You are Special

I have a friend who, every time I tell her she is special, says to me, "That's why I ride on the short bus."  I used to think it was funny and I've even said it to people who have complimented me about being special.

Not so much anymore. I guess it's because it suddenly dawned on me that the comment was meant to deflect a truth someone might find hard to accept: their own worth. The belief that we are special individuals - a belief that is rare, by the way - is a powerful tool for transformation.  

Take our little friend here, called Punchinello.  This little guy is a character in a book called "You Are Special" by Max Lucado.  It's a children's book about a village full of puppets called Wemmicks.  The village is in a valley and the puppet-maker lives on top of a high and craggy hill.  All day long as the Wemmicks compliment or judge one another, they give each other stickers: either a gold star (which means approval) or a blue dot (which means disapproval).  One day Punchinello meets a Wemmick with no dots or stars on her.  He thinks she is beautiful. She tells him that the reason she is starless and dotless is that she spends time with the puppet maker in his cabin on the hill-top every day.  He doesn't understand.  "Go see him," she urges.  "You'll understand."  And he does - and he understands that his value is not in what other Wemmicks say.  It is in the fact that the puppet maker created him just the way he is, and loves him.  At the end of the story, as he walks away from the cabin, one of his blue dots falls off.

I cry every time I read the story.  It gives me hope.

When the children were small, I stumbled on a children's show that I had never seen before.  I'd heard about it but never seen it.  Being a Canadian baby-boomer and watching only 2 channels on TV (both Canadian), I spent my formative years watching Mr. Dressup, the Friendly Giant, and Chez Hélène.  And once in a while Davey and Goliath.  But this guy is an icon, and it's funny, I had heard so much about him (mostly people making fun of him) but never seen his show.  Until my oldest was two and we were flipping through the channels one day and I heard piano music and a man singing.

After that, we never missed Mister Rogers Neighborhood.  I would hear him tell his viewers that they were special; he even wrote a song about it.  He wrote a song about nearly everything!  I would listen to him and cry.  I would watch the Neighborhood of Make-Believe and I would wish that I could have benefited from this man's imagination and wisdom. And I would cry some more.

By the way, Daniel Stripe-ed Tiger was - and IS - my favorite.  I won't let people "diss" Mister Rogers.  He's one of my heroes.  This link will take you to a video of him in 1997 when he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Emmys - a class act if there ever was one! 

I guess I ought to have known back in 1991, when I was sitting bawling in front of the TV set, that there was something amiss in me, but at the time I was living in denial, not knowing that my life had been spinning out of control for many years.  Or how to get it back!

But when I was ready, the message of "You Are Special" came back to me and helped me to accept myself the way I was, to let go of the feeling that I was a burden to everyone.  Just because (from the time I was very young) I was led to believe that I was a burden, didn't make it true.  With the knowledge that God loved me that way, just the way I was, I began to parent that shy, suppressed child.  Over time, she very slowly opened up like a long-dormant flower, and grow inside.

As I learned to love myself (the real me I was so afraid to show that not even I knew who I was) it unblocked my relationships with other people and allowed me to be able to reach out to them and repair the damage I had done by acting out of my insecurities.  I was able to recognize when the people I loved needed affirming that THEY were special.  

Acceptance like that - dare I say unconditional love? - is a very potent thing.

What makes us human?

We dance all around it.  We talk about it but then try to hide it whenever possible.  The defining trait of humanity - as I have come to see it - isn't so much our intelligence, our social structure, or our accomplishments (including how much money we make or even that we have the concept of money!)  Rather, it is the capacity to both experience emotion and KNOW we are experiencing it, to have thoughts and know we are having them.  

Psychologists call this capacity "meta-cognition."  We have no problem with the thinking part.  We think and we know we're thinking, and we can even express in words, either verbal or written (another defining human trait), the ideas and thoughts that we think.

However, we have a harder time with the other part.

Emotions.  We are taught (especially in Western culture) that emotions are bad, especially negative ones, even the positive ones - if they are intense - are suspect.  For this reason many try to clamp down on their negative emotions.  I did it for years, even prided myself on nothing being able to affect me.  The problem with that, of course, is that nothing affected me.  In cutting myself off from my negative emotions, I also cut myself off from the pleasant ones.  I lost my self, and not in a good way.  I lost touch with who I was - and at the age of 48, I had no idea who Judy was or if I would even like her if I got to know her.  If there was a feeling there at all, it was of bewilderment... of sadness so profound I could not even begin to get to its roots - by myself.  

Suppressed (shall I put it another way - denied and unexpressed) anger, fear, or disappointment, mixed with a sense of being trapped, are the seeds of depression, clinical (that is, lasting more than 3 months) or not.  

Only now, now that I have been in a recovery process for over 2 years, am I starting to allow myself the luxury of having fun.  In order to get there, I had to express some pretty strong feelings (in a safe way of course and with people I had come to trust).  All that pent-up anger and feelings of betrayal, sadness, and self-pity had to come out, to be brought to the surface and ... FELT.

Yes, it was hard.  It was incredibly hard.  I am not a big fan of pain at all!!  But I had someone who was wiling to walk through the process with me and let me know that it was necessary in order to be free, to come to a place of forgiveness, dare I say acceptance ... and compassion.  Before, I could not get to forgiveness because I could not allow myself to express those feelings that - truth be told - I was forbidden to express growing up.  

Being assured that my emerging feelings were normal for what I went through was extremely liberating.  Just the validation of that carried me through many painful months of having those "normal" feelings... I put it in quotation marks because it felt anything but normal - they came out in a flood because they had been pent-up for so very long and I had only allowed overflows (like a pressure cooker letting off steam enough to keep from blowing up).  The flood was overwhelming at times. And most of the stuff I felt was negative.  A lot of negative stuff happened to me in my life.  My emotional recovery was like a storm in a lake - all the silt and mud gets stirred up and the waters look so dirty.  That's how I felt - soiled somehow - until these things started to be brought to the surface, dealt with, and forgiven.  

Gradually, though, the waters cleared ... and I could begin to see clearly.  I began to experience something I had not known for many years - if at all.  Happiness.

I would not trade that sense of everything being as it should be - for anything.

Landmarks

Recently I celebrated an anniversary; some would call it a birthday.  A few weeks ago (Feb 28) marked 2 years since I got into a healing (I like to use the word recovery) process that has literally transformed my attitudes toward God, myself, and others.  It has cleared away a lot of the wreckage of my past and has given me more self-esteem and better relationships with the people in my life.  And most of that happened within the first year... I can't begin to describe how deep an impact this has had on every facet of my life.

Very soon my hubby will celebrate a similar anniversary; his process started almost 4 weeks after mine did.

It's an amazing transformation for both of us, one we can barely fathom.  

I think landmarks, stakes in the ground, mementos, monuments - these remind us of those moments when a line was drawn in the sand, someone took a stand, someone was rescued - or whatever.  

Which is why a medallion just like this one graces a prominent spot in my home, a spot that would mean something only to me - yet... there it sits.

It is not a reward.  It is a reminder of a new lifestyle of rigorous honesty with myself, a way of life I am now living.  It encourages me to press onward, to look upward, to not become complacent, to stay true to myself, and to have compassion for those who - like me long before I got into recovery - are still only existing and yet believing that they are just fine.  

Symptoms vs Cause

For the past week or so I have been suffering from back pain, for the second time in about 6 months.  I have disc disease and sometimes a consistent lack of good posture can put me in need of treatments to correct the misalignment of my spine that results.  I've been going to a chiropractor off and on for my symptoms, for nearly 10 years.

Recently my hubby who has suffered from back pain for a very long time, (and who recommended his chiropractor to me 10 years ago) had an upsurge of pain and in a different area than normal.  So he went to his doctor, who sent him to a physiotherapist.  He had his first appointment today.

Long story short, the physiotherapist targets the source (the cause) of the pain and works at strengthening the body so that it doesn't allow that to happen again.  If he does his exercises and follows his physiotherapist's advice, he may never have to go to chiro again.

This is impressive.  Chiropractic adjustments can treat a problem after it happens and does not guarantee that you won't be back again in six months. Physiotherapy targets the ligaments and muscles that support the skeletal structure and if you continue with the exercises, it can make it possible for you never to have symptoms again.

The idea is quite simple - work with the body to heal the body.  The onus is on the sufferer to participate in his or her healing.  

I like that.  

It's not like body-building where the focus is on making big showy muscles bulge.  Rather, it is in developing core strength in muscles and ligaments that never even show on the outside.  

I'm thinking that as soon as I can get to the place in my chiro treatments where I can get around without hobbling (got a ways to go yet) I might actually see my doctor and get a referral to this physiotherapist - to see what can be done to prevent further episodes.  

Pain is the body's way to alert the brain that something is wrong and in need of repair - and one can take pills for it or have one's body manhandled (which, believe me, goes through a stage where it feels worse), or treat the source of the problem and then have no need for the pills.

It's kind of like someone who has low self-esteem taking a course in public speaking.  It might treat the symptom of fear of public speaking but it doesn't address the core problem: the low self-esteem will resurface in another area. 

It might take longer - but getting to the root of a problem is far better than just focusing on the externals.

Live and Let Live

I was with a bunch of friends just recently and we were sharing about the things in our lives that have made a difference in how we view the world and ourselves.

One of the people there shared how the saying, "Live and let live" impacted him when he first heard it.  Someone asked him what he thought it meant - he said it meant to respect other people and let them be who they were.

"True," his mentor said.  "But you skipped something."

"I did? What did I miss?"

"It says, 'Live.' THEN it says 'Let Live'.  That's important.  It means that you cannot allow other people to be who they are until you experience life on its own terms and really live, really be who you were meant to be."

That small story blew me away... because I had never considered - like him - the repercussions of that one word: Live.

Live.  Be.  Experience.  Accept.  Enjoy.  Participate.  Act.  Feel.  Laugh.  Cry.  Taste.  Sing.

Live.

This is the kind of life to which I refer in the title of my blog (and my soon-to-be released book) - "Get Unwrapped!"  Most (if not all) of you know that I got the title from the story of Lazarus who, after he was raised from the dead, was still wrapped in grave-clothes, the trappings of death, unable to move more than just hobbling or hopping toward the light of day.  Jesus told the people around him, his friends and loved ones, to "unwrap (loose) him, and let him go."  This is the process that has unfolded in my life in the last two years and is ongoing.  It is a process that I describe fully in my book.

But it also has another, more modern meaning.  "Getting unwrapped" can be thought of in terms of a gift one person gives to another.  In this sense it is the gift of our true lives, our true identities, that God gives to us when we spring into being. 

If a gift is left unopened, it can never be enjoyed by the recipient - nor can it be shared with other people if the recipient so desires.  The good of it is trapped inside the wrappings and we are left wondering what is in there, perhaps (through the warnings or threats of others) fearing to open the exterior.  In a very real sense, this kind of "living" - until experienced, cannot lead us to the place where we are comfortable enough inside our own skin to allow other people to be who they are inside of theirs.

It's a wild ride sometimes - and I won't lie - a lot of times it is incredibly difficult to stay honest with myself, to keep it real.  I have had to surround myself with people who can and do gently point out to me when I am slipping back into my old lifestyle of trying to change others into what I would like them to be.  Or judge them for their attitudes or their choices.  I'm learning to be grateful, to ask myself the hard questions and to insist on never going back to the old way of thinking, because in that way of thinking is just existing, not living.  

At times it has meant that I've lost contact with people who couldn't handle this new lifestyle - some of those have been painful, I will admit. However, I would not trade it and go back to the dichotomy of manipulating others and getting treated like a doormat, or being angry all the time and never feeling like I had the right to (as one person put it to me once) occupy space in the world.  Or have feelings.

Best of all, I've found a new depth and a vibrant life of adventure in daily and intimate fellowship with a living, loving God.  That's living!

Upside Down

Yesterday, I spent several hours in the company of two very different and distinct groups of people who have only one thing in common...they have found that a relationship with God is the only way to true happiness.  Each has an important role to play in my spiritual life.

As I talked to my best friend (my husband) about this, he directed me to a Youtube video last night called "Reverse Thinking"  -  a 2 and a half minute video that I believe is well worth watching if for no other reason than it makes a person think.  Its premise is simple. The way we look at life (as Obi Wan Kenobi said in "the Empire Strikes Back", many of the truths we cling to) really depend(s) upon our own point of view.  And a paradigm shift in our point of view really can change the way we look at life.  I thought the video was freaky.


It can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgFU5Ak88-k

Here it is below - hoping the code will work (grin) - and if it doesn't ... just click on the link above :

Heart Issues

I spoke to my brother on the phone tonight for the first time since his heart attack.

He was doing physically fine, and told me about some of the more scary (and sometimes funny) things that happened to him while he was in the hospital.  

He did have an ultrasound (his description of that test was hilarious!!), and there was some information that got mixed up in second-hand and third-hand information...which I would like to correct now.

First, he apparently does not have an arterial blockage per se.  Rather, he has a "fluttery" valve on the left side of his heart which is not getting the electrical impulse strongly enough from the brain and which responds more to his adrenalin levels than to his autonomic nervous system.  This means that when he becomes upset or stressed - well, his heart goes crazy.  And that is what happened this past Monday night.

So it still means he's a ticking time bomb.  But they gave him medications to take, of which nitro is one, in case he has another episode.  He did have one last night after he got to Mom's - it subsided somewhat when he took the tablet.  

I spoke to Mom when I first called and I asked how he was - but she informed me in a whisper that he didn't like people talking about him.  Ha - I  must have shocked her when I said, "Then don't!"  Then I explained.  "What say when we're done talking you pass the phone to him and I'll ask him how he is myself - that way you won't be talking about him and he won't be getting upset."  She agreed, and we had a great conversation - and then she passed the phone to him.  He and I must have talked for a good 20 minutes. 

He's making some positive changes in his life.  He has decided that he will not let people talk down to him and if they persist, he will stop them and tell them to leave if they refuse to stop.  This is a big step for him; before, he would take it and get livid inside at them, and they would never know that they had crossed a line.  

We talked about him not being able to wait until he was able to go back to his apartment in the city... and how the only way he could do that was to follow the doctor's directions, even if it meant that for his first walk, he walked the length of the driveway and back to the house.  

Mom has started him eating more healthily, lower salt, lower fat, no sugar.  He sees the wisdom in this of course, but she does have a way of getting on his last nerve. (grin) Let's just say he is highly motivated to be able to live on his own again - which is a good thing in his case (long story).  Suffice to say that whenever I hear the song, "Bird with Broken Wing" by Don Francisco, ("Soaring far above the clouds on wings spread strong and wide is the vision that you've buried in despair / You dash yourself against the stones and flutter terrified, when My love would heal your wounds and lift you there....") I think of him.

It did my own heart good to hear him talking about his plans to get out and be more active, to start looking after himself and taking charge of his life, to getting back to having friends visit and jam with him on the guitar - the things he loves to do with the people who care about him and take the trouble to show it.  

I'm looking forward to the next time we get a chance to visit.

Passing the test

My brother passed his stress test today.  They released him from hospital around noon, and he is staying with an uncle nearby until he can be driven back to Mom's tomorrow.  The doctors told him that he needed to lose weight and to walk every day - for his own health.

Yet, the blockage near his heart remains ... a ticking time bomb, to be set off at a stressful moment when the timing is just right.  Or wrong.

So much is unresolved.  Family members are trying to convince him to go against his kidney specialist's advice and risk his life by having the dye test done to find out where the blockage is.  This only raises his stress.  And now other family members will try to nag him into watching his diet and getting out of the house to walk - to the point of coercion.  The more they push, the more resentful and stressed out he could become, and that is a toxic cocktail.  

Perhaps it is the experience of the last 2 years that is clouding my perceptions, but trying to make someone - anyone - do anything he or she has not bought into ... is like trying to herd cats.  It's fruitless, wastes valuable energy and only upsets the cats!

I spent so long justifying trying to control people by saying, "I'm only trying to help."  It took me nearly 50 years to realize that there is nothing I can do to make anyone do anything he or she doesn't want to do.  

All that lifestyle did for me was reap me a heap of resentment  - that is, coming from other people who I tried to control through my "concern" and "speaking the truth in love."  So when I see other people doing it, I know how frustrating and insane it all is for them: after all, (the mind-set is) if people only did things my way, how much easier their lives would be!!  And I also know from experience how such an attitude can so very easily backfire because - people don't like to be told what to do.  Unless they embrace change for themselves, they'll only want to resist all offers of "help" in SPITE of the fact that they know it's best for them. 

The choice must ... MUST remain with the person whose life it is.  I can't live others' lives for them.  I can't take responsibility - or credit - for their choices.  Nobody can.

It's really so simple, but I lived in complete denial of it for decades.  I only realized how much stress there was on both sides of the control equation after I started the healing process and began to be free of all of those destructive compulsions - destructive for me AND for those I was trying to manipulate.  


Letting go is so very important. When I let go and let people be who they are and bear the consequences (good or bad) of their own actions, I feel as though I have passed a test. 

Letting go frees not only me to care and be there for people I love, but it also respects them enough to encourage them to choose for themselves. It's a win-win situation.

Too Much

So to update you on my last post, my brother was supposed to have a dye test but opted out of it because it is hard on the kidneys ...and so they'll keep him on blood-thinners and have him do a stress test on Thursday.  They gave him something last night to calm him down and help him sleep, and he had a good day - was even sitting up in his room watching informational videos when I called the nurse's station today.

When he had the heart attack, he had been having a few 'episodes' of fluttering in his chest, and the more stress he was under, the worse it got.  He was in a situation he hated, enduring the toxicity of attitude of someone on whom he would be relying on to get to a doctor's appointment - and his body couldn't take it anymore. That his artery was blocked only provided the ideal atmosphere for such an attack to happen.  It had been building for years.

There's something really revealing about having your life reduced to a bunch of numbers and squiggly lines on a screen and hearing that beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor.  

It exposes - in real time - all the stresses, all the secrets you've been keeping from your loved ones: increased heart rate, shallow breathing, high blood pressure, poor lung capacity.  Things you store up inside yourself, feelings you push down because they're not "acceptable" or "Christian" to feel - these are the things your body screams out loud when hooked up to the machines that reveal oxygen saturation, breaths per minute, electrical activity in the skin, fast or slow heart beat, and the most revealing one for stress levels: blood pressure.

The body is like a sink into which is poured all kinds of "non-body" things: emotions, experiences, circumstances, thoughts, beliefs, the list is endless.

If there's an outlet for all that, it's all good.  The body can handle all those things and leave room for more. But when yesterday's built-up stuff is clogging the drain, then it's not about today anymore.  It's about the clog - because life still happens: circumstances, other people's stuff, the economic climate, world events, family upheavals, work (or lack of it). If yesterday's stuff clogs the outlet, then there is only so much new stuff that the body can take before it spills over into one big mess.

The process of healing is first admitting that there's a clog and that we can't clean it out ourselves - NOR can we turn off the tap of stuff that keeps happening.  We admit that we need help.  We ask God to be that providential plumber who gets His hands dirty and unclogs the sink.  But it doesn't stop there.  We identify those things, one by one (in specifics) and give them to Him.  We do it in specifics, because until we do, we will never admit to ourselves that it's there.  And we'll never be fed up of our inability to do anything about it, at least not enough to want to change, to want to have God remove those things from us.  

Honesty is key to the process of healing.

And once the clog is cleared - it's important to keep it from clogging again, to express our feelings in a safe way, and live one day at a time.

Farther Along

A few minutes ago I learned that my brother had a heart attack early this morning.  He was ambulanced to hospital and stabilized. They found a blockage.  He was transferred to a better hospital with more facilities late this afternoon and is now under the capable care of cardiologists there, who may put in a stent. 

It's strange how calm I am knowing that he may die.  If this had happened three years ago I would have been a basket case - with so much left unsaid, so much anger and so much unresolved bitterness. 

Just a few weeks ago, he and I had a real heart-to-heart (no pun intended) and he shared with me how he feels about his life, his fears about his health, and his frustrations in dealing with our common history.  We got a chance to put to rest many things in that short talk.  We didn't need to belabour any points because we both come from the same place and when one of us said said, "Well, you know how ____ is..." the other knew exactly what he or she meant.

I really don't know what comes next.  All I know is that for the  moment, he is right where he needs to be and ... if God does decide that it is his time, he is in for one whallop-a-looza of a surprise because he thinks he is so very unworthy.  

I know differently, because I know his heart - he's made a lot of mistakes in his life (I know; I was there) and he has a lot of things that he holds onto which have put him in that hospital bed.  But where the cleats bite into the dirt, he's such a precious gift to all who take the time to look past the "angry man" exterior and see the passionate person he really is.  There was a time when I could not really say that at all - but God has worked a bona fide miracle in me and I am able to love and have compassion for this man today.  

He taught me to look past the exterior of a person and see the beauty inside.  

I can still see him, his eyes brimming with the the sting of the rejection of yet another preppie young girl in high school, pleading through his tears, "Sis ... promise me - whatever you do - don't turn a man down just because he's ugly."  I never forgot it. 

He taught me to play the guitar.  When at the age of 16 I broke his favorite guitar, I expected him to hit the roof.  He was upset of course, but he just went and spent his savings on another guitar for himself and gave me his broken one. "If Dad can fix it, it's yours."  

Dad did.  I still have it.  

He stuck up for me when I was hurt - even if it meant he would be hurt in the process.  And to this day, I know he treasures every moment we spent together singing, making harmony together.  Laughing like fools at some silly thing that struck us both funny.  We could make each other angrier than anyone else could.  And yet when the chips were down, we were there for each other.

Artistic, musical, temperamental, and nerdy - in a Jimmie Walker "Dy-no-mite!" kind of way.

He'd write a song and I'd be the first one he would play it for.  Then he'd teach it to me so that I could sing and play along - or be able to play it for our other brother (who passed away last June).  We'd learn all the words and riffs to the latest James Taylor or John Denver song (wow that dates us...) or he'd break into a Gordie Lightfoot tune... or, because he could see the absurdity of the simply ridiculous - just ride a comic wave and have me, and the whole family, in stitches, gasping for breath.  

He has the soul of a poet.  I used to watch him draw - rocks and their shadows still  fascinate him. Cobblestones, a bridge across a brook.  A rock face on a mountain.  His sketch book is remarkable.  My favorite of his are the scrolls - he could draw a scroll and make it look like it was a thousand years old, with faded Gothic writing on it. 

No, I don't know what will happen to him in the next few days.  I don't even know if he'll make it. But I will pray that he knows peace - and finds total acceptance and unconditional love - because that is all he ever wanted.  

Testimony with a twist

It's an age-old question.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Well, if I knew the answer to that, I might be rich thousands of times over because that's how many tragedies happen to good people - every day.  We want it all to make sense.  We want it all to mean something.  We want someone to blame.

But the truth is, whether it's beyond our control or not, these things do happen.  The innocent suffer.  Babies die - by accident and sometimes, as hard as it is to imagine - by mistakes (fatal ones) made by relatives or friends - relatives or friends with varying motivations. Hard as it is to accept, the ones who DO die may just be the lucky ones.  Many children are wounded so badly inside their spirits that even as adults, they might never recover from the perfectionism or emotionlessness of their parents.

And the agony is still just as real for the relatives and friends who are to "blame" as it is for the ones who aren't.  Pain is pain.

Tragedies happen.  Floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, car crashes.  It doesn't mean that God isn't good.  They just happen.  They happen to bad people AND to good people.  It doesn't make the pain of loss any less real - no matter who you are or what you believe.

People fail financially.  Abysmally.  They don't mean to - but it happens.  Things get out of control.  Debts rise.  People - smart people, people of faith - buy into the idea that in order to make money you have to spend money.  The turn-around will happen, the break-even will occur and then everything else will be gravy.  

But it doesn't happen - for one reason or another (does it matter whose fault it is?)  And they have a choice: mortgage their children's future, or declare bankruptcy.

It's a tough decision.  We chose bankruptcy.  

We know the embarrassment and shame of failure.  

We also know the horrible feeling of trusting we were in a safe place with our brothers and sisters in the Lord - only to be judged and ostracized by some of the very people who only a few weeks previous were singing in complete abandon beside us.  The judgment came from a place of faulty belief: the belief that Christians should never fail financially.  (Oh yeah, like we really set out to do that.  NOT!)  In fact - it's the "flip side" of the prosperity gospel, the 'name it and claim it' doctrine (also known as the 'blab it and grab it' idea).  The basic belief is that God wants His people to prosper just because they're His.  The prosperity people take it to the extreme: diamond rings, fancy cars, 7-figure bank accounts.  But the idea has trickled down to those who would deny subscribing to that belief - because I've heard it said that it's a "poor testimony" to fail financially. To me it's the same belief - just a matter of degree.  

I'm inclined to think that financial failure is not a poor testimony.  To be sure - it's not desirable.  But it's not a poor testimony - it's life.  

I think that it is something that God will use to help someone else who has to go through such a thing.  We understand the feelings of despair and of uselessness.  Only recently God set up a conversation with someone who was so incredibly crushed by this stigma associated with his own financial failure that he felt like - well, like dung. And through our experience he was able to see that life does go on. 

If we hadn't gone through that and been able to talk to this fellow, it's possible he could have even considered suicide.  That happens too - because of the condemnation doled out by those to whom money (i.e., having enough of it) is a sign of divine favour.  Poppycock! 


Oh, to be sure, financial tragedy like that hurts - believe me - in ways I can't fully describe.  And it matters not whether losing our shirt happens because of the greed of others or the inability to control the monster when it gets out of the bag.  But I think that when Jesus said that people would know us by our love for each other, perhaps He should have put a proviso in there - "...as long as they can pay their bills."  Hm? no??  Oh... 

If we have to be the means by which other people decide whether He is trustworthy - by our success at staying out of crushing debt or of nothing bad ever happening to us - then He's not much of a God is He?

If we believe that God has to rely solely on His people to uphold His reputation in the world as to whether He is good, then who do we believe is God after all - Him?  or us?

Self-care is NOT a dirty word

If it feels good, then it HAS to be sinful (bad, wrong, illicit, fill in the blank).

Really?

Says who?  Oh yes, those lovely Puritans who stood for right and purity.  They had a lot of good qualities.  But they also wrote the book on fun-sucking.

Western society is so incredibly stressful that unless we have a way to decompress, we end up hurting ourselves, and undermining our ability to help the very people we love.  In fact, we might even end up hurting our loved ones in the long run.

Lately I have been forced to look after myself.  My body protests when I don't.  I have had to make time to lie down on a heating pad with my knees up, to relax the muscles in my back enough so that I don't have to go to a chiropractor.... again.  Truth be told, I really enjoy the time I get to spend this way, but inside my head there is this never-ending stream of voices clamouring for me to look after this person or that person, to do this chore or that chore.  

So to drown all that out, I remind myself that I need to look after me.  If the guilt is still hounding me, I get out a good book and start to read - or I get my iPod out - or I just drift off to sleep.  Self-care restores my body's shenanigans to a manageable level.  

The human spirit is like that too.  I need to look after my inside - just as much as my outside.  

I see teens hooked up all day long every day to their listening devices, and while I can't really see myself going that far, there have been times when I have just needed to "tune out" and feed my spirit.

I do that in several ways.  Music is one - writing is another. Occasionally I will Skype a friend - or a relative if I'm in a good mood (grin).  And sometimes (especially in the summer - okay, ONLY in the summer and maybe the fall) it's actually going outside into the sunshine.

One of the things I have had to remind myself about, over and over again as I travel this journey of healing, is that if God rested the seventh day, then why do I feel guilty for needing to rest?  

Resting re-energizes.  It allows me to accomplish more - and resting spiritually helps me to focus on what is important rather than majoring on minors.  I have spent way too long in my life majoring on minors.

Spiritually lately, I've been running on empty. I've allowed things that people think and say to affect me far more than they normally would.  So now, I think I will take some time to do what feeds my inner self.  That way I'll have energy reserves left over to devote to the ones in my life who matter most to me - my husband, my children, and my friends.

Shoulds and Oughtas - The Fine Print

I'm having a dream.

In my mind's eye, I see a door which is slightly ajar - inviting, strewn about in front with flowers, twittering birds, and soft music.  

Above the archway is written, "Just Believe." I can't quite see inside - but the marketing on the outside is pretty impressive.  Beneath the beautiful tones of birdsong, I can faintly hear a Voice.  It is loving, passionate, pure, full of promise and encouragement.  Hope springs inside of me!

Going through the door, I expect to see a welcoming place.  A place where I am accepted for who I am.  Perhaps the author of the Voice.

But although I can see remnants of what once was a peaceful, inviting place, on the inside are iron bars and barbed wire, and I am handed a list of dos and don'ts. "Welcome to the abundant life," says an automaton who is dressed in 40's business garb.  "There is joy here ... Unless you sell yourself into slavery and subjugate your own desires, you won't ever be truly happy." I look at the list of rules.  They include such things as giving up anything that might be construed as enjoyment or fun.  They include giving up favorite pastimes in order to be at the church whenever the doors are open, sacrificing even family time to be at the beck and call of whatever missions trip or conference is going on.  The faces of my spouse and children start to fade away - I hear their protesting voices get more and more dim as I consider the path before me.

I panic.  This is not what I signed up for!!  Where is the peace? Where is the joy?  Where - oh please tell me it's somewhere - is the love?

Where did God go in all of this?

I can't hear that Voice anymore!!

I force myself to read the list of regulations and get to the bottom.  I'm already in shock - what more could there be?  

A smudge at the bottom of the page attracts my attention.  I ask for a magnifying glass.  Uncomfortable, my new host hands one to me.  I read at the bottom: "If you do not subscribe to every single belief, behavior, and attitude on this list, your motivations and your conversion will be questioned by the Fellowship at every turn.  If you dare to step outside the prescribed methods listed on the reverse, (there's more?? I think to myself) your actions will be deemed "not of God" and you will be ostracized. Embrace the blessing.  Have a nice day."

Now I am SURE I have made a mistake.  

A suffocating feeling comes over me.  The hope I felt before entering the door is being crushed, soured, demolished.

I begin to look around in desperation.  Is it ALL like this?  What happened to all the promises I was made?  How could this existence EVER be mistaken for "abundance?" Someone PLEASE wake me up from this nightmare!

I pray desperately - my heart's cry is for God to show me what this is all about and what HE wants, how HE feels about all this.

Set before me is a labyrinth of gates, dead ends, and roadblocks.  It's all so forbidding, so artificial... so I look for any other way to recapture the promise I heard in the Voice.  

And there IS something: a light - a natural light - like Sunlight - coming NOT from the labyrinth but from somewhere I can't see, off to the side. 

I decide to follow it.  All around me are voices condemning me for my choice.  I've left the safety of the maze, they say. I've gone where nobody should go.  Nobody who's ever gone that way has ever come back, they say.  "Well," I think aloud, "there's no way I want to come back to THIS."

On this new path, I can see some of the original design of this vast place.  Gnarled roots from an olive tree.  Moss, soft and cool, cushions my step.  I feel strangely invigorated. The accusing voices behind me start to fade away.  I cock my head slightly for I think I can hear the peeping of a bird - somewhere.  The noises of an ever-increasingly wild wood both frighten and intrigue me.  The light - the light is just ahead.  

I round a corner and see a tree - one that looks like it has been in this spot forever.  One one side of its bumpy and overgrown bark there is a space cleared where someone has carved a heart.  The words inside the heart seem to vibrate with life.  "Love one another."  

The chirping of birds is more clear now - all kinds of species, with songs high and low, blending together harmoniously.  Almost forgotten is the labyrinth behind me; in fact, it has faded from my sight.

The light I saw earlier is all around me; it seems to come from nowhere but yet it is miraculously here.  I am filled with awe --  with a sense that I have only begun to scratch the surface of something that can never be fathomed. 

A rustling sound - like the sound of crinkling paper - distracts me. The list of dos and don'ts is still in my hand, the only remnant of the restrained, strait-jacket world I have left behind.  I forgot to toss the paper away - and I am just about to do so when I notice the watermark on the paper.  In the artificial light from the entryway, I could not see it - but now it is as clear as day.  

It says "Ichabod - the glory has departed."

As I let go of the paper, it dissolves into mid-air and a warm glow beckons me on. I hear a Voice - a familiar Voice - the one I thought I heard when I stood outside the entrance.  Only  now can I hear Him say my name - saying it in the purest and most passionate love I have ever known.

My heart leaps.  This - this is joy.  If I am dreaming ..... don't wake me.

Motes and Beams

It's one of my favorite scenes from the Visual Bible's Gospel of Matthew (starring Bruce Marchiano as Jesus).  It's the sermon on the mount and Jesus is teaching, "Why do you gaze at the speck in your brother's eye, when (and here He leans over and picks up a long pole and puts it beside His eye ... everywhere He turns, he swings the pole back and forth as the audience chuckles) there is a plank in your own eye?  Hypocrite - first remove the plank from your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye!"  His audience immediately got the point.  

I was remembering this scene this morning as I contemplated how a Christian could confront another (if such a thing is possible) about something in his or her life WITHOUT the latter accusing the former of being judgmental.  A very ticklish situation.  One I've come to realize - in my recovery - that I can't navigate.

Nor do I need to try.  I know that it can be frustrating to see another - especially another believer - jump up  and down on his or her self-destruct button.  If anything is said it needs to be in love and with a lot of what is known as "I-messaging."  But I have learned this: the person needs to be ready to receive that kind of rebuke, or it will do as much good as running hot water into a sink to wash dishes ... with no stopper in the drain.  A lot of wasted effort for nothing, in other words.  People will do what they want because they've already convinced themselves that it's good for them, that it's not that bad - and people resist change.  ALL people in their natural state ... resist change.  An agent of change is going to automatically incur the wrath of the one he or she is trying to change.  

It took me a long time to understand that I was powerless over other people and that in trying to change or fix them, I was really taking on the role that must be played by only one person; that person is God.  Since He is faultless, only He can reach into the  heart of someone and not condemn them but restore them to wholeness.  Nothing I can say or do can effect that kind of change in someone.  Only He can.  It's His thing.

As I meditated this morning on the mote and the beam (an analogy for a defect of character in someone's life) - I'm reminded that having something - large or small - in your eye is a PAINFUL thing.  And having it removed is even MORE painful!  There has to be a lot of trust - and hopefully anesthetic - involved.  And there is one thing common to every single removal of something from the eye.

Tears.

When God removes a defect of character from me, it is never painless.  There are lots of tears involved.  But the tears are necessary to wash all the residual crud out, and to help in the  healing process.  And there's another reason the tears are necessary.  They are so that I can see clearly again.  The pain literally blinds me - and when I let Him do His work in me, I can see clearly.  If someone else suffers from that same thing, I know what it feels like, I know how important it is to have removed, and I know who to go to in order to have the job done right.  The One who taught about motes and beams.  Getting the beam out of my own life also helps me not to judge another who has a speck in his;  it motivates me to act and speak in compassion and love.  That goes a very long way toward healing both in me and in the life of someone else on whom I have that kind of compassion - the same compassion and tenderness I would hope that another would give to me - the kind that Jesus showed to me.

There's an old Gaither song that comes to me right now ... and I thought that I would share its lyrics with you because they so powerfully illustrates this process of healing.

He washed my eyes with tears that I might see
The broken heart I had was good for me;
He tore it all apart and looked inside -
He found it full of fear and foolish pride.
He swept away the things that made me blind
And then I saw the clouds were silver lined;
And now I understand 'twas best for me
He washed my eyes with tears that I might see.

He washed my eyes with tears that I might see
The glory of Himself revealed to me;
I did not know that He had wounded hands - 
I saw the blood He spilt upon the sands.
I saw the marks of shame and wept and cried;
He was my substitute!  for me He died;
And now I'm glad He came so tenderly
And washed my eyes with tears that I might see.

Guilt and Shame

They are used interchangeably.

Guilt and shame.  Shame and guilt.

But they're not the same.

Guilt is the feeling that you get when you've done something wrong and you feel bad about it - whether it's through getting discovered by another person, or by your own conscience. 

It hurts.  It's supposed to hurt.  It can be constructive; in the right circumstances, it serves a purpose.  Its purpose is to bring you to the place of making things right and changing your behavior.  Guilt is God-given, healthy, and meant to be a means to an end.  

It is never supposed to be dumped on you by another person because of their own dysfunction. That's not something another person has the right to do (that is, take the role of God or your conscience in your life.)  Neither is it ever supposed to be held onto when the wrong has been confessed and forgiveness sincerely sought.

Shame, on the other hand, thought it might feel very much like it, bears very little resemblance to guilt when you look at the root of it, the source of it. It hurts far, far worse than guilt ever could, goes deeper than any wound anybody could inflict, leaves scars that are ... permanent.

When you feel bad for who you are as a person in the centre of your soul - THAT is shame.  Shame is the evil one's counterfeit for guilt.  To be shamed is when another person makes a judgment about you at the very core of your being. A simple message planted in that very tender area at perhaps a very young age has the potential to cripple you emotionally for the rest of your life and becomes a target for the enemy to wreak further havoc in a vulnerable area.  

Shame makes you believe that you are worthless, that your opinion doesn't matter, that your life experiences are of little or no consequence. It can even go as far as to make you believe that your very existence is a mistake or a sham.  Its close relative is despair: a complete loss of even the slightest glimmer of hope.  It can keep you trapped in a cycle of abuse - or self-abuse - or letting people walk all over you - thinking that you deserve all of the bad things that keep happening to you.  

It's a lie.  It's all a lie.  

There is a way to emerge out of that dark and lonely place inside.  To believe that you have worth.  To shed the shame like a snake sheds its skin, and - come to think of it - that's a really good analogy that just happened to pop into my head!  

It starts with the simple admission that you can do nothing about your own inability to climb out of that place by yourself, then believing that God can give you that strength and asking Him.  Other steps follow - healing happens from the inside out... and before long that old skin of shame feels like it doesn't fit, that it's stretched to the max and you've grown bigger than that inside.  The growth sometimes hurts - mostly because of the stretching of the old person that once was, the one that doesn't want to give in to the new person that's emerging.  

Before long that old skin just peels off as you keep going forward and living life, really living it!  It's a new sensation, the silencing of those condemning voices in your head - they might disappear slowly, like turning down the volume bit by bit. And one day you don't hear them anymore.

I can't say that I have gotten to that point yet.  But I am getting there.  Slowly.

Flocking crowds

I must be wired weird.

With rare exceptions, I absolutely abhor shopping.  For anything.  Clothes, food, bedding, whatever.  The more people there are crammed into a store, the less I like it.  My skin starts to feel all crawly, I get more and more irritable, and I get into the "if I have to endure one more pushy, or rude (or um, unknowledgable) sales person (or fellow-customer) today, I just might put all my stuff back on the shelf and walk out" mode. The clouds of fragrances from people's colognes, hair sprays, and even deodorant soaps and fabric softeners give me a nasty headache and make my eyes puff up and sting like crazy.  Add to that the fact that a good 80% of the clothing in the store is too small for me - and the stuff that is left looks like it's made to cover a bar-b-q rather than a human being - and it just intensifies my distaste for the whole thing (Why DO they make clothing items with broad horizontal stripes for those who are size 16 and over?) 

I guess I'm not your typical (stereotypical) woman either.  I hate "girl power" stuff, women-only events, and all that "sister bonding" makes me sick.  Oh, don't get me wrong.  I can be with a group of women who get together because they are friends - and be perfectly fine as long as it's friendship upon which the gathering is centered.  

But as soon as the feminist monster rears its head (favorite past-time of which appears to be male-bashing) I am outta there - in spirit if not in body. I find it all so shallow. Like I said: I must be wired weird.  

I think it's because I grew up being dragged to women's events (quilting bees, potlucks, women's missionary society functions, and so forth) and enduring the cheek-pinchers and listening to old biddies natter on incessantly about how very hard it was living with their men, who were all such slobs. (An aside: mine isn't.  I'm the slob.)  Or listening to them list their aches and pains.  Or worse, discuss what curtains went with what couch, or how to get this or that stain out of a tablecloth.  (I so much preferred being with my father and his friends.)

I got so very tired of meaningless small talk that I purposely closed my eyes and forced myself not to understand the pedantic and poisoned words I was hearing, but instead listen to the tone - and it sounded very familiar.  Where had I heard that tone before?  and then it dawned on me.

It was in the chicken coop. 

My uncle kept chickens when I was a child. I'd been specifically told to stay out of what my aunt Muriel called "the hen-'ouse" ... because for some odd reason that was taboo.  It's like they thought if the chickens were frightened by my being there, then they wouldn't lay eggs or something. After a while - because I was quiet - the birds forgot that I was there. 

Although the stench was overpowering, I was slightly amused by the conversations that seemed to be going on in there. There was a low-pitched awwwwk, awwwwwwk, awwwwk, droning on and on until the rooster woke up and walked around, strutting his stuff, and then the cackling would start.  I could even get them going; I learned to mimic the rooster's crow so well that they thought he was nearby and they'd get all flustered hoping he'd pay attention to them.  Or frightened that he might have overheard their gossip. I was grateful that I couldn't understand chicken or I might have heard some rooster-bashing going on.  

So I'm afraid I call women's events and gatherings "hen parties" - - and if that offends some people, so be it.  But you won't catch me going to one, no matter HOW it's marketed.  

And since the majority of people who shop are women (most men wisely stay away from the whole affair) - well, I might have to do it, but I don't expect to enjoy it.

It doesn't make me popular.  But it makes me, me.

Hope Springs

Winter is long in the Maritimes.  It's large and in charge.

For now.

Snowmobilers are loving it.  Skiers too.  Winter enthusiasts (to me that's an oxymoron but we shan't go there today) have absolutely been thrilled with all this white stuff.

I've seen snowbanks twelve feet high, have been trapped behind a snow plow as it punched its way, backing up and taking its umpteenth run, through a huge drift on a country road in the Maritimes.

Contrast that with the scene we'll most likely see in as little as two months or so.  Culverts filled with run-off water, lawns bursting with greenery but too wet to mow, and best of all, the spring flowers!

First the crocus, the lily of the valley, and other assorted "early spring" flowers peek out from behind the snowbanks.  Then, the tulips, cautious souls which have been poking tentatively above the ground while the others were blooming (and being flattened by the last ice storm of April), send forth their stems and start to bud.  By May 1 they are showing their colours: rainbow colours, pastels, and deep reds and fuchsias.

The mess and the muck are part of the parcel.  

We welcome spring - and by spring I mean spring-time green and colour, not necessarily the date on the calendar - because it means an end to such a cold and forbidding winter.  By the time the tulips drop their petals, the sound of the first lawnmowers will be heard.

In the meantime, we wait.  All of nature waits.  The trees catch the scent first... and the tips of their branches bulge with pregnant anticipation.  Before the last winter storm has happened, they have already prepared themselves inside - the sap is flowing, unseen to most of us (unless you happen to be in the habit of collecting the sap for maple syrup!)

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the miracle happens.  The temperature starts to rise. Oh, it acts like a yo-yo at first; winter is reluctant to release its icy grasp. 

But it happens.  The pessimism that we've fallen into, wondering if we'll ever be rid of the ice and snow - the irritability of cramped streets where snow removal crew have run out of places to put it all - starts to erode.

A flicker of hope.

And then we start to notice those other things.  Goose-song from alphabet letters in the sky.  Icicles with drips coming off the tips.  Snow turns to water when it hits our doorsteps.  The snow banks closest to the houses start to recede from the foundation.  And one day we head outside on our way to work and the unmistakable smell of spring - the smell of things decayed from last fall, mixed with muck and mire, nourishing the earth - greets us.

And hope springs. 

Blind Spots

With the snowbanks so high, the danger of getting into an accident at a corner is extremely real.  They're so high that my hubby waits until there's a quarter mile of space in the traffic coming from the left, pulls half-way into that lane, and gets me to peek around the snowbank to the right so we can turn left into the stream of traffic in the morning.

The blind spots are plenteous enough on the car without that sort of thing! 

Which brings me to blind spots in general.

I guess it's standard on every car because of safety requirements, but honestly - if it reduces visibility, then the very thing that has been designed to save lives might be responsible for loss of life!! 

Not only are there the usual blind spots (pictured in the diagram) but there are other ones created to the side because the windows in the late model cars don't extend down as far as older models once did, and at ten and two, because the sturdy posts that hold the windows in place are twice as wide as they used to be ... when you look at them from the INside. With all our rampant technology you'd think that they'd invent a car with the posts see-through, or made of two-way mirror or something - so you could see out without the world seeing in. Just saying!  

And the mirrors - rear view and side view - add to the width of the new blind spots created by the new "safety" features.  I can't count the number of times we didn't see someone walking on the road, someone coming up beside us, or someone pulling out into traffic ahead of us - because the posts were in the way.

It's even more important now to do that shoulder check before changing lanes.  

Yet even with the best intentions, it's so easy to miss something: on the road ... or elsewhere. Even in life.  So easy to slip back into old habits, old ruts.  Blind spots can creep in without us even becoming aware that they exist.

I had a friend call me on a blind spot of mine today - one in my attitudes of late regarding certain things and people.  It really made me think.  Whoa - I took my foot off the gas and had to take stock really abruptly.  Where did THAT come from?  When I started to analyze it, I realized that I'd allowed other people's stuff to intrude on my own perception of "the way things are."  Plus I had not set proper boundaries to keep people from trying to influence my opinions. My natural desire to have people "like me" had given them license to dump their prejudices all over me, tell me things about certain people that led me to judge and go on the defensive - even though I didn't want to know those things.  I had told myself that once a person knows something, he or she can't "un-know" it, much as that might be preferable!! 

Much as I tried to wriggle out of it and make excuses for myself, I have to admit, it was a blind spot ... for sure.  I had allowed a hidden resentment to evade me, and it manifested in some very un-christian (and very typically religious) behavior.  I tried to back up and avoid the real issue but there it was - staring me in the face through the loving concern and the gentle, kind rebuke of my friend.  I'm so glad that I saw the love there - and was able to thank her for calling me on it.  Two years ago, I would have gotten angry with her.  

I've come a long way, but there is still far to go. 

So now it's time for me to take personal inventory (shoulder check) and leave that whole issue - not as a blanket thing but in specifics - in God's hands (yeah, that kinda looks like "Hey God, I screwed up, in this and this and this and this specific thing/s.  I really don't want to do that anymore- help!"), then do my part to put things right in my own spirit.  

Part of that is going to be (sighhhh) setting another boundary - this time for ME - and asking God to not let me cross it! 

Turning the Page

I remember when I was a kid my mother would never let me turn the calendar page before the first of the month.

Not even the night before. She was kind of obsessed about it.

Her fear stemmed from superstition that someone might die if the page were turned because "fate" would decide that tomorrow was taken for granted.

I just loved the idea of a new start - a fresh month with uncharted territory in it.

So now, I turn the page ... the night before, just before bedtime.  And nothing bad happens - and in the morning I can glance up during my busy morning routine and know just what day it is, what I have planned that week, and there's the little thrill of the brand new page.  Funny how that happens.

And the month I really love to put behind me is February.  For me it is the longest month of the year even though on the calendar it is the shortest.  Yet it happens in my least favorite time of year - the dead of winter.

I saw something a few days ago that gave me some hope that things would change, that spring was on its way.  

Icicles.

All winter long the snow has been piled high on everything and just the other day, I noticed that icicles had formed on the eave of our roof.  It meant that some of the snow had melted under all that white, and dripped to the edge of the roof.  As it hit the cold air it froze and formed ... bit by little bit ... icicles all along the edge of the roof. 

Then, just this past Sunday morning, I happened to spy a maple tree in our evergreen hedge, with the tiniest swelling on the tip of each little branch.  It's starting to bud. 


My heart leaped inside!

Only another month before I get to hear the mourning doves, see the geese fly back, and look for the first pussy-willows to emerge in the little garden spot outside where I work. 

It will be a while before I see my favorite spring flower - but who knows? maybe during that time I will also see that first crocus on someone's property ... not ours of course because we are up on a hill and pretty much out in the open - so the winter winds howl longer and harder here than they do in the more sheltered areas of the city.  But our turn will come.  

Spring always comes.

Turning pages, on the calendar, in the seasons, or in life - brings hope - hope that things will be better if they've been rotten, hope that things will be marvelous if they've been good.  

I guess I celebrated an anniversary of sorts yesterday.  Two years ago, I started on the journey that has begun to rid me of all the things that have bound me for so many years, bound me in slavery to the great god "Should" and its evil side-kick "shouldn't."  Such wounds from the past that I can't begin to describe how they scarred, marred me.  God enters into those dead places and brings hope where there was despair, sunshine and birdsong where it was only bleakness and silence.  

Which I guess is another reason why I turned the calendar page yesterday.   
Happy March!