The Badger Family & the Unthinkable

If you don't know who Madonna Badger is, or what happened at her home on Christmas morning, you must be living under a dusty rock somewhere, but to recap: her Stamford house burned down, killing her parents and her three young daughters.

Why am I blogging about this? Because I haven't been able to get it out of my mind for a solid week. This has haunted me unlike any other news story I can recall. I've read a lot about devastating fires recently. First a house in the next town over burned down a few weeks before Christmas, killing a 24-year-old woman and her parents. Her teenage sister had to jump from the second floor to safety. Over in Australia, a beloved celebrity chef named Matt Golinski lost his wife and 3 daughters on Boxing Day and suffered third-degree burns to over forty percent of his body trying to save them. 

I actually found myself getting sort of angry the other day thinking about it. I don't know who or what I was angry at, I just felt... angry. I've been through some very painful things in my life, but isn't this THE absolute nightmare of everyone, everywhere? This really dwarfs all other fears and tragedies in my mind. It's senseless. The Stamford fire, in particular, was senseless - the blaze is blamed on a bag of smoldering fireplace ashes placed at the back of the house by Badger's boyfriend.

I don't know if there's something that presents a major challenge to your faith, but logic presents a major challenge to mine and always has. A loving God who allows people to lose, literally, their entire families in one swoop. Stupid freakin' logic - it's kicking me in the butt this time! I've devoted a lot of hours to mulling this one over. I've tried to envision what these people must be going through, and how they will - I hope - eventually put one foot in front of the other and simply breathe. I have thought numerous times that I would regret not dying myself. I don't even have children of my own.

I can sit here and tell you about the peace I had when my husband almost died this summer, or the way God has been healing me from a crappy childhood, and I can give you a list of things God has done for me through rough circumstances, and there is barely a comparison. Like trying to blow bubbles into a stiff wind. Right back in your face.

It leaves me feeling naked and terrified. And all I can really do when I feel that way - here's the irony - is pray. Pray because being afraid doesn't get me anywhere, and it doesn't get the Badgers or the Golinskis or the Risslers anywhere, either. I pray because it makes no sense to me and I still hang onto that little mustard seed of faith that tells me GOD understands it, and the only thing that can help these people breath and walk and carry on is HIM.

It makes me stare directly into the face of what a relationship with Jesus is supposed to be about in the first place: making Him my everything. Everything else can disappear in an instant, but God cannot be lost. Real relationship with God means you can never lose everything.

But I'm guessing none of those people are feeling it right now, and that's the emptiness that scares me. It scares me, but it brings me to my knees.

It's a messy grace that keeps us afloat, isn't it?

Pin It

Baby Steps

I don't know how you define 'victory' when it comes to faith. I always thought victory meant getting over something - like, one day you wake up and realize you're not addicted to alcohol anymore, or you suddenly have super strong faith where you once were barely hanging on. I guess maybe I'm changing my mind about all that.

Over the past month or so, I've been dealing with a lot of depression and anxiety for different reasons. More than usual, actually. Seeing as how I have depression and bipolar disorder, it's not like I don't deal with it normally. There were extra pressures this year, though, and my usual struggle was unusually difficult, even for me.

(I know this sounds like a total fail, but hang in there.)

I've been praying and reading the Bible like crazy because of it. Instead of boxed, trite prayers (or none at all) I've been actually TALKING to God. Leaning on Him. Going to Him when I'm afraid, instead of going to one of the ten million other things I used to go to.

That's a victory, right?

And it's WORKING. That has to be a victory.

When I feel afraid (sad/exhausted/hopeless) I pray. IT WORKS.

If it wasn't so late, I'd say a lot more, but it's the middle of the night. It was just one of those things, though - I couldn't keep it to myself anymore. :-)

Pin It

The Gift of Hope for Healing

God kicked my butt in church recently.
The pastor was preaching about hope and healing, and how we should never stop praying for healing, or hoping that God will answer in full. It wasn't like I had never heard that message before. All of Christianity is based on hope, isn't it? Maybe God was sick of my stubbornness or maybe I was just more willing to hear the truth, I don't know; all I know is that God took that particular sermon and smacked me with it.

I realized that I had come to an awful place of acceptance in my life. Not the kind of acceptance that a terminally ill person finds in the last few moments of their lives, but the kind of acceptance that says, "OK, this is just my lot in life. Forever. Amen." I not only accepted that my husband was chronically ill, and that I had a mental illness and diabetes, but that it was permanent. That's just... the way it is. Get used to it. That's life.

I wasn't bitter or angry about any of those things, really. I didn't blame God or wonder whether or not I was being punished. I had just accepted it. It was as much a normal part of my life as, say, running the dishwasher every afternoon. I took my pills and injected my insulin and that was that. In fact, I used to get angry at people who said they were praying for our healing. What was up with that?!? Didn't they know I had already prayed, like, at least 10 times? And when someone professed healing from depression in Jesus' name, that really set me off, too. My response was to always fold my arms and mutter, "Then you never had REAL depression."

You could say that my God was a God of maintenance, not transformation. Yes, God works through doctors and medications, but God also works through... God. He doesn't NEED a pill. He can command the waters to be still, and they will obey. Pill or no pill! The more comfortable I was with my life, the less power I attributed to Him. God heals people through medicine, but God still heals people outright, with nothing but His own sheer will.

I had been dismissing the omnipotence, power, and mystery of God. I had also all but abandoned any real communication with Him about the issues my husband and I face daily.

I could go on about how Jesus' birth was a gift to all mankind, but that has been done before. I know a lot more about how Jesus has been a gift to me. He has given me the fresh gift of hope, and wide-eyed wonderment at all that He is capable of. Many years ago, when I was a baby Christian who didn't know how to pray, a friend of mine told me to pull out a chair and pretend Jesus was sitting in it. That works fine if you're a teenager, but it gets stuffy when you grow up. Jesus is as close as a brother, and yet I don't understand Him completely, nor do I want to. I want a Savior who has more power than I do, and more knowledge than all of us combined. Buddy Jesus is great, as long as I don't forget about Sunday School Jesus - big, mighty, awe-inspiring.

That's the Jesus who was born to a virgin, healed the sick, saved the world, rose from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and allows the Holy Spirit to dwell in the hearts of everyone who calls Him "Lord." And that's the Jesus  who changes my perspective, perfects my imperfect heart, and gives me hope that with the slightest touch of His hand, or a whisper of His voice, I can be healed.

Pill, or no pill.

Pin It

Suicide and Addiction

This winter seemed to be a particularly harsh one for a lot of people. February and early March (knock on wood) saw the suicides of three celebrities: first it was fashion designer Alexander McQueen, followed by "Growing Pains" star Andrew Koenig (RIP, "Boner"), followed by Marie Osmond's son, Michael Blosil/Bryan (if one could call him a "celebrity).

Was there something in the water? I don't mean to make a joke of suicide, but I have to ask because I just came out of a very deep depression, as did several of my friends. I know seasonal affective disorder is a very real thing, but I swear the government secretly implanted crazy electrodes in our brains to make us miserable this year or something.

In all seriousness, it was beyond hard. The thing about having depression is (especially when people are committing suicide left and right) is that you always feel the need to hide it. At least I do. There are a few people I am very honest with, but for the most part I don't let on as to how bad it really is. You just don't want to worry everyone. As a teenager, I attempted suicide (didn't get very far, fortunately) so I don't want everyone automatically assuming I'm sitting on the other end of the phone line with a gun to my head.

You hear people say a lot of different things when someone commits suicide. For as much sympathy as you hear, you also hear a lot of anger. For every "that poor man" you hear "that was so selfish." And I guess if you're not suicidal, it does look terribly selfish. You're gone and everyone else is left to suffer. You will be mourned. Questions will be asked. That's the reality. But to someone suffering from severe clinical depression, the picture doesn't look like that at all. To someone with severe depression, all is lost, nothing matters, and the world is better off without them. Severe depression, in a sense, sometimes removes a person's ability to see beyond their own pain to how the rest of the world will react. You see that person as loved and valued; however, they see themselves as colossal failures who ca do nothing right and don't deserve anything good in their lives.

I don't know the story behind Alexander McQueen's suicide, but from everything I have read, Andrew Koenig and Michael Blosil felt exactly that - worthless, hopeless, miserable. If you don't think you have a friend in the world, then in your mind there isn't anyone to leave behind in despair.

Then there's Corey Haim. When I was growing up, Corey Haim was a teen heartthrob. I was never particularly "into" him but I certainly knew who he was. He died this past week at the age of 38 - the same age as my husband. Too young. He battled drug addiction and had a number of health problems that I'm sure the drug use exacerbated. He reportedly died from heart congestion. Though the toxicology results won't be known for several weeks, however, from all accounts he was addicted to prescription drugs... Vicodin, Valium, Soma, maybe others. A few months ago, troubled actress Brittany Murphy died from pneumonia and drug intoxication. She filled a prescription for Vicodin 11 days before her death on Dec. 20, 2009 and it is believed she took 109 of the pills in those 11 days.

These are the stories that break my heart. A teenage relative my husband and I are very close to recently got out of drug rehab. She told me she tried everything but heroine, but her drugs of choice were prescriptions. Maybe celebrities can get oodles of pills from crazy, money-hungry doctors in Hollywood, but Joe Simpletons like my relative buy them on the street from other kids - God only knows where they get them. They think that because a doctor prescribes it, it must be "safe." My relative has told me stories about being "careful" not to overdue the Xanax. But nobody knows what their body's breaking point is.

I'm convinced I'm not a drug addict today because my parents made it very clear that if I did illegal drugs, I was dead meat. I would have to find other living arrangements. I was terrified of my mother - in this case, it did me some good. But even I, as a teenager, tried this and that. Ritalin was the biggie when I was in high school; I gave that a shot. We used to chug Nyquil. We sucked on the whipped cream hose at Friendly's for a high. One time, in college, when I was particularly naive and in the worst depression of my life, I unknowingly huffed CD cleaner.

We tried it for a quick high, a little fun. Isn't that why most kids light up a joint or smoke a bowl? But my relative got so hooked on alcohol and prescription drugs that she couldn't even wake up for school until she was higher than a kite and she took the stuff all day long to keep going.

These kids think it makes them hardcore. They think it makes them cool.
Meanwhile, the rest of us sit back and see sad, broken little children who can't handle reality. Oh, and you can be a broken little child at any age.

My husband and I watch "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew" pretty faithfully. OK, I'll admit it - at first we started watching it because we were amused at the idea of washed-up, B-rated celebs trying to get off crack. But with every episode, we got more and more sucked in, and for legit reasons. I started to identify with some of the patients and my husband saw his brother (a recovering drug addict) in a lot of them. We started to cheer them on. It made us realize that underneath it all, people are just people. It really doesn't matter how much money you have, how many albums you've put out, or how many movies you've made. We're just people with our own history of pain and every one of us faces a decision - "Am I going to deal with this or not?" Are we going to to face reality like the intelligent, grown-ups capable of healing that God made us, or are we going to hide like the sad little broken children, pushing away reality with a needle to the arm, a puff of smoke through a bong, or a line of powder snorted up our noses?

Since my relative has been out of rehab, I've heard a lot about "higher powers." In 12-step recovery, anything can be your higher power - God, Jesus, a toilet seat, your recovery book, your roommate, your cat... you get the idea. You pick something and say "this is stronger than I am" and then you rely on it to keep you from getting hooked back on whatever you were hooked on in the first place.

From where I sit, I look at all the broken little children - and I was one, but I never got sucked into drugs - and I want to hold them all and give them the love they missed out on and tell them... the only reliable higher power is Jesus Christ. Period. You want to kill yourself? You were bought with a price by the blood of Jesus. Your life is no longer your own. Go ahead - jump off that bridge. Your body will be in a thousand tiny bits, but what about your soul? You think you're damaged goods and the best you can do is drugs? You are created in God's image. He made you beautiful. HE CAN HEAL YOU. Not some book, not a statue of Buddha, not your Golden Retriever. Jesus can heal you. If you let Him.

It's a choice. You chose drugs. Will you choose the Savior of the world?

My favorite band is Casting Crowns and they say it better than I ever could:
"I'll take a shack on a rock over a castle in the sand."

Sad, broken little children like me... make your choice. And if you screw up, make it again.

But never, ever give up. 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

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