Being a Nice Christian Neighbor

I've been writing all of these stories about my neighbors in a pretty sarcastic tone, and while I'm attempting to be humorous and entertaining, I have a feeling that some Christian readers might get a little ticked off. What about witnessing? Didn't I do any of that? Or did I just get mad and poke fun?

Most of my neighbor stories were not funny at the time, they were frustrating and often terribly sad. (Like I said - I won't write about all of them because I don't want to hurt certain people.) We have always made great efforts to have a welcoming home (smells and all) and to try to help the people around us. I was once an undiagnosed, un-medicated woman with bipolar disorder and therefore not the easiest to live with. We're not above anyone.

Having said that, I DO seem to amass a large number of bizarre stories, both with neighbors and sometimes strangers. Sometimes you have to look back and laugh. After at least a dozen people tell you "this stuff only happens to you" you start to think... hmm, maybe I should write about some of this. Because it IS weird, and weirdness makes for good writing.

My husband and I believe God put all of these people in our path for a reason, that reason being to love them, which we did. And if I thought any of those people could read these stories and be hurt by them, I wouldn't write them. They're people I still pray for when they come to mind. But weird is weird, and funny is funny.

But don't think for a minute that I hate any of my old neighbors or consider myself better than them, because it's simply not true.

Happy reading. Pin It

Bad Neighbors: Part 2

"Hey, you kids put those knives down and get me another pack of smokes."

In the fall of 2003, my husband and I were broke. Flat broke. Dumpster-divin', barely-thrivin' poor. We both lost jobs within six months of each other and could no longer afford the charming half-house next to the cat-cooking Chinese restaurant/family with the godfather teenage son. Forced to downsize, we moved into an old church that had been turned into apartments in the 1950s. Charming on the outside, Skid Row on the inside.

It was a dump, but I was determined to turn it into a home. It was harder than I thought, considering the bathtub that had so much mildew build-up that my husband's buddy once told us he felt like he needed to bath in Clorox after showering in it. The water ran constantly and the landlord didn't care. His idea of "fixing" the problem was to show up with a wrench and tighten the faucet handles so much that it took another wrench to turn the water on to wash our hands.

The stove in the apartment below us blew up one day. You might think I'm exaggerating for the purpose of writing an entertaining story, but I am the George Washington of neighbor stories - I cannot tell a lie. It blew up - kaboom - flames, smoke, everything. My landlord's solution? He bought our neighbor a hot plate.

There was a minor mold problem in our apartment... nothing too extreme... just, you know... mushrooms growing in the corner of our bedroom carpet, which was always wet, which the landlord also ignored. Oh, and the apartment produced strange, unidentifiable odors. Every day was a new adventure. What will the apartment smell like today? Raw sewage? What sorts of diseases would be develop from the mold contamination? Why were my eyes crusted shut every morning? It was never boring.

The town was not nearly as Rockwell-esque as the last one. It was more rural, with a dive bar on the corner of our street, but not entirely unfriendly. The neighbors smiled, flashing their tooth at you in a welcoming sort of way.

A single guy in his 30s called the basement home. The other people in the building described him as a "washed-up, wannabe rockstar." He boasted of sleeping with a middle-aged woman and her daughter on a regular basis, and left notes on my door asking me to "walk softly" because he slept during the day. (Too bad. It's a rickety old wooden church. Get a real job.)

At first, we loved the tenants in the apartment beside us. It was a single mom we'll call "Stella", her boyfriend, and her two teenage daughters. Four people, one bedroom, and a living room the size of a Pop Tart. I don't know how they did it. I worked nights and the single mom took pity on my husband by feeding him their leftovers and making small talk in the evenings. The oldest daughter, 17, had dropped out of high school. The younger one, 13, was in a special program for kids who needed a gentle beating now and then. They were the type of people, though, who would give you the shirts off their backs, and they once spent an entire afternoon doing us the favor of improperly installing a fuel pump in our car.

I was working with teen moms at the time and I enjoyed kids, so I was friendly with the neighbor girls. Unfortunately, I sometimes have a hard time being nice and helpful without turning into a complete doormat/therapist/safety net. The girls and I got along just fine until the night the youngest one wanted me to take her and her friends to the mall in the pouring rain at night and I refused. The little estrogen monkeys stood in the front yard and started pelting my front door with rocks. I hurt no one. I merely threw the door open as they scattered, and challenged them to a fight to the death. No more rocks after that.

They were hurting for money just as much as we were. Being the entrepreneur that Stella was, she decided to start a home business... running a daycare for 10 toddlers...out of the apartment. It was totally illegal, but I didn't care. I was a little bothered by the fact that Stella and her daughters chain-smoked and watched TV all day while the youngsters ran wild, but the cigarette smoking couldn't have been a mystery to the moms dropping off their tots. Just walking by their apartment gave you a whiff of smoke so strong you nearly passed out and needed oxygen right there on the front steps. If they were that dumb, who was I to say anything?

I got my book contract right before we moved into Le Toilet, so I wrote during the day and worked at the group home at night. No easy task. The walls were about as thin as toilet paper, and our living rooms shared a wall. Ten toddlers...one bedroom...a living room the size of a Pop Tart...paper-thin walls... I wrote my book to the sounds of a herd of children running and screaming from one end of the apartment to the other all day, every day, with no pauses.

Stella and her herd finally moved out a year later. She had broken up with her boyfriend to start dating a drug dealer. The oldest girl got pregnant. Shortly thereafter, I ran into the youngest daughter, who was working at a gas station and had just dropped out of high school herself. She told me her mom had become a crackhead. Nobody can say my stories are anti-climactic.

The Partridge Family was replaced by a kind 50-something trucker we both enjoyed chatting with. When his electric heat vents died, the landlord blessed him with a cooler-sized space heater. He had an adorable, sweet Akita who had a deviated septum or sleep apnea or...good Lord, I don't know what was wrong, but he snored to loudly we could hear him even when we went in our bedroom and closed the door.

It was the man living in the house next-door to our building who would eventually challenge my sanity and cause me to demand that we find another place to live...




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Bad Neighbors: Part 1

I did my best to ignore the stereotype...

Many people (many people) have asked me to write about the whacko neighbors I've had over the years. I haven't because it's like staring at a set of encyclopedias and trying to figure out which one to tackle first. Where do I even begin? Of course, I can't tell ALL my tales, for various reasons, but I thought I'd take a crack at writing down at least a few.

I guess a good place to start would be the Chinese restaurant next-door.

My husband and I moved into a half-house in a quaint town that looked like it had been painted by Norman Rockwell. It was right between his hometown and mine, and we loved driving through. We thought it would be a nice place to raise a family - the kind of place you could walk around after dark and not get murdered. That's hard to find these days, after all.

I was psyched about the fact that a Chinese restaurant was directly beside our house. So close, I could throw a rock out my living room window and bounce it off one of the cook's heads. It smelled so good on the day we toured the house that my mouth was watering. I couldn't wait to have eggrolls so easily within my grasp, even if it meant swelling up to the size of a rhinoceros. I had no idea that the town smelled like the local chocolate factory in the morning, like fried rice by noon, or that the two scents would combine into a noxious odor by evening.

People warned me about the restaurant. Wanting to be politically correct, I brushed them off when they said the pork fried rice was, in fact, kitty fried rice. Stuff like that doesn't happen anymore in America, does it? Sure, Jade Tiki in the mall had been shut down for cooking with kitties and pet food, but that was a long time ago. I ate up, all the while telling myself the texture of the chicken in my chicken lo mein was totally normal. My best friend at the time - a Korean-American - told me to stop being such a sissy.

But who was she to tell me to lighten up? I'd seen food in her house that scared me half to death. Her family munched on dried octopus tentacles as a snack and served up a "soft drink" that looked like something I can't write about in good conscious because of my conservative audience.

As time went by, I began noticing...oddities...over at the restaurant. There were always people riding bicycles through the kitchen, which was plenty unsanitary. I tried to ignore the large number of cats running in and out of the building at all hours. I told myself they were just "pet people," even though no one cat was like the other. They were different all the time, in and out.

One hot summer day, I went out back to put my garbage in the garbage cans and smelled something obnoxious. It smelled like death. Living in a farming community, I'm used to really bad smells. Farmers spray their fields with liquified cow manure in the spring. This kind of smelled like...liquified cow manure with a pureed decaying body thrown in. And there were flies. Where were those flies coming from? I followed one from my shoulder and up to my right...up to the top floor of the Chinese restaurant building. The owners of the restaurant lived on the second floor with their family. They never said hello and often threw tree branches in my backyard.

I looked up on their porch and saw where the flies were swarming - around a laundry rack with skinned, bloody, decaying animal corpses hanging on it. They were too small to be cats (do Asians cook with kittens or just cats?), but seemed too big to be dogs... unless they were cooking with Pomeranians or miniature Pinschers. I shudder at the thought... They appeared to be rat-sized, and they had rat-like tails.

Sometimes you see things...but you're not sure you're really seeing them. That's why I called a friend to come over and assess the carnage. My friend stared at the shriveling bodies, swatting the flies away, but couldn't figure out what kinds of animals were dangling above. "I don't know, dude. All I can say is, don't eat there anymore."

My husband wanted to call somebody, but we didn't know who to call. Animal control? The ASCPA? The Humane League? The local mental ward?

I was pondering what to do one day as I surfed the internet in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Through my window, I was within slapping distance of one of the family's teenage sons. On a nice day, we both had our windows open. We would glance at each other as if to say, "What are YOU looking at?" and then go about our merry way. On that particular day, I was listening to the whole family arguing with one another.

Usually, it was no fun eavesdropping on them because I don't know Chinese, but that afternoon, I heard the mother scream:

I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU AND THE MAFIA AND I COULD CALL THE POLICE ON YOU ANYTIME I WANTED!!!

I don't know which family member she was referring to, but that was a defining moment for me. It was the moment I decided:

1. I wasn't going to call anyone about the skinned animals on the balcony because I was afraid they would skin ME and drape me over the laundry rack, too.
2. Not only was I never eating at their establishment again, I was going to warn people not to complain about the food...if they wanted to live to see another day.
3. No more eye contact with the neighbors.
4. I would let them throw as many tree limbs as they wanted in my yard and I would never say another word.
5. Just because it looks like a Normal Rockwell painting, that doesn't mean it is.

I thought it couldn't possibly get any weirder than that. Ha! So young, so naive. That was just the beginning of my neighbor troubles. Pin It

The Bad Boss Blog

"YOU'LL EAT IT! YOU'LL EAT THAT CAKE AND YOU'LL LIKE IT!"

This story got me thinking today about some of the bad bosses I've had. Most of us have had at least one. I love my current boss... oops, wait, I AM my boss. That explains it.

I've had some great bosses, too, and honestly, before my bipolar disorder was stable, I wasn't such a great employee. I'm nothing if not honest.

But the bad bosses I've had were really bad bosses. One, in particular, takes the cake.

I was working for a group home for teen mothers - a job I loved and was pretty good at. My major flaw was that I didn't put my foot down as easily as others. I was the "good cop" and looking back, I wish I'd been a little more hardcore. But I loved my girls and their kids and the fact that several of them keep in touch with me 5 years after leaving the job is a testament to that, or at least I think so.

My second supervisor at the group home will always live on in my memory as a crazy person. To say we weren't friends is putting it nicely. On her first day - at the ministry-run home (important to note) - she first told me about her faith, then told me she had a reputation for being a b*tch, and that she was proud of that, because b*tches "got things done." Praise the Lord! If she had never said another word to me for the rest of her life, I still wouldn't have liked her based on that conversation alone.

She went on to tell me she had a daughter my age who was "bad." She ran away from home, got into trouble, that sort of thing. She never really went into detail about what made her "bad" aside from that. Anyway, when her daughter turned 18, she promptly kicked her of the house and told her to never come back. She had a son who was a little younger than me who was absolutely perfect and never did anything wrong. She felt like she was more of a "boy's mom" than a "girl's mom" and didn't really like teenage girls.

So she came to work at a Christian group home filled with teenage girls. Hopefully the "crazy" part is starting to come to light for you now.

I had been working there a year at the time, and she explained that if it had been up to her, the entire staff would have been fired so she could hire an entirely new team. Nice to meet you, too.

Over the next 18 months, she made it abundantly clear that she strongly disliked those of us who were there before her, slowly cutting our hours, writing us demeaning notes in the staff log, and praising the new staff up, down, and sideways in as public a way as possible.

On more than on occasion, I took my concerns to her. We never had a professional meeting in the nearly two years I worked with her. She would immediately begin screaming at me and even threw things across her office. We didn't have meetings, we had matches. She insisted I give a girl "restriction" one time when the girl had done nothing wrong. She said she "needed to know who was boss." When I refused, a stapler zinged past my head.

She spent no time with the girls and all of her time in her office, leaving before the girls got home from school so she wouldn't have to deal with them. She did her best to get rid of us, but most of us were stubborn and held out as long as possible before we were certain she was going to drive us to insanity.

What bothered me the most was how often she referenced her daughter when discussing an issue with one of the group home girls. It became obvious that she was one of those people who should never have been permitted to procreate, and certainly never should have been able to run a ministry. Many of us - with the exception of her pets, who bowed to her every beck and call - agreed that she was taking her anger towards her daughter out on the group home girls.

Finally, I decided sanity was more important than stubbornness, and I handed in my resignation. She never acknowledged it, just took me off the schedule. It was the shortest resignation I've ever written - I simply said I was leaving and gave the date of my departure. No flowery words, no complaints, just the facts. The day I left, there was no good-bye, no card, no nothing... not that I had expected anything.

A few weeks after I left, I got a call from one of my old co-workers who was also getting ready to take a different job. She told me my old boss had finally lost it. One of the girls refused to celebrate her birthday with the rest of the girls for 3 days straight. She was angry and lonely and didn't want to be bothered. On the third day, my old boss stormed into the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, started calling the girl "that little b*tch" and massacred the birthday cake, forcing staff to eat heaps of the murdered dessert whether they wanted to or not. The ministry's administrator responded...by doing nothing. She continued to work there for years after that.

Until the administrator was charged with stealing from the ministry, and the group home finally shut down.

Hands down, THE WORST boss I've ever had. Everything else doesn't even seem worth writing about. Pin It

Lancaster, Pennsylvania Residents Reeling from Earthquake

Major quake sends local residents into hysteria.

Hey, let's talk about that big earthquake that hit DC today. Might as well, right? That's all anybody is talking about.

We felt it here in little old Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I was sitting on my couch working on my laptop when there was a big bang. I thought the neighbors downstairs slammed the door... but then everything kept moving. Some pictures fell off the TV. The fan in the dining room swayed. There was a brief moment when I thought "oh crap" and thought perhaps I should head for cover... but then I noticed the TV was rocking back and forth.

My choices were painful. They included:
1. Go stand in the doorway
2. SAVE THE TV!!!!!!!!!!!

I chose #2. If the building is still standing but there's no entertainment, what good is that? Just as I got up to rescue my appliance, the movement stopped.

The earthquake was big news here, of course, and local residents are slowly picking up the pieces and recovering from the mass devastation. These local tales of destruction, found at WGAL's website, will just smash your heart to pieces. Read on, if you are brave.

Raymond Miller, of Carlisle, said his house shook.

A Columbia, Lancaster County, woman said the tremor was quite severe, knocking over a cat water dish. She had time to leave her house from the second story before the tremor ended.

 

Kelly Clark from the Colonial Lodge in Denver, Lancaster County, said chandelier crystals were still shaking two minutes after the quake.

 

Linda Hess of Holtwood, Lancaster County, said she didn't actually feel the earthquake. She heard banging and rattling and saw the cabinet doors in her kitchen shaking.

Michael Myers, of Palmyra, said he was in his basement working and all of the sudden everything started shaking.

A Red Lion woman said her floors shook hard for about a minute.

 

A woman who lives in southern York County said the house shook and windows rattled. 

Leanne Ferree, of York Township, could see her windows rattling.

I have my own tale of sorrow.
I was unable to send text messages for about 15 minutes.

God help us all.

And thank God for WGAL for covering this calamity with dignity and gut-wrenching narration as always. They might not be able to forecast a snowfall, but they certainly do know how to draw out the raw emotions of such a horrible natural disaster.

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Christians and Porn Addiction

I read this interesting piece this morning on CNN.com about the Christian fight against pornography. The piece details Christians going through therapy to deal with their porn addiction, and the ways in which Christian counselors are tackling the problem.

Many non-Christians feel that porn is just a fun way of spicing up one's love life...or dealing with the lack thereof. But Christians understand that a pure thought life is essential to a smoother, more fruitful walk with God. Of course, porn isn't the only thing that can clog your brain. Anger, resentment, fear - all of these are things that prevent us from focusing on the good things of God and push us to act in rather ungodly ways.

Pornography can become an addiction like drugs or alcohol, not because of the chemicals you put into your body, but because of the chemical reaction in the brain TO the pornography. Some people can look at pornography and not develop a major problem, but I can think of at least 2 people I know who have lost everything because it turned into a major battle they couldn't win.

There two points that I think are important to make.

1. Temptation is not a sin.Jesus was tempted in every conceivable way and did not sin. What's the difference? Temptation is a longing to act on something. It becomes sin when we act on it. Because God wants us and instructs us to have a pure thought life, acting on the sin of pornography can mean actually indulging in it, or dwelling on the virtual rolodex of images we have in our heads from past experiences. The Bible tells us that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. 2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us to "take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ." If you've looked at a lot of porn, or maybe have sexual abuse in your past, sometimes you need someone to come alongside you and help you do those things.

2. Why look in the first place?Why would a healthy, thriving Christian need to look at porn in the first place? I think the article makes an excellent point.

“If you spend your time in session talking about what God thinks and what the Bible says, you don’t get to understand what the patient thinks and what happened in their life up to that point that explains why,” Giugliano says.

Now, obviously, I don't agree with removing God and the Bible from the equation. But I do agree that every problem has a starting point and that you can't stop a weed from growing without tearing out the root. Being a new creature in Christ doesn't mean that actions don't have consequences - either your own actions, or someone's actions against you. Why would you retrain a mind that was trained properly the first time? What is there to guard your heart from?

My friend Shaunti Feldhahn did exhaustive research into the "inner minds" of men and discovered that a lot of men - Christian and otherwise - view porn out of a sense of inadequacy. Seeing an all-too-willing and enthusiastic woman on a screen, willing to do anything to please anyone, gave them a small-but-important esteem boost. It made them feel like they could do anything, and were sexually adequate.

Where do we get our sense of adequacy and esteem from as Christians? From God. He makes us adequate and worthy, it's nothing we can do for ourselves. We often need the help of Christian counselors to help us see who we are in Christ. It's important. Secular therapists don't get it, and it's sad.

But there's something to be said about finding out why it's so hard to grasp all of that in the first place.

Modern-day knowledge with ancient Truth can make for a great combination.


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A Life Lesson from Terri Cheney

I'm in the midst of reading Manic by Terri Cheney. Over the summer I decided to start reading memoirs by people suffering from bipolar disorder, but was pretty surprised to find there wasn't much out there. I finally found myself leaning over the counter at a local Books-A-Million, asking, bluntly, "Do you have anything written by someone with bipolar disorder?" I'm sure it was a strange request for them, but they produced Cheney's book and I've been reading it in the haphazard way I usually read books - in the five minutes I have before a doctor's appointment, or on the toilet.

At first, there wasn't much in the book that I could relate to. Cheney was a powerhouse LA entertainment attorney who worked with the likes of Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. I'm just a freelance writer. Cheney writes a good bit about her money, connections, and success. I drive a 1997 Chevy and live in an apartment and don't have any big celebrity friends.

Cheney was also institutionalized more than once and attempted suicide numerous times. The suicide part I could relate to, having semi-attempted to off myself a few times as a teenager. Of course, my "attempts" were cries for attention, whereas Cheney really, truly wanted to die. And, to date, I have never been institutionalized. I've always thought my life has been crazy thanks to the BP, but now I feel incredibly boring by comparison.

So I've been reading this book and it's a great read, and I'm thoroughly fascinated and entertained, although I don't feel like I could ever sit down with Cheney as a girlfriend-sistah-child. There is only one thing I've been able to relate to so far...

Throughout the book, Cheney talks about how often she thinks of death, constantly wanting to be free of her troubled mind, always plotting her own demise. This part I could relate to. It's not the sort of thing you generally admit to people, but I'm admitting it now - I get this. It's nothing I've experienced lately. I've been pretty healthy for over a year, with few hiccups and certainly none I haven't been able to overcome. But it wasn't that long ago that I experienced the same things Cheney writes about as far as the constant obsession with death.

I would often drive through my town - a very rural and sometimes wooded area - thinking how easy it would be to drive my car into a tree at 100 miles per hour with no seatbelt on. At times I envisioned other ways of offing myself, right down to the nitty gritty details. It was a constant monkey on my back, a thought that was with me everywhere I went. Even on "good" days when I didn't feel particularly depressed, the thoughts still entered my mind at the most inopportune times.

What stopped me? The things that stop most people - too many people to love and be loved by, an underlying hope that eventually things would get better...fear of going to Hell. The last one was the biggie for me. If you give your life to Jesus, and then decided to end it, how does that go over with God? After all, I'm a Christian, which means my life isn't really my own anymore. I've had many people give me many different answers to that question but, in the end, I didn't want to find out the hard way.

I haven't finished this book yet, but I realized something tonight: death is my measuring stick. I haven't had those thoughts in a long time - I can't even remember exactly how long it's been. Like I said, I'm sure it has been at least a year.

But now I know that if I ever start thinking that way again, it's serious, and I need to ask for help.

Oh, and incidentally... if anyone knows of any other good reads, let me know.


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New Book Links Mental Illness and Leadership

I'm a little late on this one, but I had to share it with everybody.

I watched this Dr. Nassir Ghaemi fellow on The Colbert Report last week. Dr. Ghaemi recently wrote a book titled A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness documenting "the psychological and psychiatric research on positive aspects of mental illness" which Ghaemi applies to great historical leaders.

During Ghaemi's interview with Stephen Colbert, he suggested that the greatest future leaders of our country might be defined, in part, but by their instability, rather than stability. The things that make great leaders - in Ghaemi's words, realism, empathy, resilience, and creativity - are aspects that are often found in mental disorders. The psychiatrist believes this country would be wise to elect such leaders in the future.

But here's where it gets a little bit messy: first, in order for something like that to happen, the stigma attached to mental illness in this country (in this world, for that matter) would have to disappear. I don't see that happening any time soon. Two, Ghaemi suggests that perhaps presidential candidates' mental health records ought to be released to the public in the same fashion that their medical records are released.

I agree that people with mental illness are often pure geniuses, and that these characteristics would probably make for great presidents. And the fact that a politician is able to make it all the way to a presidential bid would indicate they are either not severely mentally ill, or their mental illness is well controlled.

However, a major problem sticks out in my mind.
In our society, mental health activists are constantly on a mission to "normalize" mental illness. They are trying to remove the stigma and help people understand that mental illness is, in fact, a medical illness. It's a disease of the brain, and the brain is an organ, just like the heart, lungs, pancreas, etc. At the same time, these same activists are the same folks who would likely fight tooth and nail to keep a presidential candidate's mental health history under wraps, saying it violates privacy and subjects the individual to undue scrutiny.

And until people stop viewing people with mental illness as a bunch of crazies, releasing a public figure's mental health history - whether they want it released or not - would probably result in that person being ridiculed and bashed on late night talk shows and water coolers all over the country.

All this to say - it's a nice dream, but I don't think it's going to come true anytime soon. Hopefully, Ghaemi's book will help people to understand what mental illness is, and what it isn't. Pin It

Upside Down

It was four in the morning, and I was in the kitchen arranging my spice cabinet by alphabetical order and container size. Most of them were spices I never used. I didn't even like marjoram and I didn't know what coriander was but I kept them anyway, lining them up row by row. It could have been four o'clock in the afternoon, it didn't matter to me. I was wide awake and contemplated a trip to Wal-Mart to expend some energy.

"What are you doing?" I looked up and saw my husband standing in the hallway in his rumpled t-shirt, rubbing his tired eyes. This had become a predictable routine - my husband awaking in the middle of the night to find me elsewhere, usually in front of the TV, or quietly trying to pluck at my guitar, or writing depressing poetry. It scared him when he found me doing something productive in the middle of the night, like cleaning or arranging. It meant my energy was off the charts.

He took me gently by the shoulders and led me away from the kitchen. I imagine it must have looked a lot like a scene from the Alzheimer's unit of a nursing home - "Come on, Julie. Let's go back to your room." Of course, I was only in my early twenties and we were supposed to be happy newlyweds, except we weren't. I was not at all what he had signed up for.

We got married wanting a simple life - the kids, the dog, teaching Sunday school, keeping the white picket fence nicely painted so it glowed around our perfectly manicured lawn. He wanted a soft-spoken wife who could make a decent meatloaf, but instead he got me - exhausted and barely able to function by day, wide awake and wired at night. If he had known I'd be punching holes through walls or throwing plates at him, or contemplating suicide on a daily basis, he probably never would have walked down the aisle with me. Nobody signs up for Wifezilla.

Did I know I had issues before I married him? You could say there were a few signs. I believed, like a great many foolish women do, that once I got married I would "settle down" and the problems would magically disappear. Being in love would make the depression go away. Establishing a new life would make the anger subside. Being a wife would make me gentler.

The fits of rages didn't tear us apart, the expectations did. My husband walked on eggshells and tried to be the perfect man, hoping that if he could keep from rocking the boat, I'd be in a manageable mood. I expected him to understand that what he did or didn't do had nothing to do with how I felt or how I acted. When I whipped a plate at his head, it wasn't personal. I was angry, in general, and he just happened to be in the way. As many times as I tried to explain to him that I wasn't angry at him, he didn't understand it and certainly didn't believe it. To him, my actions proved otherwise.

It's hard to have a happy home when one spouse follows the other one around all day asking, "Honey, are you doing OK today?"

Translation: "Are you crazy today? Are you normal yet? How many fingers am I holding up?"


Realistically, the things that angered me don't anger 'average' people. Most people don't fly off the handle because they dropped a butter knife or something fell out of the freezer when they opened it. At least, they don't fly into a rage that escalates and escalates until they have bloody knuckles.

I found myself going through pastoral marriage counseling and sitting through individual therapy once a week, and praying for deliverance from my anger every day. I read books and hashed out a troubled childhood that I had hashed out many times before in counseling. Nobody seemed to understand - least of all my poor husband - that I wasn't seething with inner anger. I was having flashes of very intense anger that came out of nowhere, and I felt powerless to control it.

I was energetic and creative and had so many ideas, but was limited by my human capabilities. More often than not, that's what really ticked me off. How could I sleep when my mind was racing and my body felt like an engine revving at the starting line? How could I be happy and at peace when my hand was reaching for a plate but my thoughts were a mile ahead of me already contemplating what I would do the next morning and I was super-sensitive to noise and light and virtually everything around me?

I knew there was something wrong - something medically wrong - but part of me worried that I wasn't really a Christian. How could the Holy Spirit live inside of something so messy and frightening? Repentance means turning away from sin and walking as far away from it as possible. I was always 'sorry' after an angry outburst, always sorry for scaring my husband with my late-night antics, but I always did them again and again. Had I really received Christ's ultimate forgiveness? Could Christians be terrorized by demons?

Was it brain chemistry, or something demonic? Both? What was the answer?

I didn't have the answers to those questions.
All I knew was that nothing was working.




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Good And Angry At God

God has a big ol' lightning bolt with your name on it, you naughty, naughty thing, you.

Parents always embarrass their kids by talking about them, and since I don’t have a kid of my own, I’ve decided to embarrass my niece. She’s the closest thing I have to a daughter, which makes her the perfect candidate.

She’s pissed off at God for a variety of reasons I won’t share. (I’m not THAT bad.) At 17, she has experienced more hardship in life than some senior citizens. We have a lot in common, though teenagers won’t ever admit to being anything like an old person. The trouble with teenagers is that you try to impart life lessons but always wonder if what you say will be overshadowed by a rap song, whose lyrics will undoubtedly be quoted on Facebook.

My niece is a lot like I was at her age – a troubled young girl trying to make sense of the pain in her life while trying to figure out where and if God fits into the big picture. Unless you are raised steeped in Christianity, it’s easy to think that God sits on a cloud somewhere in the sky chucking lightning bolts at people who cross Him – even if those people have accepted Christ as Savior.

I have to say my view of God was perhaps considerably worse when I was a teenager. God was the head administrator of the universe, seated at a desk piled high with paperwork. Every now and then, an angel would wander in and hand Him a paper. “This girl is being molested,” he’d say, or “This boy’s father ignores him. Which pile do you want it on?” And God would point to the appropriate stack without even looking up and save the crisis for another day, if at all. He should have been on that heavenly cloud, chucking lightning bolts at evil people, but He was too caught up in red tape to do that. And when he did venture out with bolts in hand, He only shot them at the believers who screwed up and sinned against Him.

I suspect this is my niece’s view of God at this very moment. She wants Him to answer the age-old question of “Why?” but her queries seem to be met with silence.

Reverse Theology
Apart from the death and resurrection of Christ itself, all of Christianity is based on the premise that our identity, value, and worth can be found within the pages of the Bible. When facing hardships in life, the Bible is full of promises designed to give us hope and keep us focused on the reality that earth sucks, but it’s not our eternal home. In Psalms, God promises that that He will bless the righteous and show him favor (5:12); that He will be a refuge to the hurting (9:9); that He will give His people strength and peace (29:11), and that’s just to name a few. Throughout the Bible, God promises us healing, full forgiveness of sins, and freedom.

It was always hard for me to understand a book full of promises when I lived in a world full of painful uncertainty. Obviously, I’m not alone in that. Everyone has questioned why there is pain and suffering in the world. It is a part of human nature. For a young war-torn believer, it’s hard to reconcile what seem to be blatant contradictions. 

The human brain weighs about three pounds. Did you know that? I actually learned that from a Chris Rice song years ago, but I promise I looked it up to make sure. I’ve purchased smaller bags of ground beef at the grocery store. Now compare that to the vast knowledge of God and suddenly it makes a little more sense how… none of this makes much sense. Only in the past couple of years have I realized that I’ve been trying stuff all of the wisdom of God into three pounds of gray goo. I’d have better luck trying to back my car into my laptop bag.  Can you imagine how frustrating that would be? I get irritated when I can’t get the cover on my grill. No wonder we get angry at God. 

Part of the problem, of course, is that we expect things out of God that He specifically told us not to expect. We have a sense of entitlement. We get too caught up in being human beings and believing that since we live here, we should have it all. My husband has a relative who lived in a house rent-free and when it was time to leave, he believed that meant he owned everything in the place. 

Not so!

I got a grip on my anger at God through reverse theology. You’re less likely to hear this preached from the pulpit because instead of focusing on God’s promises, I focus on the things He didn’t promise, but it gave me great perspective.

A lot of people “get saved” believing that life will be wonderful now because we have Jesus in our lives. We don’t realize that the peace and joy of God comes from what we learn from circumstances, and not the circumstances themselves. We see “good” people getting what they “don’t deserve” and it infuriates us. I watched one of my cousins slowly die of ALS over the course of five years. He was a good man who loved the Lord, had a beautiful wife, and four amazing daughters. He was a musician with a brilliant mind who once designed and published a game that was promoted by MENSA. 

According to my three pounds of brain mass, if anyone deserved to live a good, long life, it was him. But he became completely disabled and finally died in 2009. I don’t get it; I never fully will.

We can trace death and destruction back to the fall of man in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve decided to get uppity and directly disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit. God cursed man and said that from that point on, we would experience the things that hold us back now – shame, trouble, hardship. 

Ah, that’s the part we missed. We missed the section at the front of the book where God said life would be hard. We miss John 16:33 where Jesus says that in the world we will have trouble. We just want the good stuff. We feel like we are owed it. 

The first part of my life was inexplicably hard. I spent nearly the next half being angry about it because I felt like I didn’t deserve it. Whether you blame Adam and Eve or not, however, none of us deserve anything good, if only because we expect God to deliver our goods with no hassle, like a child demanding money from a parent. 

It would be one thing if God honestly promised an easy, problem-free life and then all around us, the world was crumbling, our bills weren’t getting paid, and people were taking advantage of us, but that’s not really the case.  In reality, we do stupid things on a daily basis, and it’s astounding just how cruel humans can be to one another. Maybe you never killed anyone. Good for you. Me neither. But have you ever thought something nasty about someone? Flipped someone the bird in traffic? Yelled at an authority figure? If you answered no, you’re still a sinner because you’re lying.

For me, it was much easier to stop being angry at God once I realized I wasn’t being duped.

Choices, Choices
Go to any church or Bible study and you will hear about how life is all about choosing to accept the good things God has for us, including those promises. I say you also have to choose to accept the things God never said, or the things He said that you didn’t like.

You can’t really accept Jesus as Savior until you’ve figured out that you need Him. It’s about more than not wanting to go to Hell. You have to understand that you do ungodly things on a regular basis and that Jesus died on the cross to pay for what you’ve done. In a huge, supernatural way, it’s like paying for an item somebody shoplifted to keep the guilty party out of jail. A good parent will love their child unconditionally; this is what God does for us.

It’s also about understanding that God cannot stand to be around unholiness – hence, Satan got kicked out of Heaven. When Adam and Eve screwed up, God got angry and gave mankind consequences. But like a good parent, He also wanted to see His kids restored, so He sent Jesus to die for us.

So we face a choice, and often make the wrong one. We have the option of loving God and thanking Him for His unconditional love and desire to make us whole again, or staying mad at Him because sometimes our actions have consequences, and the actions of others sometimes affect us. We have to decide what is more important to us – our earthly circumstances, or what God is capable of doing in our spirit.

We react out of hurt, and we hurt others. Think about it. A drug addict becomes a drug addict because they were neglected, abused, or unloved. That drug addict then turns around and steals from law-abiding citizens to fund his habit, and destroys the people who love him the most. The drug addict can blame God for his painful history without ever realizing how he is hurting others. There are no truly innocent people in this world, even if we don’t harm others deliberately.

We can’t go to God for a new life until we realize the life we’ve been living has at some point harmed others, the least of which is God himself.

Keepin’ It Real
For years I was unable to have a fruitful spiritual life because of my anger with God. I tried to out-think it and I believed in the Bible’s promises, but anger was like a little cobweb that got stuck in my brain and even when it wasn’t a dominant emotion, it was always in the background. I have two dear friends in my life who have served as mentors to me for years, and they constantly encouraged me to discuss my feelings with God, but I rejected the idea. It seemed like a terrible sin to feel anger, let alone talk about it. 

In retrospect, it was out of character for me not to discuss how I felt. I am not obnoxious, but I am the type of person to always voice my opinion and speak up when I think it matters. If I have an issue with my husband or a friend, I confront it and try to discuss it to clear it up. God was different, though. I didn’t want Him to chuck a lightning bolt at me.

Through a support group and godly counsel, I began to realize that being honest with God was not only important, but also encouraged and modeled in scripture. I recently started the “Search for Significance” Bible study by Robert S. McGhee. The very first chapter of the book provides verses that demonstrate how David – whom the Bible describes as “a man after God’s own heart” – was very blunt with God throughout his life.

In Psalm 42:9, David questions his own pain a

nd God’s motives.
“I say to God my Rock, 
   “Why have you forgotten me? 
Why must I go about mourning, 
   oppressed by the enemy?”

In Psalm 58:6-9, David tells God how angry he is with others.
 “Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; 
   LORD, tear out the fangs of those lions! 
Let them vanish like water that flows away; 
   when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short. 
May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along, 
   like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
 Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns— 
   whether they be green or dry—the wicked will be swept away.”

More than once, David got frustrated with God and His timing, such as in Psalm 13:1-2.
 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? 
   How long will you hide your face from me? 
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts 
   and day after day have sorrow in my heart? 
   How long will my enemy triumph over me?

And in case you’re quick to believe that God only listened to David’s emotional prayers because he was an all-around good guy, take into account the fact that David committed a number of serious offenses, including an affair with Bathsheba that got her pregnant, which David later tried to cover up. God did not listen to David because he had all of life figured out. In fact, the life of David would have made a good Lifetime Original movie.
God’s love is unconditional, which means He always has an ear for us. Anyone willing to talk to God in an honest way shows an open heart that is willing to be changed by Him. That’s really all He asks of us.

I stopped covering up my anger towards God for a number of reasons. One, it is very exhausting and damaging to carry around anger for a long time without making an attempt to resolve it. What I found was that you really can’t cover up anger. You can pile all the crap you want on top of it, but it’s going to dig its way through again.
Two, my anger was greatly alleviated once I realized that God never promised me an easy life and understood that I didn’t deserve one anymore than the next person.

Three, I took a look at my personal relationships and realized that a relationship wasn’t a deep one unless there was honesty. I don’t like shallow friendships. I want to get to know the people in my life on a deeper level, and a few of those people I hold extremely close to me. Our friendship is close and intimate because I allow myself to be totally forthcoming with those people. If we want to stop seeing God as an administrator or some sort of tattle tale, we need to form the same kind of intimacy with him, which includes confronting the things that need to be confronted.

We have to choose to believe that the God who created the universe, who loved us enough to restore us, is big enough and capable enough of handling even the very worst of us. If David could tell God off and still be a “man after his own heart,” why can’t we? 

I think we submit our prayers to God a lot like we put quarters in a soda machine. In goes the money, out comes the prize. That’s how we think God should work. But prayer is a conversation, right? For years I couldn’t understand the purpose of prayer. It seemed pointless to me to ask God for things without ever really knowing if you’re going to get them. You pray for safe travels for a bus full of youth group kids, and then it goes over a cliff. I’m sure you’ve heard that God always answers prayer, but not always the way you want Him to. I don’t know if I buy into that. Sometimes God doesn’t answer prayer because it’s not His will, plain and simple. Does that mean you shouldn’t ask for things like protection or favor, or the healing of a terminally ill relative? 

The character and promises of God don’t change, but that doesn’t mind God can’t or doesn’t change His mind. In Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah goes into the city of Nineveh with a message from God to change their evil ways, or else. Nineveh heeds the warning and because of their repentance, God “relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” (vs. 10) 

We also have to keep in mind that our actions have consequences, and our actions affect each other. A friend of ours had a nasty porn habit that broke his wife’s heart and kept the atmosphere in their home tense. After many second chances and years of counseling, his wife found out he had never addressed the issue in therapy and discovered more pornography that crossed the line into child porn. He may have prayed at that point for God to fix his marriage, but his wife had had enough, and rightly so. They separated and are now planning to divorce.

Our response to God, our willingness or unwillingness to honor Him with our lives, and the actions of others directly impact God’s answers to our prayers. God is unchanging. He will not break His promises, He will not contradict Himself, and above all He will always love His people unconditionally. We may not know how or if a prayer will be answered, but we should always remind ourselves and that God is good…all the time.

When you really stop and think about it, telling God how angry you are isn’t just confronting an issue so you can hopefully get past it. We are asking God for something – we are asking God to be the person He promised to be, even though we can’t acknowledge it at the time.  If you’re angry at God, I think it should be a comfort to you, because that means you believe in Him, and that’s the first step in the right direction. 

One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, talks about an encounter he had with God in his book, Believing in God Knows What. What started as an angry confrontation with his Creator turned into a moment of reflection and, for us readers, humor. He told God He didn’t believe in Him anymore, only to realize that, unless you’re schizophrenic or on drugs, you don’t tell off someone who isn’t there. 

Being angry at God was a miserable feeling for me. It took many years before I finally broke down and told Him what I really thought of the things He allowed to happen in my life. But it made me realize that even though I was good and pissed, I still believed…a little bit. In Luke 17:15, the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus said that even faith as small as a mustard seed could move mountains. Even the original 12 got it. I was not alone. And Jesus reassured them that even a little goes a long way.

I’m hoping my niece can go from seeing God as a cloud-dwelling lightning bolt-chucker to a confidant who can take whatever she dishes out. He seems to think we’re worth the hassle. That’s enough to grow your faith right there.

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My Husband Dissed Jani Lane

I walked in from checking my email on the balcony with bad news for my husband, a self-proclaimed metalhead: Jani Lane of Warrant was found dead in L.A.

"What?! Where?!"

I filled him on the few details - he had been found dead in a hotel room at the age of 47.

"He asked me to play cards once...," my husband said, his voice trailing off.

Ah, yes. The card story.

It's a story I've heard at least 500 times, a tale from my husband's glory days. He worked as an inventory manager for The Wall record store back in the 90s and often found himself hanging out in the tour buses of his childhood heroes.

As the Warrant story goes, my husband ran to Denny's for the band to grab some food. He was munching on a Moons Over My Hammy and was watching "The Mask" with a few co-worker friends and the rest of Warrant when Jani Lane entered the tour bus and asked if anyone wanted to play cards with him. Everyone blew him off, so Jani Lane went to bed.

I'm pretty sure turning down the lead singer of one of your alleged favorite bands makes you a diva. Just sayin'. But nothing gets between my husband and his Moons Over My Hammy.

Upon hearing the news of Jani Lane's passing, my husband looked at me and said, "I feel bad now."

I patted him on the shoulder and said, "Somehow I doubt Jani brought it up in therapy."

Still, that would be like me turning down Amy Grant's offer to paint our nails and talk about boys when I had dinner with her and the band back in March. 

RIP, Jani. Scott says "sorry."


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Seroquel, Take Me Away

Last night was a no good, very bad night. I didn't sleep at all. I didn't doze off here and there. I didn't sleep AT ALL. And my muscles were sore. And this morning I was so nauseous I could barely sip my coffee.

I must have forgotten to take my Seroquel.

For someone my age, I take quite a few meds. I'm diabetic (my fault/genetic) and hypertensive (genetic) and have restless leg syndrome (who knows). And then there's bipolar disorder. I was tired and it was late last night when I took my fistful of drugs. Sometimes I mistake the Glipizide (for diabetes) for Seroquel. I take 2 Glipizide. Sometimes I look into my hand and think I have them both because they look almost identical.

First thing I did after almost vomiting my coffee was take a Seroquel. It will probably make me sleepy, and I can't sleep today. Deadlines. But I'm no good if I'm sick, either. Withdrawal doesn't make for a pleasant day.

Even though I encourage people to take these meds if they need them, it does sometimes strike me how crappy it is to have to take pills in order to be a functioning human being. There are people who fall asleep with no help, get out of bed with no help, and lead stable lives with no help.

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My Cat: She's Cute But She Ain't Real Bright

Before I jump into this post, let me say this: I love my cat.

She showed up on my doorstep as a kitten 3 years ago and she has been a gift from God. To hear me describe her, you wouldn't think that's the case. She's not terribly affectionate and she doesn't like strangers. She hisses at little children. If I dropped dead in the middle of my living room, she'd nap on my body, then eat it.

But, man, I love my cat.

My only complaint is that she doesn't eat right. If you could watch her eat for five minutes, you'd think she isn't very bright. Heck, maybe she's not.

My cat is incapable of keeping food in her mouth. She cannot eat anything without flinging it all over the place. I am constantly having to sweep my kitchen floor because there are food nuggets everywhere. She loves her crunchy tuna treats, but those, too, get flung every which way and she refuses to eat anything that touches the ground. When I give her real tuna, I regret it later. I spend hours picking up little fish flakes.

The other day I picked up a couple of small cans of wet tuna food for her. It's basically horrible smelling tuna covered in cat-friendly gravy. When she heard me open the can, she came running. When I put it in her bowl, she immediately began licking it.

And licking it.

And licking it.

There is now a bowl full of bone-try tuna cat food in her bowl. She has not touched the tuna itself. No clean-up for me, but I could have used that fifty-seven cents on something for myself... a gumball, maybe. No, wait. I'm diabetic. I guess it wasn't a waste after all.

A lot of people like to treat their cat to a giant slab of lunch meat, or leftover dinner meat. We stopped doing this after Thanksgiving turkey bits showed up on the bathroom rug.

I don't even want to know.






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Wal-Mart, Wheelchairs, and Weirdos

 

You would think the Wal-Mart crowd would be accepting of a dude in a motorized grocery cart, but...no.

Hubby is recovering nicely from acute pancreatitis, but he doesn't have much energy. So, he decided to ride in a motorized cart while accompanying me on a short shopping trip today. It wasn't the greatest cart - it stalled periodically and when he took his hands off the controls, it nearly threw him over the handle bars. It also sounded like a meat grinder.

He was hesitant to board. He's only 40 years old and he's ticked off enough that he is almost all gray. But it was either ride the cart, or pass out in the canned veggie aisle... which he almost did a couple of days ago. 

People don't like dudes in motorized carts. They take up a lot of aisle space and they beep when they back up. But people don't really know how to handle such a thing. It's the same as riding in a wheelchair, basically. In 2011, you'd think wheelchairs would be a normal thing, but not at Wal-Mart. No, not at all.

It's understandable that little kids would look at you funny when you're riding one. Most of them probably want to ride one. It's another thing when full-grown adults stare at you like you've got one ear and four eyes. Haven't you seen someone sit down before? Is this really new to you? 

Some people over-compensate by being sickeningly polite. They're trying to be nice, but it's awkward. They take a giant step back and sweep the path in front of them with their hand, like your throne awaits in aisle 3. Some make a run for it, hoping to get in front of you so they don't have to wait, nearly knocking you and your items on the floor. Others stomp behind you, sighing loudly, letting you know that you're a total jerk for having some sort of disability.

It's really hard to excuse a 400-pound woman in a mini-dress from treating your husband like a moron. 

Pot.
Kettle.
Black.

 When we got in line, a young(er) dude got in line behind us. Out of 36 lanes, only a few were open, and the lines were crazy. Everyone was in a bad mood. The guy behind us was in an even worse mood because my husband's cart was blocking him from putting his groceries on the belt. There was nowhere for my husband to go, except the mini-fridge full of sodas. As soon as the person in front of us left, I told my husband to scoot in front of me so Prince Charming could put his precious margarita mix down.

Next time, I'm going to put a flag on the back of hubby's cart. The Vietnam vet with the enormous flag and the POW symbols on his cart drew no ire from other shoppers. Note: If you're a wounded vet, that's OK. If you can't walk for any other reason, you don't deserve to shop.

I got mild satisfaction from watching the looks on everyone's faces as my husband got up from his cart and gingerly made his way to the car, which I managed to park only 2 spaces away. I know it ticked some of them off. They probably thought he was just too lazy to walk around the store.

Now if only some people would muster up the energy to put on a real shirt and some pants.

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