his last days also struck me. You know, most of us aren't half as productive during our "living years" (I call it that because the majority of us have no idea how long we have here on earth) as Jay was during his dying days. When I feel like giving up, when I feel like my life doesn't matter, when I feel like being lazy and not even trying, I think about Jay, and it gives me fresh energy.
Can you imagine how easy death would be if we truly considered it moving away vs. leaving forever? On a grander scale, mind you, but the same basic concept. I think about our friend Mark & Jen moving away and it breaks my heart. I desperately want them to stay, but I know if they go, it's not like I'll never see them again. I will see them eventually. And that's what keeps me from completely falling apart. God, could you open our hearts to see death in the same way? To not just know it on an intellectual level, but to believe it with all our hearts and souls?
As I'm writing this, I'm watching my cat, who is sleeping face-first in the couch. Oh, to have the worry-less life of a house pet. And yet, if I really lived out the Word - not worrying, completely trusting in God, believing fully that God is for me and not against me - that's the kind of life I'd have.
Bring on the breakthrough! Pin It
Well, I've got my decorations out but no tree yet. My friend and I are like two little kids awaiting the first snowfall. Maybe Sunday??? I've lived here all my life, apart from that brief stint in Tennessee, and snow is elusive. There were a few years when it seemed like the snow would never end, but that's rare. Some people say a black cloud follows them everywhere they go, but I used to think the sun followed me, preventing snow from ever falling.
And here you thought the sun following you around all the time would be awesome.
Tomato, TO-MAH-TO.
Depends who you ask.
Last night was a bad night. I was about to write Christmas '09 off entirely. Our best pals possibly (probably) moving away, family crap I can't really write about, low funds and no job prospects... It's amazing what a hot shower can do for your spirit. I do my best thinking in the shower. Anyway, I came out thinking, OK, it's Christmas. I'm going to think about the wonderful things in my life, instead of the depressing stuff.
I'm going to be a godmother in the spring.
I'm going to be an aunt again in the spring.
I have a wonderful husband and a wonderful marriage.
I have a lovely home.
I have new boobs. (Sorry - had to throw that in there. Breast reduction really did make my year.)
I have a SAVIOR who loves me and wants to give me an abundant life filled with hope and PURPOSE.
When I frame it that way, the Christmas lights seem extra sparkly, you know?
What are you praying for these days? Me, I'm praying for breakthroughs. A breakthrough in finances, a breakthrough in work, a breakthrough for different people I love who are hurting. I am the quintessential stubborn Christian. When I should be praying, I am trying to force things to happen. When I should be silent, I'm flapping my gums. So I guess I should also be praying for a breakthrough in my prayer life and my self-control.
My cousin's death in September has made an interesting impact on me. On the one hand, I'm sad that he's gone and heartbroken that his family is without him. But the way he lived out his last days also struck me. You know, most of us aren't half as productive during our "living years" (I call it that because the majority of us have no idea how long we have here on earth) as Jay was during his dying days. When I feel like giving up, when I feel like my life doesn't matter, when I feel like being lazy and not even trying, I think about Jay, and it gives me fresh energy.
Can you imagine how easy death would be if we truly considered it moving away vs. leaving forever? On a grander scale, mind you, but the same basic concept. I think about our friend Mark & Jen moving away and it breaks my heart. I desperately want them to stay, but I know if they go, it's not like I'll never see them again. I will see them eventually. And that's what keeps me from completely falling apart. God, could you open our hearts to see death in the same way? To not just know it on an intellectual level, but to believe it with all our hearts and souls?
As I'm writing this, I'm watching my cat, who is sleeping face-first in the couch. Oh, to have the worry-less life of a house pet. And yet, if I really lived out the Word - not worrying, completely trusting in God, believing fully that God is for me and not against me - that's the kind of life I'd have.
Bring on the breakthrough! Pin It
Monday, November 30, 2009
Merry Ho Ho Or Whatever
In the words of Roseanne Barr: "It's beginning to look a lot like crap!"
'Tis the Christmas season, and I'm trying to get into it. Trying, because my wallet is starving and every time I open it, I hear a scream. I sold one of my cars today (one that didn't run) but the money was accounted for before it even reached my husband's grasp. I know that Christmas is not about money or gifts, but ever year I think to myself that maybe NEXT YEAR we can buy that huge tree and not freak out every time we purchase a Christmas gift.
Kids, stay in school and go to college. Just a tip from your very poor Auntie Julie.
Now, that's not to say you can't make your crib look decent on a next-to-nothing budget. It is possible. The dollar store is my best friend. I have a snowman fetish, so I'm always on the prowl for more to add to my collection, and I'm picky about it. I don't want it to LOOK like it's dollar store material, you know? If you look hard enough, you can find cute stuff. I found a beautiful table runner for $2.99 today and Santa salt shakers for even less.
Still, I dream.
My dream is to have an A-frame log home on a nice piece of land. A fireplace, maybe two. High ceilings to allow for a 12-foot tree (or larger!) An actual mantel filled with live greens and holly and candles out the wazoo! A place big enough for the entire family to convene for Christmas dinner.
Most of the time, if you tell people you're low on dough, they don't get what that means. They're like, "Oh yeah, we're struggling, too." And then they go on to tell you they had to cut their vacation to France short by two days, or it's hard to fill the tank in their Cadillac Escalade or something. One friend complained about how hard it is to pay her $13,000-per-month utility bill. (You know I love you, but this was the best example I could come up with!) When I use the term "broke" I mean I'm counting out change to buy a pack of gum.
Ho ho ho!
This is not my way of bashing rich people. I know a few rich people and they're all really cool. I'm just saying, it's all relative, and your idea of "broke" goes along with the standard of living you're used to.
I don't usually feel this way at Christmas, though I have had very few Christmases where I was really rolling in the dough. I find that I am trying to "do it up" more than usual this year, I guess because I feel an extra sense of loss this Christmas of 2009. I can't even go into all of it for various reasons, but I've blogged about many of those reasons, and I assure you, Prozac gets a lot of credit for helping me maintain my sense of humor right now.
The annual Christmas Eve party will be held December 27 this year, and I'm hoping that a quiet night with my husband will allow me to reflect on what really counts - the Son of God, born to die for our sins, who came to earth in the humblest of ways to bear the weight of the sadness, the loss, and the disappointment that all of us feel at different times in our lives.
If I can just get THAT in my scope, hopefully I can tune the rest out. Pin It
'Tis the Christmas season, and I'm trying to get into it. Trying, because my wallet is starving and every time I open it, I hear a scream. I sold one of my cars today (one that didn't run) but the money was accounted for before it even reached my husband's grasp. I know that Christmas is not about money or gifts, but ever year I think to myself that maybe NEXT YEAR we can buy that huge tree and not freak out every time we purchase a Christmas gift.
Kids, stay in school and go to college. Just a tip from your very poor Auntie Julie.
Now, that's not to say you can't make your crib look decent on a next-to-nothing budget. It is possible. The dollar store is my best friend. I have a snowman fetish, so I'm always on the prowl for more to add to my collection, and I'm picky about it. I don't want it to LOOK like it's dollar store material, you know? If you look hard enough, you can find cute stuff. I found a beautiful table runner for $2.99 today and Santa salt shakers for even less.
Still, I dream.
My dream is to have an A-frame log home on a nice piece of land. A fireplace, maybe two. High ceilings to allow for a 12-foot tree (or larger!) An actual mantel filled with live greens and holly and candles out the wazoo! A place big enough for the entire family to convene for Christmas dinner.
Most of the time, if you tell people you're low on dough, they don't get what that means. They're like, "Oh yeah, we're struggling, too." And then they go on to tell you they had to cut their vacation to France short by two days, or it's hard to fill the tank in their Cadillac Escalade or something. One friend complained about how hard it is to pay her $13,000-per-month utility bill. (You know I love you, but this was the best example I could come up with!) When I use the term "broke" I mean I'm counting out change to buy a pack of gum.
Ho ho ho!
This is not my way of bashing rich people. I know a few rich people and they're all really cool. I'm just saying, it's all relative, and your idea of "broke" goes along with the standard of living you're used to.
I don't usually feel this way at Christmas, though I have had very few Christmases where I was really rolling in the dough. I find that I am trying to "do it up" more than usual this year, I guess because I feel an extra sense of loss this Christmas of 2009. I can't even go into all of it for various reasons, but I've blogged about many of those reasons, and I assure you, Prozac gets a lot of credit for helping me maintain my sense of humor right now.
The annual Christmas Eve party will be held December 27 this year, and I'm hoping that a quiet night with my husband will allow me to reflect on what really counts - the Son of God, born to die for our sins, who came to earth in the humblest of ways to bear the weight of the sadness, the loss, and the disappointment that all of us feel at different times in our lives.
If I can just get THAT in my scope, hopefully I can tune the rest out. Pin It
Sunday, November 29, 2009
It's My Blog - I'll Cry If I Want To
So, my neighbor informed me this evening that "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" is going to be on TV back-to-back five times this week, and I'm thinking this would be a great time to shut out the world and spend a few days in my jammies. First, because that's my favorite movie of all-time and I don't think I could ever get tired of it. Second, because I'm down & out and just want to shut out the world for a while.
And I could, too, if it weren't for that whole having-a-job thing.
I'm feeling alone tonight. You know how sometimes one thing goes wrong, and all the little things pile on top of it to make it seem like a huge mountain of crap? That's sort of how I'm feeling at the moment. Not that anything "went wrong" but just that they didn't go the way I'd want them to. (Yes, there is a difference.)
First, everybody got pregnant.
Our best friends are expecting in May. My sister-in-law is expecting in March. The other night we were at our best friends' house for a pre-Thanksgiving meal and there was an infant there, so we discussed lots of parenting-related things. Pregnancy, childbirth, rearing, first teeth, that stuff.
Our best friends were our last perpetually child-less couple that we hung out with on a regular basis. We're ecstatic for them, but... it was a reminder that we are still child-less, and from a physical standpoint, that's not going to change anytime soon. And, yeah, we want to adopt. We're seriously thinking/praying about it even as we speak, but I'll never get to tell people I'm pregnant, I'll never feel a baby kick inside of me, I'll never nurse my child or be able to say, "He looks just like his dad."
Unless God changes something, which he may, but right now... it's not happening.
Then our best couple friends announced to us they might be moving far away.
These are people we spend a lot of time with. We've gone through our marriages together - we even got married 2 weeks apart. Scott was the husband's best man.
Today I got an email from my friend of 18 years. We were best friends in middle school, high school, college... We met in the 7th grade and there wasn't anything we didn't go through together. When my mother was unbearable to live with, she talked about giving me the money she saved in a pantyliner box so I could run away. And I guess, because we had been best friends for so long, I assumed we would always BE best friends.
Well, she's getting married in October.
I'm not going to be in her wedding - she hopes there are no hard feelings. It's going to be just her sister and some other chick I've never met in the wedding party.
We haven't seen each other in a few years. She went on to get a great education and make good money working in DC. She went overseas with another of our best friends, time did its thing and I got pushed out of the picture. Not because they're mean, but because I didn't have the money or the time off. I just never had the money to throw down to go to France or wherever. I couldn't hop a plane or even fill up my gas tank half the time, so our visits became fewer and fewer. But she was my maid of honor, and we'd planned on being in each other's weddings from the time we were in training bras, worshiping the ground Amy Grant walked on together.
I'm hurt. It doesn't matter if it's ridiculous and stupid, I'm still hurt. I have this fifth-grade feeling of, "Who's my best friend now?!?" I'm 30 years old. I just have to get over it, I guess.
So I went out on my deck for some fresh air, and I remembered, just three years ago, sitting out there in that exact same spot, talking to my cousin, Jay. He was still talking, still walking a bit. He was HERE. And the air seemed extra cold and the night seemed extra lonely...
...I started thinking that God designed us to need and love each other, and yet it's never permanent. Something will separate all of us, be it time, distance, or death. And yes, I believe in Heaven and I believe that this earth is not our eternal home, but it made me think that investing in relationships is ridiculous. Investment means pain and disappointment - it means missing people desperately that don't desperately miss you back.
So I'm sad, and I know I need to pray and focus on the blessings in my life... but I'm sad and I guess... well, I guess I felt like telling the world about it. Pin It
And I could, too, if it weren't for that whole having-a-job thing.
I'm feeling alone tonight. You know how sometimes one thing goes wrong, and all the little things pile on top of it to make it seem like a huge mountain of crap? That's sort of how I'm feeling at the moment. Not that anything "went wrong" but just that they didn't go the way I'd want them to. (Yes, there is a difference.)
First, everybody got pregnant.
Our best friends are expecting in May. My sister-in-law is expecting in March. The other night we were at our best friends' house for a pre-Thanksgiving meal and there was an infant there, so we discussed lots of parenting-related things. Pregnancy, childbirth, rearing, first teeth, that stuff.
Our best friends were our last perpetually child-less couple that we hung out with on a regular basis. We're ecstatic for them, but... it was a reminder that we are still child-less, and from a physical standpoint, that's not going to change anytime soon. And, yeah, we want to adopt. We're seriously thinking/praying about it even as we speak, but I'll never get to tell people I'm pregnant, I'll never feel a baby kick inside of me, I'll never nurse my child or be able to say, "He looks just like his dad."
Unless God changes something, which he may, but right now... it's not happening.
Then our best couple friends announced to us they might be moving far away.
These are people we spend a lot of time with. We've gone through our marriages together - we even got married 2 weeks apart. Scott was the husband's best man.
Today I got an email from my friend of 18 years. We were best friends in middle school, high school, college... We met in the 7th grade and there wasn't anything we didn't go through together. When my mother was unbearable to live with, she talked about giving me the money she saved in a pantyliner box so I could run away. And I guess, because we had been best friends for so long, I assumed we would always BE best friends.
Well, she's getting married in October.
I'm not going to be in her wedding - she hopes there are no hard feelings. It's going to be just her sister and some other chick I've never met in the wedding party.
We haven't seen each other in a few years. She went on to get a great education and make good money working in DC. She went overseas with another of our best friends, time did its thing and I got pushed out of the picture. Not because they're mean, but because I didn't have the money or the time off. I just never had the money to throw down to go to France or wherever. I couldn't hop a plane or even fill up my gas tank half the time, so our visits became fewer and fewer. But she was my maid of honor, and we'd planned on being in each other's weddings from the time we were in training bras, worshiping the ground Amy Grant walked on together.
I'm hurt. It doesn't matter if it's ridiculous and stupid, I'm still hurt. I have this fifth-grade feeling of, "Who's my best friend now?!?" I'm 30 years old. I just have to get over it, I guess.
So I went out on my deck for some fresh air, and I remembered, just three years ago, sitting out there in that exact same spot, talking to my cousin, Jay. He was still talking, still walking a bit. He was HERE. And the air seemed extra cold and the night seemed extra lonely...
...I started thinking that God designed us to need and love each other, and yet it's never permanent. Something will separate all of us, be it time, distance, or death. And yes, I believe in Heaven and I believe that this earth is not our eternal home, but it made me think that investing in relationships is ridiculous. Investment means pain and disappointment - it means missing people desperately that don't desperately miss you back.
So I'm sad, and I know I need to pray and focus on the blessings in my life... but I'm sad and I guess... well, I guess I felt like telling the world about it. Pin It
Thursday, November 19, 2009
At Long Last... The Neighbor Blog... Part 1
It really seemed like a nice joint when we pulled into the parking lot; it really did. A lovely, flowing creek nestled beneath a blanket of brilliant autumn leaves, a quaint park across the street, and a seemingly nice fella who came out to show us the apartment.
AND - this is the important part - the apartment was NICE. You had to see where we were living at the time... we were growing alien-like mushrooms alongside our toilet, in our bedroom, in all of the places you never thought you'd ever see mushrooms growing. The ceiling leaked. On any given day, the place could randomly smell like an egg factory or a funeral home for no explicable reason. The neighbor in the apartment next-door ran an illegal daycare out of her one-bedroom apartment, the guy downstairs had sex with a lady and her daughter - at the same time - and the man in the house next-door killed deer and threw the bloody carcasses in our dumpster. It was not the kind of place you'd want to raise kids in... unless you're a psychotic, crackhead of an abusive parent.
It was so nice, we were convinced we'd never get it. So much for positivity, huh? But we did get it, and we were thrilled. The man who showed us the apartment (let's call him Ed) lived in apartment #1 and he seemed so sweet. He was a burly, carrot-topped dude in his late fifties; an ex-Marine. He lived with a younger guy we'll call Steve. Actually, our first thought was that they were gay. We didn't really care one way or the other, it just seemed... well... stereotypical, frankly. Either way, they were nice guys that made a hobby of smoking on the front porch all day. Hey, whatever floats your boat.
We thought surely nothing could be worse than what we had been living with, so chain-smokers on the porch was no biggie. And so 2 weeks after getting the go-ahead from our landlord, our small group at church moved us in, I decorated for Christmas, and we were good to go.
It was great at first. Ed told us everything we needed to know, from how to turn up the water temperature, to how get on the landlord's good side (paying the rent helps), and he helped us out with a few things here and there. He took care of the gardens out front and called me "sweetie" and seemed the grandfatherly type. There was a family downstairs consisting of a husband & wife, and two sons, one around 10 or 11 years old, and a baby. The boy and his father fought constantly, slammed a lot of doors, and screamed, but we sucked it up. Not much you could really do about family drama. Everyone else was nice but kept to themselves and that was fine with us.
I have since concluded that as long as you are living among the rest of society, there is no "nice" place to live. There's no Mayberry. It's all Crazy Town.
I don't remember when it all started to tank. There is no one incident in my mind that tipped me off to the reality that this place was just as much of an insane asylum (typical that I would live in an insane asylum...) as The Bates Motel where we came from. It was in a nice area. It was a nice building coated in fresh paint. No leaks, cracks, or salad items growing in the bathroom. Heck, Ed even drove a Jaguar. Never judge a book by it's cover... or a parking lot by its Jag.
Slowly but surely, Ed's "sweeties" became "honeys" and eventually "babies" and eventually we graduated to "sexy." Pats on the back became hugs. YAY! HUGS FROM GRANDPA! Right?!? RIGHT?!? Wrong. Hugs turned into kisses on the cheek. I'm not a naive person. I know it sounds like I'm totally naive and my Mormon mommy never let me ride my bike down the street alone, but seriously... I've been around the block. Still, I let the old sleaze ball kiss me and thought it was innocent.
Till that hickey.
Yes, that's what I said. I said hickey. He gave me a hickey. I was standing out front commenting on the weather one day when he leaned in to give me what I thought was going to be a peck on the cheek, and instead he grabbed my neck with his yellow-stained smoky chops and started sucking.
OK, I take it back. That was the first time I realized I was on the threshold of hell. Because, honestly, I can stick up for myself just fine. I come from a family where you can't be heard unless you're able to scream above everyone else. I'm not easily intimidated. But when an old man sucks on your neck... it's... something different. Can you slap a veteran? Don't you go to hell for that? I didn't know what to do.
I told my husband, who promptly proclaimed that he was going to kick some [expletive]. But he's not the [expletive]-kicking type. (And, yes, I'm very grateful for that.) He said he would at least say something to him, tell him he needed to leave his wife alone, go give Steve a hickey or something.
Just one little problem.
By that point, we had figured out that Steve was a druggie and a drunk. We're pretty sure he deals. He got violent a few times, slit his wrists once, even went after Ed with a knife, and was hauled away for it. I had visions of Scott telling Ed off, and Steve coming after him with an axe or something, his eyes all red and bloodshot. After much begging, pleading and arguing, I got him to agree to let it go. I'd just avoid his chops as much as possible. I'd rather have my carotid sucked on then slashed by a drug addict.
But Ed and Steve could not be avoided. They lived on the front porch. They didn't work. They just stood around and smoked and spit. When I walked out the door or got out of my car, they hooted and hollered and called me sexy and told me to "work it." If I wore high-heel boots, things really got out of control. I didn't tell Scott about that part. Listen, I've lived through sexual abuse and rape. I figured I could handle cat-calls. Looking back, I have to say that was ridiculous on my part. I might as well have hung a sign around my neck that said, "PLEASE ABUSE ME AGAIN!" But it wasn't a matter of self-respect. I just wanted to live. And the rent was affordable. Plus, there is admittedly a part of me that desperately wants to seem non-prudish. Prudes freak me out - I don't want to resemble one. Again... stupid, but that was my thought process.
In case you're wondering how we concluded that Steve sold drugs...
Well, there were the subtle things. The fact that he wore designer clothes, didn't have a job, and didn't even have a driver's license. (Lost it because of repeated DUI's.) He bought antiques and electronics and ferociously played the stock market. Random "friends" stopped by at random times during the day, and they'd disappear into the backyard. If we went anywhere near them, they promptly changed location and stood about 2 centimeters apart to talk.
Oh... and they grew pot in our backyard. At first, we didn't know it. It was hidden among the trees and we didn't know it was there until Ed flat out told us one day. But then Steve brought home an enormous pot plant... the thing was the size of a tree, no joke. It was growing in a pot and they kept it next to the picnic table out back. The landlord's kids mowed the lawn and raked the leaves and their mom waited for them while they did so, so clearly they either have no idea what marijuana looks like, or they were like us - they just wanted to live. As they say in the hood - "No Snitching."
Now, if I had seen Steve across the street at the park selling dime bags to little kids on the see-saw, yes, I would have called the police. Otherwise... OK, fine, great, you grow and sell drugs. Please don't kill me.
And, you know, it just sucks because I always told myself I'd never be one of those jerks who turns a blind eye to that stuff. But when it's literally right in your own backyard, you don't know what to do. Scott was worried about me; I was worried about Scott. It doesn't matter how far you hide in the land of Suburbia, the crap will find you, and it found us... or we found IT, however you want to look at it.
But things were about to get worse, when Steve's mother moved with him and Ed.
More to come... Pin It
AND - this is the important part - the apartment was NICE. You had to see where we were living at the time... we were growing alien-like mushrooms alongside our toilet, in our bedroom, in all of the places you never thought you'd ever see mushrooms growing. The ceiling leaked. On any given day, the place could randomly smell like an egg factory or a funeral home for no explicable reason. The neighbor in the apartment next-door ran an illegal daycare out of her one-bedroom apartment, the guy downstairs had sex with a lady and her daughter - at the same time - and the man in the house next-door killed deer and threw the bloody carcasses in our dumpster. It was not the kind of place you'd want to raise kids in... unless you're a psychotic, crackhead of an abusive parent.
It was so nice, we were convinced we'd never get it. So much for positivity, huh? But we did get it, and we were thrilled. The man who showed us the apartment (let's call him Ed) lived in apartment #1 and he seemed so sweet. He was a burly, carrot-topped dude in his late fifties; an ex-Marine. He lived with a younger guy we'll call Steve. Actually, our first thought was that they were gay. We didn't really care one way or the other, it just seemed... well... stereotypical, frankly. Either way, they were nice guys that made a hobby of smoking on the front porch all day. Hey, whatever floats your boat.
We thought surely nothing could be worse than what we had been living with, so chain-smokers on the porch was no biggie. And so 2 weeks after getting the go-ahead from our landlord, our small group at church moved us in, I decorated for Christmas, and we were good to go.
It was great at first. Ed told us everything we needed to know, from how to turn up the water temperature, to how get on the landlord's good side (paying the rent helps), and he helped us out with a few things here and there. He took care of the gardens out front and called me "sweetie" and seemed the grandfatherly type. There was a family downstairs consisting of a husband & wife, and two sons, one around 10 or 11 years old, and a baby. The boy and his father fought constantly, slammed a lot of doors, and screamed, but we sucked it up. Not much you could really do about family drama. Everyone else was nice but kept to themselves and that was fine with us.
I have since concluded that as long as you are living among the rest of society, there is no "nice" place to live. There's no Mayberry. It's all Crazy Town.
I don't remember when it all started to tank. There is no one incident in my mind that tipped me off to the reality that this place was just as much of an insane asylum (typical that I would live in an insane asylum...) as The Bates Motel where we came from. It was in a nice area. It was a nice building coated in fresh paint. No leaks, cracks, or salad items growing in the bathroom. Heck, Ed even drove a Jaguar. Never judge a book by it's cover... or a parking lot by its Jag.
Slowly but surely, Ed's "sweeties" became "honeys" and eventually "babies" and eventually we graduated to "sexy." Pats on the back became hugs. YAY! HUGS FROM GRANDPA! Right?!? RIGHT?!? Wrong. Hugs turned into kisses on the cheek. I'm not a naive person. I know it sounds like I'm totally naive and my Mormon mommy never let me ride my bike down the street alone, but seriously... I've been around the block. Still, I let the old sleaze ball kiss me and thought it was innocent.
Till that hickey.
Yes, that's what I said. I said hickey. He gave me a hickey. I was standing out front commenting on the weather one day when he leaned in to give me what I thought was going to be a peck on the cheek, and instead he grabbed my neck with his yellow-stained smoky chops and started sucking.
OK, I take it back. That was the first time I realized I was on the threshold of hell. Because, honestly, I can stick up for myself just fine. I come from a family where you can't be heard unless you're able to scream above everyone else. I'm not easily intimidated. But when an old man sucks on your neck... it's... something different. Can you slap a veteran? Don't you go to hell for that? I didn't know what to do.
I told my husband, who promptly proclaimed that he was going to kick some [expletive]. But he's not the [expletive]-kicking type. (And, yes, I'm very grateful for that.) He said he would at least say something to him, tell him he needed to leave his wife alone, go give Steve a hickey or something.
Just one little problem.
By that point, we had figured out that Steve was a druggie and a drunk. We're pretty sure he deals. He got violent a few times, slit his wrists once, even went after Ed with a knife, and was hauled away for it. I had visions of Scott telling Ed off, and Steve coming after him with an axe or something, his eyes all red and bloodshot. After much begging, pleading and arguing, I got him to agree to let it go. I'd just avoid his chops as much as possible. I'd rather have my carotid sucked on then slashed by a drug addict.
But Ed and Steve could not be avoided. They lived on the front porch. They didn't work. They just stood around and smoked and spit. When I walked out the door or got out of my car, they hooted and hollered and called me sexy and told me to "work it." If I wore high-heel boots, things really got out of control. I didn't tell Scott about that part. Listen, I've lived through sexual abuse and rape. I figured I could handle cat-calls. Looking back, I have to say that was ridiculous on my part. I might as well have hung a sign around my neck that said, "PLEASE ABUSE ME AGAIN!" But it wasn't a matter of self-respect. I just wanted to live. And the rent was affordable. Plus, there is admittedly a part of me that desperately wants to seem non-prudish. Prudes freak me out - I don't want to resemble one. Again... stupid, but that was my thought process.
In case you're wondering how we concluded that Steve sold drugs...
Well, there were the subtle things. The fact that he wore designer clothes, didn't have a job, and didn't even have a driver's license. (Lost it because of repeated DUI's.) He bought antiques and electronics and ferociously played the stock market. Random "friends" stopped by at random times during the day, and they'd disappear into the backyard. If we went anywhere near them, they promptly changed location and stood about 2 centimeters apart to talk.
Oh... and they grew pot in our backyard. At first, we didn't know it. It was hidden among the trees and we didn't know it was there until Ed flat out told us one day. But then Steve brought home an enormous pot plant... the thing was the size of a tree, no joke. It was growing in a pot and they kept it next to the picnic table out back. The landlord's kids mowed the lawn and raked the leaves and their mom waited for them while they did so, so clearly they either have no idea what marijuana looks like, or they were like us - they just wanted to live. As they say in the hood - "No Snitching."
Now, if I had seen Steve across the street at the park selling dime bags to little kids on the see-saw, yes, I would have called the police. Otherwise... OK, fine, great, you grow and sell drugs. Please don't kill me.
And, you know, it just sucks because I always told myself I'd never be one of those jerks who turns a blind eye to that stuff. But when it's literally right in your own backyard, you don't know what to do. Scott was worried about me; I was worried about Scott. It doesn't matter how far you hide in the land of Suburbia, the crap will find you, and it found us... or we found IT, however you want to look at it.
But things were about to get worse, when Steve's mother moved with him and Ed.
More to come... Pin It
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Who Or What Is Responsible?
A man believing himself to be a prophet kidnaps a 14-year-old girl from the peaceful slumber of her own bedroom. His wife washes her feet and dresses her in 'sacred' garb for a wedding ceremony where the girl will become a polygamous wife alongside the aforementioned wife #1. Incidentally, wife #1 calls herself "mother of Zion" and believes God reaches out to touch her via her television set.
Just another day in the wacky lives of Brian David Mitchell and his old lady, Wanda Barzee. For Elizabeth Smart, it seemed like the nightmare that would never end.
Both Mitchell and Barzee have been diagnosed as being delusional. Barzee was forcibly medicated in order to be declared competent to stand trial. Faced with the reality of what she had done, Barzee offered this apology:
Now, Bipolar is different from Schizophrenia or delusions, but one thing most of us with some form of mental illness can all relate to is the weight of "getting better" only to be faced with the path of destruction we left behind. Fortunately, most of us will never have to be faced with kidnapping charges or worse, but a lot of us have garbage to clean up. Sometimes it's money we shouldn't have spent, family members and friends we shouldn't have hurt, jobs we wish we hadn't lost. But for almost all of us, the aftermath of being sick requires some janitorial work.
To the Smart family's credit (which sounds so odd because Smart is my maiden name), they have opted to forgive Barzee:
And, yet, forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean erasing responsibility.
Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart said of Mitchell:
So my question is simple, but the answer is not.
Mental illness is a brain disease. When I think about it, for whatever reason, an image of a Swiss cheese-like brain comes to mind. A skull full of gray, gooey Swiss cheese. And if there are holes where circuits and chemicals and connections should be... how responsible are we for our actions? Do we deserve to pay if we honestly cannot help our actions?
And if we SHOULD pay for our transgressions, whether intended or not, which makes more sense? To lock Mitchell in a prison cell where he will continue to believe himself a prophet, or a mental hospital where he will be medicated, cared for, and brought back to a healthy place where he can see the surreality of his reality and possibly feel genuine remorse?
I'm looking for logic over political correctness. I'm not concerned with pleasing NAMI.
Anyone have the right answer?? Pin It
Just another day in the wacky lives of Brian David Mitchell and his old lady, Wanda Barzee. For Elizabeth Smart, it seemed like the nightmare that would never end.
Both Mitchell and Barzee have been diagnosed as being delusional. Barzee was forcibly medicated in order to be declared competent to stand trial. Faced with the reality of what she had done, Barzee offered this apology:
"I am so sorry, Elizabeth, for all the pain and suffering I have caused you and your family," Barzee said, taking an emotional pause between sentences. "It is my hope that you will be able to find it in your heart to forgive me."
Now, Bipolar is different from Schizophrenia or delusions, but one thing most of us with some form of mental illness can all relate to is the weight of "getting better" only to be faced with the path of destruction we left behind. Fortunately, most of us will never have to be faced with kidnapping charges or worse, but a lot of us have garbage to clean up. Sometimes it's money we shouldn't have spent, family members and friends we shouldn't have hurt, jobs we wish we hadn't lost. But for almost all of us, the aftermath of being sick requires some janitorial work.
To the Smart family's credit (which sounds so odd because Smart is my maiden name), they have opted to forgive Barzee:
"We all make mistakes in life," he said. "If we can't forgive each other, heaven help us."
And, yet, forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean erasing responsibility.
Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart said of Mitchell:
"To me, he should never see the light of day out of prison," Ed Smart said. "I believe mentally he is an extremist and that extremism is not going to change. If he were ever to get out, he would do it again."
So my question is simple, but the answer is not.
Mental illness is a brain disease. When I think about it, for whatever reason, an image of a Swiss cheese-like brain comes to mind. A skull full of gray, gooey Swiss cheese. And if there are holes where circuits and chemicals and connections should be... how responsible are we for our actions? Do we deserve to pay if we honestly cannot help our actions?
And if we SHOULD pay for our transgressions, whether intended or not, which makes more sense? To lock Mitchell in a prison cell where he will continue to believe himself a prophet, or a mental hospital where he will be medicated, cared for, and brought back to a healthy place where he can see the surreality of his reality and possibly feel genuine remorse?
I'm looking for logic over political correctness. I'm not concerned with pleasing NAMI.
Anyone have the right answer?? Pin It
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
It Pays To Be Humble
'Ninja' Man Impaled On Fence After Jump
..."he insisted he was just a ninja trying to clear a 4- to 5-foot-tall fence."Pin It
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sad End To A Sad Case
I've been following the story of little Shaniya Davis, the little girl who authorities say was basically sold into sexual slavery by her drug-addicted mother. Shaniya's father, Bradley Lockhart, felt that Shaniya's mother, Antoinette Davis, had gotten her life together enough to raise her daughter and become a part of her life.
Unfortunately, a father's well-intentioned attempt and uniting mother and daughter ended in horror after Antoinette gave her child away, and today Shaniya was found dead in a wooded area in central North Carolina.
They will undoubtedly report that she had been sexually assaulted.
When I worked in a group home for teen moms, there was one girl who had a similar story. Her mother had A LOT of kids, I can't even remember exactly how many. One by one, she lost custody of them. She was busy drinking and sleeping around. The girl told stories about living in dank hotel rooms with her brothers, and how they would get into fist fights over who got the last hot dog in the mini-fridge. Eventually, her mother - who wouldn't work and lived off the government - "traded" the girl to neighbors and such for sex, in return for the perpetrators paying her rent, utilities, etc.
When she was 14, she got pregnant to a 25-year-old man. And throughout her stay at the group home, her mother did her best to keep the two in touch.
When you do those things for a living, you see a lot of sad crap - parents who just don't care and let their kids run wild, parents who overlook their child's drug problem because they don't want to be bothered, and moms who bring a string of shady guys in the house all the time. But nothing ever blew my mind like the mom who sold her child for sex, in return for some cash.
These are the things I sincerely hope we learn the answers to in Heaven. Either that, or we're just so dang happy to be with God, we forget it ever existed. I'll take whatever I can get. Pin It
Unfortunately, a father's well-intentioned attempt and uniting mother and daughter ended in horror after Antoinette gave her child away, and today Shaniya was found dead in a wooded area in central North Carolina.
They will undoubtedly report that she had been sexually assaulted.
When I worked in a group home for teen moms, there was one girl who had a similar story. Her mother had A LOT of kids, I can't even remember exactly how many. One by one, she lost custody of them. She was busy drinking and sleeping around. The girl told stories about living in dank hotel rooms with her brothers, and how they would get into fist fights over who got the last hot dog in the mini-fridge. Eventually, her mother - who wouldn't work and lived off the government - "traded" the girl to neighbors and such for sex, in return for the perpetrators paying her rent, utilities, etc.
When she was 14, she got pregnant to a 25-year-old man. And throughout her stay at the group home, her mother did her best to keep the two in touch.
When you do those things for a living, you see a lot of sad crap - parents who just don't care and let their kids run wild, parents who overlook their child's drug problem because they don't want to be bothered, and moms who bring a string of shady guys in the house all the time. But nothing ever blew my mind like the mom who sold her child for sex, in return for some cash.
These are the things I sincerely hope we learn the answers to in Heaven. Either that, or we're just so dang happy to be with God, we forget it ever existed. I'll take whatever I can get. Pin It
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Back to Jesus
A long time ago... in 2003... God spoke to me. Not really in an audible sort of way (maybe because He figured I have Bipolar Disorder and hearing voices would freak me out?) but in my heart. I decided in June '03 that I wanted to be a writer. I had spent the last several years working with adults with mental retardation and it started out very rewarding but quickly went downhill the first time one of my clients came after me with a railroad spike. I was in desperate need of a change.
When you first decide to become a writer, you have no idea where to go or what to do. God never dropped a magazine on my lap and said, "Write to them" but He did tell me:
WHY DO I KEEP RUNNING FROM THAT?!?
I mean, seriously... how moronic am I that I would doubt what GOD told me? And not just about writing. About, just... everything. Ministry. Life. My focus has shifted in the wrong direction.
God, I'm going to shift it back. I'm going to fight the bipolar and fight what I feel, and live in obedience and do the things you've told me I need to do. I want to live the way my cousin lived in his last days on earth, accomplishing things that touch people for eternity.
I'm going to fight my natural reflex to run and avoid.
I'm going to obey.
I'm going to be successful. Pin It
When you first decide to become a writer, you have no idea where to go or what to do. God never dropped a magazine on my lap and said, "Write to them" but He did tell me:
If you write about me, you will be successful."
WHY DO I KEEP RUNNING FROM THAT?!?
I mean, seriously... how moronic am I that I would doubt what GOD told me? And not just about writing. About, just... everything. Ministry. Life. My focus has shifted in the wrong direction.
God, I'm going to shift it back. I'm going to fight the bipolar and fight what I feel, and live in obedience and do the things you've told me I need to do. I want to live the way my cousin lived in his last days on earth, accomplishing things that touch people for eternity.
I'm going to fight my natural reflex to run and avoid.
I'm going to obey.
I'm going to be successful. Pin It
"Make it good."
So I told my husband I was going to put up my first post on my new blog tonight, and he told me, "Make it good. Don't write 'I'm back' or something and that's it."
It's almost 1am, but I promise to write more than that, though I really can't update you on EVERYTHING in this post.
As much as I'd like to tell you that things are the "same old, same old," I really can't. Life has changed rapidly over the past few months. I quit one job and lost another. My cousin, who originally told me about Jesus, died of ALS in September and I traveled to California to attend his memorial service. I have been struggling since I returned because I feel very numb. I was so angry at God for the almost 4 years that he was sick, I think I had already made my peace with God when he died. So I feel almost guilty that I don't... well, feel more. My sadness, now, centers around the rest of my family, the ones he left behind, and how they are going to move forward and cope in a world without Jay.
Those of you who know me probably remember that I've been having neighbor "issues" for a long time now. Actually, if you know me, there's no way you could NOT know that. I've had neighbor issues my entire life. Even when I was growing up, we had crazy neighbors. From flashers to drunks to hunters dumping bloody deer carcasses in our dumpster, I've seen it all. When I was growing up and somebody new moved into the neighborhood, my mother used to say, "I'll be cordial, but I don't want to be anybody's friend." I used to think that was so cold, you know? Well, I still don't agree with that, but I definitely understand where she was coming from. I frequently tell Scott we need to buy a house in the middle of the woods with no neighbors around for miles. I'm happy to report, however, that the wackadoo couple living in apt. 6 broke up and they both moved out, proving that miracles really do happen. I would go into more detail the trials and tribulations we've dealt with over the past few months, but there's not enough space on this blog.
More later. I'm falling asleep. (Thanks, Seroquel.) Pin It
It's almost 1am, but I promise to write more than that, though I really can't update you on EVERYTHING in this post.
As much as I'd like to tell you that things are the "same old, same old," I really can't. Life has changed rapidly over the past few months. I quit one job and lost another. My cousin, who originally told me about Jesus, died of ALS in September and I traveled to California to attend his memorial service. I have been struggling since I returned because I feel very numb. I was so angry at God for the almost 4 years that he was sick, I think I had already made my peace with God when he died. So I feel almost guilty that I don't... well, feel more. My sadness, now, centers around the rest of my family, the ones he left behind, and how they are going to move forward and cope in a world without Jay.
Those of you who know me probably remember that I've been having neighbor "issues" for a long time now. Actually, if you know me, there's no way you could NOT know that. I've had neighbor issues my entire life. Even when I was growing up, we had crazy neighbors. From flashers to drunks to hunters dumping bloody deer carcasses in our dumpster, I've seen it all. When I was growing up and somebody new moved into the neighborhood, my mother used to say, "I'll be cordial, but I don't want to be anybody's friend." I used to think that was so cold, you know? Well, I still don't agree with that, but I definitely understand where she was coming from. I frequently tell Scott we need to buy a house in the middle of the woods with no neighbors around for miles. I'm happy to report, however, that the wackadoo couple living in apt. 6 broke up and they both moved out, proving that miracles really do happen. I would go into more detail the trials and tribulations we've dealt with over the past few months, but there's not enough space on this blog.
More later. I'm falling asleep. (Thanks, Seroquel.) Pin It
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