This can't be happening...

I was reading something today about the topic of denial.  The author likened denial to a blanket or a cloak of protection that we use in harmful or abusive situations; this covering protects us, shields us from the intensity of emotion that is too difficult to handle at the time.  As we are in a more accepting and loving atmosphere, however, we can shed this protective layer.  Yet, the writer said that denial is a tool which can be used to protect ourselves once more when we are in a similar situation - where there is the threat of harm or of abuse.  The more we are in a warm and accepting atmosphere, the less we will need our security blanket of denial and will be able to face our own pain as we are able, and finally heal.


I had never thought of it in those terms before.  But it makes sense!

The comparison of denial to a blanket or cloak of protection made me think of a long-forgotten story, one I learned in school when we did a section on Aesop's fables.  

The sun and the wind were having a dispute over which of them was stronger.  Along came a traveler on the road, and the sun said, "I see a way to determine the answer to our dispute.  Whichever of us can cause this traveler to remove his cloak is the stronger.  You start."  And the wind blew his hardest, but the more he did, the tighter the traveler pulled his cloak around him.  Finally the sun came out from behind a cloud and took his turn.  He shone in all his brilliance and warmth and the traveler was soon too hot to continue, so he willingly removed his cloak and carried it.  The moral of the story (and there is always a moral with Aesop) is that gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail.  

Source of the drawing:
http://www.nfb.ca/film/north_wind_and_sun_fable_by_aesop

This has proven true in my life, not only as a recipient of force and bluster (and occasionally of gentleness and kindness) but as a giver as well.  And many have been the times that I have pulled the cloak of denial around me to protect me from the harsh winds of someone's judgment, rudeness, or abuse - verbal or otherwise.  Of course denial has a down-side as well: it not only numbs us to the unpleasant feelings from which it protects us but also keeps us from being able to experience the pleasant ones.  Only in a warm atmosphere of total acceptance can we feel comfortable enough to let go of our protective covering and open ourselves to deep internal healing.  In my case, the affirmation I received - that although my experiences were not normal, my reaction to them was - freed me enough on the inside to begin to face some of those experiences from which I had been hiding all my life.  

I find it encouraging that I'm not expected to entirely dispense with that defense mechanism of denial, and I have made a mental note to myself that if I see someone who is in denial, my best response is not to rip their protection from them in an attempt to "make them face reality" ... but rather, to accept and love them as they are, to be a safe place for them, so that they will come to the point on their own where they don't need their cloak anymore.  

It might take more time ... but the healing that results will be deeper and longer-lasting.

Root Bound

I've been on vacation for a little over a week (almost 2 if you count the weekends). When I went home, I took my office plants with me to take care of them at home. Part of what I intended to do was something I had been putting off for months.

My peace lily kept getting larger and larger, blooming regularly. With beautiful, thick foliage that cleans the air, it is an ideal (not to mention beautiful) companion plant for working in a 'closed building' - also known as a 'sick building'.  But the tips of the leaves have been turning brown and the ones around the edge of the pot even more so.  Therefore, I need to repot.  The folks in the know recommend dividing the plant.  This involves a sharp knife!!  They say that once you have your potting soil and pots ready, you have to remove the plant from the pot, root ball and all, and slice it in half or into however many pieces as you want plants.  The rest is easy for me to do - just follow instructions - put each section in a different pot with some soil in it, water and feed, and add more soil.  But cutting the poor thing!  I've been dreading it.  

Source of the photo:
http://www.emilysplants.com/
My_store_pages/sympathypeacelily.html

But last night I got the pots out that I had purchased and began to "psych" myself up for this.  As I started to think more about this process, I began to realize how symbolic it is for me.  I've had this peace lily plant since right around the time I went into recovery - the early months of 2009.  The plant and I have both grown in that time.  

And now it is outgrowing its pot.  The root system is so well-developed that it's starting to send shoots out the bottom of the pot - and if I don't do something soon to give it the room it needs to grow, it will be (if it isn't already) root-bound.  And then it won't be healthy anymore.  The roots won't have room to grow.  

What's more, once I repot, I won't have room for all the pieces.  I'll have to give a couple of them away!

My journey has been like that.  There has been some amazing growth, a few periods of incredible blooming.  But now it's time to allow myself to branch out, so to speak.  I need room to grow.

Yet it involves some uprooting, some slicing, some entirely new situations and challenges which  I've never tried before and frankly, which frighten me even as I make the first tentative moves to step into them.  My book is getting closer to completion; I'm expanding my sphere of influence (and my comfort zone) in recovery; I'm taking more of a leadership role in various areas, including work.  

And the part people see is only the above-ground part. Leaves.  Blossoms.  Inside, though, I feel the pressure of being root-bound, of having nowhere to go except around and around.  It feels tight.  It feels restrictive somehow. 

I know that once I have that room to grow, there will be more of me to "go around."  I'll be able to give more of myself, so to speak.  But in order to do that, I must become smaller, to give up more control in some key areas.  For a control addict, that's a big thing.  But so necessary!  

Well, it's a great day to do a little plant surgery.  Now.  Where did I put that big sharp knife?

Whose applause?

I firmly believe in giving credit where it is due.  If I appreciate what someone has said or done, I try to make sure that he or she knows that I appreciate it.  The words "thank you" mean so much when they come from the heart.  Which is why I say it whenever I can.  

Individually.  Privately.  

Public praise - applause for example - is a different matter.  As a rule, I cringe at giving it and cringe even more at receiving it. Especially in church.

Don't get me wrong.  When I go to a performance (say, a play or a concert) and it's well done, I show my appreciation heartily with applause.  

But that's just it.  It's a performance.  That's what applause is for; one performs for the pleasure and approval of other people.  (Of course it helps if the performer enjoys it too.)  

When it comes to what I do for God, however, it's NOT a "performance."  It's NOT a "job."  (How I shudder inside when I hear after I've been on the worship team on a Sunday, "you did a good job up there."  If it was a job ... I would have quit long ago.)  I consider what I do for Him a ministry TO Him.

It's NOT an "act."  

If I really wanted accolades or applause from people, I'd go into show business - emphasis on "show."  

I've noticed a dangerous trend in the western church: that of applauding people, and in particular children and youth, for participating in a service.  The message it might give them is that holding an office in the church is all about people-pleasing.  

It's not.  

My first reaction when a congregation is encouraged to clap for someone who has prayed, spoken, or sung ... is disappointment, because in my opinion, the applause of people diminishes "the eternal reward" he or she might receive by making "the immediate reward" the focus of his or her attention.  

I know that God has gifted me with the ability to sing; I sing to Him and for Him.  He is my "Audience of One." That's all that matters for me.  My desire for other people - if I think about them at all when I sing - is that they focus on Him, on how great and wonderful HE is.  When the limelight is on me, it is off Him - and that I don't want.  

True, I like to be appreciated.  Some of the more meaningful moments for me in ministry have been those where an individual has come to me after a service and said how the words to something I sang gave them strength and hope, or allowed them to feel God's presence.  Those have been precious times.  

But to take credit for something He gave me in the first place - this I can't bring myself to do.  Of course, I've learned to smile and say "Thank you," when someone compliments me.  But inside, I try to let that go in one ear and out the other (that way I don't get a swelled head) - and at least pass on the adulation to God - privately - as soon as possible.

Just like anyone else, I like to be thanked and praised.  But for me, it all boils down to whose applause I value most: theirs, or His.

Command Central

A hundred and one different messages come barreling down on us from all kinds of sources.  Sometimes it is really hard to know what is right or how to behave.  Especially around other people.  Especially if our whole lives we have been taught that pleasing other people is somehow more important than being happy - or (worse yet) that it is the way to be happy.  

The messages can come with a whole pile of guilt.  A classic message I hear frequently, one that seems to be passed off as true and admirable - which is why it is so insidious - is the idea that the whole purpose of our lives is to serve.  

The moment I start suggesting that it isn't - I start getting backlash.  But I truly believe that the servant word mixed with the should word is and always shall be one thing and one thing only: religion.  People are religious about a lot of things. It's somehow comforting to folks to think that what they do has a bearing on how other people feel about them - including God.  

The problem with that kind of thinking is that it's backward.  The locus of control is wrong. It gets the focus off what's really important... what often gets overlooked.

The "give, give, give" and "do, do, do" mentality tells us what we SHOULD be doing, and relies a great deal on hammering on already over-developed feelings of inadequacy to 'guilt' us into doing things that we OUGHT to be doing for others - or for God.  It's everywhere.  We see pictures on TV of starving children in some 3rd world or war-torn nation, combined with a voice-over that says that we 'have so much and they so little' in a plea for money, sponsorship, whatever - can we not see that this is a classic guilt-trip?  

The message of "you're not doing enough" is perpetuated from the time we are very little and DO something to please a parent.  That's when the wires get crossed.  We DO some THING and we are told that we're good PEOPLE.  ("Good girl!"  "Atta boy!")  And the line between who we ARE and what we DO gets blurred.  We don't DO something that the parent thinks we "should" and it's, "Look.  Why can't you BE more like Johnny?" (emphasis mine) and we start to define who we ARE by what we DO.  

With some folks the line between being and doing gets downright obliterated.  The favorite saying becomes, "Faith without works is dead..." as folks attempt to justify this whole mentality and make it somehow spiritual.  All that does is provide a convenient cover for the "doing equals being" myth.  After a while, we become so used to living live by a set of rules and being commanded by Guilt (feeling bad for doing something wrong or for not doing enough right) and its cruel partner Shame (feeling bad for existing) that we forget that there is a difference between who we are and what we do - or that the difference is important.... and the seeds of burnout start to germinate. 

It's putting the cart before the horse.  It's insane!  We keep doing it - with the same results!

And it's also completely unnecessary!  Desperate for approval, praise, attention, applause - we keep trying to get the cart to go somewhere and we get further and further behind. 

And more and more frustrated.

I referred earlier to the locus of control being wrong.  The "do-do-do" mentality is an external locus of control.  The motivation comes from outside: comparing ourselves with other people, feelings of inadequacy, of not ever being able to do enough,  crushing guilt - from years upon years of the wrong kind of praise and/or criticism.  (Examples: "Good boy! what a great job!" or "You're such a screw-up! Can't you do anything right?" again equating what a person does with who he or she is...) It results in the belief that those of us who are "doing" enough (and how much is enough?) have the right - some even believe it's the responsibility - to confront others about their inappropriate or irresponsible behavior : in other words, to be another person's conscience, to play the role of God in his or her life.  We command and control what another person does.  Or we think that by following those self-imposed or culture-imposed rules, that we are living life right.

It backfires.  It backfires EVERY TIME.  It's the whole "push, push-back" syndrome.  Something in us rebels against being told what to do; we were created that way.  We were never intended to live our lives in fear of punishment (or of the withdrawal of approval / love / blessing). It breeds a growing resentment, well-camouflaged but still there, finding expression in locating others who aren't "doing" as much and unleashing anger and blame on those people rather than facing our own internal void.  This is living life from the outside in.  

How much more efficient and less frustrating to have an INTERNAL locus of control.  This is "command central."  God - through relationship with Him and/or through the conscience - becomes the source of identity.  The horse gets turned completely around.  

That relationship of love and acceptance becomes the locus of control, the life source.  It rejuvenates.  It restores.  It builds up.  The motivation for any action is gratitude for being loved, for being cherished.  It is not based on fear of punishment or on a wild grasping for approval.  The result is love.  Serenity.  Joy.  Peace.

I don't Juan no more

September 29, 2003 dawned just the same as any other day for us.  We hadn't listened to the news or seen a newspaper for nearly a week, so we had no idea what we'd see when we looked out our window.  That's strange, we thought as we lay in bed and saw that the alarm clock showed no display.  The power is off. There must have been a storm last night.  In fact, it was still raining hard - and man-oh-man, was it windy!

The leading edge of Hurricane Juan had whirled through our picturesque Island in the early hours of that morning, already having left devastation in his wake in Nova Scotia, to wreak havoc here.  The scene out our picture window, which only the previous day was comforting with large mature maples, a lilac tree, and an uncluttered lawn, was transformed into a wasteland.  The large maple in the centre of the yard - an old friend who had sheltered my privacy and kept me company when I went sunbathing, who had bounced my children on its strong limbs as they learned to climb, was twisted like a matchstick, two-thirds of the tree lying on its side ... heavily and helplessly.  Similar scenes awaited us as we looked out other windows.  

The rain was still coming down in what seemed like cupfuls.  The gutters were overflowing.  We headed out into the elements - I held the ladder to keep it from being blown over, and hubby went up to the eaves and dug out the leaf and dirt-filled metal gutters, which he'd only cleaned about a week or two previous. We were both drenched when we came in ten minutes later.  

We were blessed not to have had more damage considering that we had a total of eleven shade trees on our property and any one of those large branches could have come flying through that picture window.  One almost did reach it, snagged about four feet away from the living room window, about seven feet off the ground, by the crook of a branch that was in the tree closest to the house.  And as the sun came out and we surveyed the damage, grief at losing three of those trees mixed with gratitude that we hadn't lost more - much more.

Fortunately for us as well, the Tim Hortons about 3 minutes down the road from us was open and had a generator - and the road was relatively clear between here and there.  We had not yet been hooked up to the town water and sewer, so we were relying on our well and (electric) pump.  We were therefore unable to use our own bathroom.  So we became Timmy's most frequent uh, customers for three days until the power came back on.  And - in spite of the loss we felt - we considered ourselves fortunate.  Some people in nearby Nova Scotia lost parts of their homes - washed away in the storm surge - and were without power for well over two weeks.  

The Public Gardens after Juan: Sept 29, 2003
Source of this photo:
http://emblogificationcapturedevice.blogspot.com/
2010/09/juan-another-hurricane-um-no-thanks.html

Since that time, during hurricane season, I regularly visit a site I never knew existed before Juan.  It's The National Hurricane Centre - (here's the link).  

I found myself wondering at some point what useful purpose could be served by hurricanes anyway.  So I did a little research. The results made me appreciate even more than I already did, the way our world is designed.

Meteorologists tell us that during the summer months, the sun beats down on the tropical waters.  The water absorbs the considerable heat.  A hurricane is a huge heat-reducing mechanism by which the excess heat mixes with the nearby moist warm air and transfers it back up to the atmosphere by condensing enormous amounts of water vapour.  As it does, the heat is mostly released upward in the core (the eye of the storm), which lowers the air pressure very quickly, and speeds up the wind around it.  In essence, it is the earth's way of getting rid of a fever.  Unfortunately, it also has the side-effect of causing a lot of destruction if it comes in contact with people or the things with which we've surrounded ourselves.  

I don't want another hurricane to come that close to us again.  I hate the devastation that such a storm can leave behind, the lives that are lost or turned upside down because of one.  However, I understand that these things happen and that they do have a larger purpose - making the planet more liveable in general.  So when I see that one is headed in our general direction, I like to make sure we are as prepared as we can be - and trust the outcome to the Master Designer. 

Sharing one's Story

It's astounding how powerful the simple act of sharing one's own experience can be.   

Recently I was somewhere where a bunch of people were sharing their stories of how they had learned to develop a relationship with God.  There was one person who was really struggling, trying to figure it all out and getting more and more frustrated and angry that nothing was working.  This person freely admitted not having a personal relationship with God.  In the next breath the person talked about trying to dredge up the past and deal with it, yet the tone this person used was so resentful, hurt and bewildered that family members did not seem to understand and sympathize.  

I could relate.  Not long ago I had those very same reactions, flailing around in my own cesspool of long-standing resentments, grudges, and all the while wanting someone else to fix me.  Yet in trying to unearth the past without giving the whole process over to God first, all I ended up doing was digging dirt all over myself; there was nowhere else to put it because the more I tried to put it on my family members, the more I got all over myself!!  I wanted to speak up and say that without God in the picture - all that introspection and reliving old memories was for nothing. 

But as I listened, I decided to unhook, to give even this uncomfortable experience over to God. 

When the person was finished speaking, another person spoke up - and told a story of years of struggling to deal with all kinds of baggage without God and how that did NOT work, then how in desperation that willingness to consider that God might be part of the solution came to be - how there was now a growing relationship and reliance on Him, and how a transformation has slowly taken place ever since.  The story was so powerful as we listened - some drinking it in because they'd never heard it, and some marveling in the miracle because we'd seen the 'before picture' and we've watched in gratitude and wonder as the transformation has taken place.  All of us knew that God was present.  The sense of His presence was almost tangible.  It was a tremendously powerful moment.  

I remember, many years ago when I first started going to the church I go to now, how my whole family thought I was such a traitor for leaving their denomination.  One family member expressed her genuine concern that I was "seeking after experience."  She said it like it was a bad thing.  I remember being baffled by that.  "Isn't that what the Christian life is?" I asked.  "An experience with the living God?"  And I watched her struggle for words ... words that never came.  For, I realized shortly afterward, a person can dismiss advice, can argue belief, can disagree with opinion.  But experience is irrefutable.  

I've seen it happen over and over again.  Just like the blind man Jesus healed (the one who was born blind) discovered, there is no defense against experience. "I was blind.  Now I see."   

It is what it is.  And it is powerful.

Long after the effects of sermons, motivational talks and the like have worn off, someone's story will be remembered, looked to as an example of what God can do in a life.  This kind of honesty has helped rescue more people simply by them coming to the conclusion that if God did this much for that person... maybe He'll do it for me.  Another's experience can give strength and hope to those who have none; it must never be underestimated.

Much Ado

I laid flat on my back looking at the TV screen suspended from the ceiling, trying not to think about what was going to happen, trying to find a TV show that wasn't too intense or gory for me.  I settled on "Say Yes to the Dress" and watched the closed captioning while I waited for the dentist to come into the room.  


For two years I had been putting this appointment off.  My only remaining wisdom tooth had nothing below it to bite onto, it was now interfering with flossing.  It had come in twenty years ago, not impacted but facing my cheek.  Now it was getting harder and harder to clean and threatened to cause a cavity in the tooth next to it.  It was time.  

Needles and I are not really good friends.  It's been a hate-hate relationship ever since I was born and someone jabbed me with needles in both my feet while I was still in the hospital (ostensibly to take blood  -  the sadists!)  But my dentist is pretty good, very easy to talk to, and he is the absolute best at giving needles.  Still, I was apprehensive about that part of the process.  I started repeating the Serenity Prayer.  And reminding myself that I had asked for this extraction and it was too late to back out - and it was really for the best.

I had a couple of people I trusted, praying that I could get through that first five minutes with the dentist.

It went great!  He put this pink gel on my gum, applied it with a Q-tip and left the Q-tip there - which numbed the injection site before he put the needle in.  And five minutes (and two injections) later (neither of which I felt) ... the tooth root, my cheek and even as far forward as my nose ... had already started to freeze.

Ten minutes later, he came back in and put some more novocaine into the "neck" of the tooth.  I felt NOTHING.  About a minute later he reached in with this little tool and told me that I'd feel some pressure.  I did - it was weird but not painful.  Talk about slick - in less than 30 seconds the tooth was out and the assistant was already packing gauze into my cheek!  No muss, no fuss.  

"It'th gawn?" I asked through the gauze and the freezing.  "Yep!  just like that!"

I asked to see the tooth.  

It looked so tiny!!  I could see where someone had previously put in a filling ... it must have been several years ago because it was that gray amalgam material. 

Even though the whole procedure was painless - really!! - I was a little shaky as I made my way to sign the insurance forms with the receptionist.  But that shakiness soon passed, and in the car as my husband drove me home, I caught a glimpse of myself in the visor mirror.  I couldn't help myself - I laughed - and the way I looked when I laughed made me laugh even harder.  Hubby turned to me and he saw me with this lopsided grin - he couldn't help himself either.

When I got home, I decided to take a photo of myself (this is a mirror image so is pretty much what I saw in the mirror coming home!) - the freezing still in effect and gauze stuffed into my cheek.  ;D

It amazes me that I spent so much time thinking about this whole thing when it was such a simple procedure - truly it was "much ado about nothing."

It's such a small thing in the grand scheme of far more important and life-altering things.  But I am grateful. Grateful for the miracles of novocaine and of that lovely pink gel we used to call Anbesol (teething gel).  Grateful that my dentist is such a great needle-giver.  Grateful for the prayers of folks who care; my fear level was not nearly what it once was for something like this.  Grateful that God isn't too busy to care about even such a small thing as this.  And grateful that I have a caring family and loving friends.

Case Dismissed

I was just reading about a program in the state of Ohio where people who surrender to the authorities for outstanding warrants for misdemeanors were guaranteed leniency - that is, that in most cases (unless the crime involved violence) the people would not go to jail and not even have a criminal record - their case would be processed and dismissed.  It's an interesting article. You can read it HERE. 

One of the things about the story grabbed my attention.  It was that people started lining up outside the courtroom where these crimes were to be granted leniency TWO HOURS in advance.  People were lining up, in essence admitting their guilt ... to be forgiven.  

I've also been reading some blog posts about famous people in the news who for one reason or other are notorious.  Casey Anthony.  Mike Tyson.  The question these bloggers have posed is whether these folks deserve a second chance - whether their readers would give them one.  Everyone seems to think that it would be hard but yes, they would give these people a second chance.  Everyone deserves one, or so the saying goes. 

Which is fine and well, because these are people you and I probably would never meet anyway.  

But what if it's someone you know, someone you used to trust?  What if it's something that touched your life personally, deeply?  What if it was something you couldn't escape with distance, with anonymity, with religious platitudes because that person was "in your face" every day?  How would it be then?  

Source of this photo:
http://fallenpastor.wordpress.com/
2011/03/01/why-churches-arent-growing-
transparency-and-the-fallen-church/

And I'll get a little closer to home for my fellow-Christians, because we are really good at expecting less of non-believers than we expect of ourselves.  

What if ... what if it was a fellow church member? your Sunday School teacher?  a pastor?  a worship leader?  the person you see every Sunday in the next pew? What if you found out that there was a moral failure, an addiction?  What if that person stood at the front of the church on a Sunday morning and admitted it publicly, and not only admitted it, but said that they were having a difficult time giving it (whatever "it" is) up?  What would happen then?  

You see, this is the other half of grace.  This is the part where we find out if all those messages about forgiveness and love really make a difference.  I know people in the Christian community who have been brave enough to risk being ostracized just to stop playing church and be "real" - the response from the next pew has been anything from leaving the church in disgust or at least shunning the person socially ... to forgiving and embracing the one who is struggling, loving the person through the process of restoration.  

Believers are just as much in need of grace and forgiveness as those who are not.  I'm not exactly sure where we got the idea that we're supposed to be 'better' than everyone else.   

If I were a betting person, I would wager that if people who attend church could be guaranteed that their fellow church members would say, "Case Dismissed" if they were to be open and honest about their inner lives and struggles - there would probably be a whole lot more people willing to talk about them.  

In fact, they might even line up.

How you make me feel

"...people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."  - Maya Angelou  

I ran across this quote today as I was searching for something else.  The words stopped me in my tracks and made me think.  How many times I have said to someone (whether in a positive or negative tone), "You make me feel ... " and proceeded to say an emotion or use some sort of comparison to describe it.   How many times I have said or done things that I hoped would last, when all it took was a simple act of kindness to communicate how dear someone was to me.  Those times when someone has told me how I made them feel have either been overwhelmingly joyful or overwhelmingly sad, depending on how I made them feel (obviously).  That's a tremendous amount of power that one person can have over another, sometimes without even being aware of it!

And how many times someone's behavior or opinion of me has made me feel this or that way, and I've denied it, shoved it down inside of me and pretended it didn't exist.  I figured that if I ignored it, it would go away.  It never did; it just sat there and festered.  

Or I would get trapped in the emotion, not be able to confront the person, and get lulled into a false sense of my own importance (or unimportance).  

When you think about it, emotions are pretty powerful things and sometimes they can be overwhelming. But they are what they are. They are neither good nor bad. They just are.

A couple of days ago, while talking to a friend, I mentioned that emotions are temporary states designed to alert us to what's going on in our inner life.  They are meant to last for a short time and act as warnings, guide-posts.  Like traffic lights.  When we get into trouble with our emotions, it usually happens in one of two ways: either we deny they're there (and they will surface another way - usually by making us sick so we finally WILL pay attention!) or we hang onto them longer than is necessary to locate the source of the emotion and process it.  Imagine, I said, climbing up on a traffic light and hanging onto it for the rest of the day.  Emotions tell us when to stop, when to be careful and when it is safe to go ahead or change direction.  It's okay to have them; in fact, NOT having them is just as dangerous as hanging onto them for dear life.  

Part of recovery for me, though, is learning where I stop and where other people begin, where others stop and I begin.  Those boundaries are never more important than in the realm of emotions that are based on what someone else does or says.  And the time it takes to process such emotions is in direct proportion to how deeply what they said or did impacts me.  

Nobody lives in a vacuum.  It is important, though, to be aware that the possibility exists for great joy or great harm to be done by words and deeds.  "Death and life," said King Solomon, "are in the power of the tongue."  Being aware that someone's words can take on a life of their own and can actually generate a self-fulfilling prophecy ... can help me to be able to evaluate whether something that someone says is true and decide whether it applies to me.  Then I can make the choice to accept and receive it - or reject it and not give it any power over me.  Learning that other people's opinions of me were their business and not mine, that I didn't have to let them "make me feel" this way or that way if what they said wasn't true - this was a revelation, an epiphany for me.  

This is part of what living life "inside out" is all about.  It means that I am not bound any more by the things people put onto me from the outside (like grave-wrappings). It means I live from what is inside of me, outward - grounded in my relationship with God and with myself, open (and yes, vulnerable) to those around me, being honest with myself, with God and with them - and willing to admit when I make a mistake - feeling what I feel and living from that core, from the heart.  

When I do, the grave-clothes start coming loose and dropping to the ground.  And my spirit can breathe.

Slow Down

For the past month or more at work, I noticed myself having less and less endurance to see tasks through to completion; I'd do them of course, but I had to really concentrate to do them.  I was more easily frustrated, and little things bothered me more: non-work sounds, interruptions, paper jams, and so forth.  It carried over at home too.  

About half-way through that period of time, I finally figured out what was the matter.  I was tired.  Not just the "I didn't sleep well last night" kind of tired but the "approaching burn-out" kind of tired because of a multitude of things: sleep deficit, added stresses, feelings of loss and uncertainty, and adjusting to changes in the workplace and at home, just to name a few.  To borrow a term from Star Wars, my "motivator" wasn't functioning properly.

So I began a countdown to vacation.  I'm not sure exactly why, but it helped me get through those last couple of weeks, spurred me on to achieve closure. On those tasks I just couldn't complete because I was relying on someone else's timetable, I did what I could and then left behind a status list on the various files still "in progress."  So when I left the office for my vacation, it was with a mind uncluttered by all those loose ends I should have tied up.  That way, I could not only leave the workplace physically, I could leave it mentally.  

Everyone needs a break now and then, a rest from the mundane and the hundred frittering things - and the urgent things - that intrude on what's really important.  It's a reminder that while it might feel like we're in a rat race, we are not rats and it's not a race.  Someone commented on the futility of that things-oriented mentality a few years ago in a bumper sticker which said, "The one who has the most toys when he dies, wins."  

More than any other year that I can remember, vacation this year has been a time to put the hamster-wheel in my mind in "Park" and go do something else, look after me, do things I like to do, and enjoy my family.... to slow down.  I've had time to rest, rejuvenate, and reflect.  To give myself permission to recuperate.  

And after a few days of sleeping in until after 9 a.m., finally my body woke up this morning and said, "Okay - now I'm rested.  So what are we going to do today?"  I got up and went for a walk - by myself - for the first time in years. When I got back, I did a couple of chores, showered, and woke up hubby.  Then I did something else I like - I cooked breakfast, and ate it with hubby, lingering long over coffee and conversation.  Some of these things I don't get to do when I'm working.  Now that I feel more rested, my "motivator" works again and I have a whole list of things I want to get done before I go back to work.  But I know that if they don't get done today, that's okay - I'll do what I can do and then I can allow myself to rest without feeling guilty. 

It's allowed.

Never too far

I've been pondering the simple, unadorned truth this week of the depths of the grace of God.  I've been reading a couple of blog posts that make me think and rethink how great that fact is, and that there is never anyone alive today that is beyond the reach of that grace.  No matter if I think or anyone thinks that that person is beyond it.  

Grace, simply defined, is undeserved favour.  It's the free extension of the reward you can't possibly deserve (whereas mercy is not inflicting the punishment you do deserve).  

As Christians we think that we understand grace, because we've experienced it, at the moment of our conversion: from our darkness to His light, having received His beauty in exchange for our ashes.  However, the longer I'm a Christian in daily relationship with God, the more of an enigma grace really is to me.  It's unfathomable.  It exists outside of time because it comes from the One who exists outside of time, for He created it.  

It was God's grace, His superabundant grace that sent Jesus to the cross so that there would be a way for us to have intimate relationship with Him.  Christians all over the world accept this, the moment that the "before" ash-heap is transformed into the "after" flower garden.  But that same grace extends into the "after" picture.  It delves into the ashes and encourages the beauty, beauty we never thought existed, to come to the fore.  It encourages, uplifts, redeems, strengthens, and sustains us as we get to know Him more and more.  

Source of this photo is:
http://eyesonhigh.blogspot.com/2011/01/
beauty-for-ashes.html

I've experienced that grace, first-hand.  

When I think of the life of emptiness and misery from which He rescued me when I was much younger (nearly 35 years ago now), I still mist over with gratitute.  Without Him, I would have died; I am sure of it.  I was drowning in the lifestyle I had chosen, a lifestyle of seeking the next thrill of conquest, the next power trip - just to mask the wounds inside that I dared not admit existed.  Without His grace, I would have ended up in a ditch somewhere, raped, beaten to death ... but thank God - when in a moment of clarity I cried out to Him - He reached down into my hopeless state and picked me up out of it.  And not only that, but He put up with my growing pains in Him - everything from the super-religious Bible-thumping fundamentalist to the social-drinking believer with the superiority complex, to the militant write-your-MP activist, to the super-needy clinging vine who scared people away with her intensity, to the wounded and bleeding victim that nobody wanted to hear whining about how hard she had it.  Throughout those stages, I still knew God's grace sustaining me, giving me a safe place to rest.  

And in 2009, when I reached out to Him in a courage of heart that is only borne of desperation, my life a shambles once more because of ... because of a lot of things which combined to propel me to my knees in powerlessness, His gentle grace reached in and began to heal those dry, barren places I'd hidden from Him (and from myself) throughout all those phases of my development as a believer.  His grace gave me the strength to finally be honest, to admit that I was just as broken now as I had been back in 1976, and that the only thing that had changed was my method of coping.  

I've discovered through my experience(s) that you can never go too far away, or be too injured or wicked for God's grace to touch, to heal, to transform.  That His grace has a staying power that goes beyond friendship, that forgives and keeps on forgiving to the nth degree, and that sparks hope and life where there once was despair and death.  

I'm so unbelievably grateful.

Serenity - Courage - Wisdom ... part three

"God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference." 

I was reading in a daily devotional book this morning; the topic was on watching where you go - something about paying attention to your path.  But it was a verse shortly before that which caught my attention most.  It also happens to be one of my favorite ones in this healing process I call 'recovery' - which is simply another word for 'restored sanity'.  It said, "Above all, guard your heart, for out of it flow the well-springs of life." (Proverbs 4:23)   

(I think I've said before that) I used to think this meant that my heart had to be watched like a hawk, because it couldn't be trusted as far as I could throw a Mack truck.  But it doesn't mean that at all.  It means that my most important relationships are the ones I have with God and with myself (both out of which flow my relationships with others).  It means that only in right relationship with God and with myself (and it is essential to have a nurturing relationship with oneself) can those daily paths be attended to, the ones Solomon told his son to pay attention to.  

"The Creation of Man" detail (God's hand is on the right, man's
on the left) - Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel ceiling 
Source of the image above:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/rayortlund/2011/03/28/
depending-solely-on-god/

It boils right down to this.  Wisdom to know the difference between the things I can't change and the things I can ... has only come for me with a dedicated focus on my relationship with God, and a commitment to know myself as I truly am, not as others have painted me.  

It's in daily dependence on God.  I believe that this is the only "dependency relationship" that is healthy because it is the only one humans were created for.  The more time I spend with Him, the more grateful I am for His presence. The more I value His opinion and am aware of how much He loves me, the more I want to honour Him in all things. The more I depend on Him, the better I'm able to see what's true, right, and honest, and when I'm just deceiving myself.

He lets me know He is there.  Sometimes in the smallest of ways.  But when I am living in a "God-conscious" state of mind, nearly everything reminds me of His presence, His power to transform, His love.  He even reminds me to take care of myself when I need to do that (and of course, part of that self-care involves keeping my contact with Him close).  When I don't, there's a nameless feeling of uneasiness that creeps in, and sometimes it takes several hours, days, even weeks to pinpoint.  

Sometimes I even have had to be told by caring and loving friends that I am not "myself" lately.  (That's still a new experience for me, because up until a couple of years ago I didn't even know who "myself" was!!)  At such times I look first to that vertical plumb-line and see, yes, it's been shifted off centre and I need to be still and let Him come to the middle - my middle - the centre of who I am.  The less I do (in the sense of frantically trying to please Him with what I do) and the more I allow myself to be (that is, resting in His love, His grace, His power) the more 'opportunities' open up for me to share what He has done in me, and communicate that (or even a part of that) to someone who asks. 

Which reminds me.  I've discovered, in my Christian faith, that if I am not BEing, I might as well not DO anything because it will backfire. Every time. When I am living in daily and intimate relationship with God, it shows in my attitudes toward work, family, friends, leisure, ... everything.  He fills me up with an awareness of Him being with me - and in me.  Out of that automatically flows opportunities to be there, to be a friend, to be a conduit of healing and mercy to the most unexpected (and unexpecting!) of recipients - and for that I can't take one bit of credit.  Nor would I try.

God sets it up, He orchestrates the whole thing, and I'm simply left in awe of how He does it...  I'm just glad to occasionally be there when He does.

Serenity - Courage - Wisdom ... part two

"God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can and Wisdom to know the difference."  

Winston Churchill said, "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."  Much of my recovery from a lifestyle of letting other people, places and things determine my level of happiness (also called codependency) involved sitting down and listening.  I attended 12-step group meetings, I went to therapy, I read books, and I listened to people speak who had traveled the road I was just beginning.  They all had one thing in common.  They listened and learned before they were able to speak about this lifestyle with any authority.  Me?  I was so grateful to have found any modicum of happiness that as soon as I started feeling just a little bit better, I was all set to change the world.  

But that wasn't the way.  The way was to learn how to BE instead of DO.  My whole life was geared toward, steeped in, and overshadowed by doing.  Doing for others.  Doing for God (or rather, should I say, the church; there IS a difference).  Doing to hide how I was feeling, to deny that I had needs.  Doing to keep from feeling guilty.  

In learning what I couldn't change (see previous post) I started to learn what I could change.  And let me tell you - there wasn't much that I COULD change.  Yet, as time went on, I came to understand that it was about responsibility.  I was responsible for my own actions, and I was to let others bear the responsibility for theirs unless their actions directly impacted my life.  Then it became my responsibility - not to make them pay but to look to my own reactions and response to them.  (That's a whole other post for another time.)  

Photo source is :
http://successsystemsnow.com/3992/what-is-courage/

So, I did eventually come up with a (partial?) list of the things I CAN change, and I pray for the courage to change them.  


My focus

One of the things I learned when I took equitation lessons (long ago) is that your focus determines your direction.  Look to the left, your whole body leans left and the horse will pick up the cues and veer left.  So when I started recovering from the chains of the past, it was important for me to remember where I was going: I was going to be free.  I was going to find myself, to get to know myself, and then to be myself... even if it meant being seen as crazy, weird, or whatever.  Of course when I first started I had no clue who I really was. So, that led to another discovery.  


My inner mirror

This one was hard, and I did need help with it.  Writing down what I really believed about myself was wrenching but as I wrote down those things and analyzed where those beliefs came from, I came to some pretty shocking conclusions. Those conclusions were based on a distorted mirror which made me appear uglier than what I was, more of an awful person, more of a failure than I was in reality. Those were the things I could then leave in God's hands, and receive truth from Him to speak healing into my own life.  It was like looking in a true mirror for the first time in my life.  Yes, sometimes there were things in there that I didn't like - and I asked Him to remove them.  But there were also some things in there that surprised me - things I liked, and liked a LOT.  Who knew!  


In conjunction with knowing that some people were not "safe" for me, (again, see previous post) I intuitively knew which friends would embrace the new reality and which friendships - if that's what they were - could not be salvaged because those people were not willing to accept my newly discovered boundaries.  It was hard to let go of them.  But I gained so much more by letting go.  Self-respect for one. And my new and renewed relationships are more and more with equal partners - no superiority or inferiority complex to pussy-foot around.  (Theirs or mine.)

My measuring stick

All my life, I had measured myself based on what others thought about me, how much they liked or didn't like me, what people might or might not say to me or behind my back.  The numbers on my stick (like a see-through ruler) were all facing away from me as I allowed others to define what was acceptable.  The problem with the numbers facing away from me was that they were backwards and went in the wrong direction.  When I turned those numbers around, through discovering who I really was and starting to nurture that person, a lot changed for me.  I found that I could stand up and say what I needed.  I found that I could say what I felt without feeling guilty - surprisingly people didn't think less of me anyway - and the end result was that I felt more comfortable inside my own skin.  I discovered that it was okay to feel what I felt; I didn't have to stuff my emotions down inside of me and deny their existence, or mask or drown them with addictions that numbed how I was truly feeling.  

When I turned the numbers around, I was able to be honest with myself and to own up to my mistakes, to be strident and take responsibility for the (sometimes far-reaching) consequences of my previous actions.  I could see how my wrong behavior had hurt others and I was able to confess that to people and watch miracle after miracle take place as the power of truth liberated me to be who I truly was, and liberated them as they forgave.

I also started to learn (in figuring out where I stopped and others started - and vice versa) to give people the space they needed to figure things out on their own and not feel obligated to tell them what was what, what they were doing wrong and how to fix it.   


My light level

By 'light' in this context, I am referring to my attitude.  As I learned to (slowly) love myself in a healthy way, I was faced with a choice - to see each experience (pardon the cliché) as the glass being half-empty (which was my previous "light level") or half-full.  To enjoy the good, to enjoy today, to not regret the past or worry about the future.  

The word "gratitude" has taken on new meaning for me.  It's not only something that I do once a year at Thanksgiving; it's an ever-expanding way of life.  Seeing difficulties and obstacles as opportunities for growth.  Seeing trials as life-lessons in humility and (yes, I'll say it) patience.  And fully joying in experiences that make me sigh a happy little sigh and say, "Life's good,"  without sabotaging it by saying with one eyebrow raised in skepticism, "Wonder how long THAT will last..."  I've been happier and more content, more frequently since February 2009 than I had been in my whole life up until that point.  That has to say something right there.

One thing's sure.  It's never boring.

Serenity - Courage - Wisdom ... part one

I say this prayer at least once a week, sometimes several times a day.  

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.  

There's more to this prayer which is attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr - it goes on to say, "... living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it - so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next."

Wow.  Just .... wow.

The part I do repeat frequently is enough in itself to give me pause.  Even just the Serenity part - that of accepting what I cannot change, because it took me decades in my life to get to the place where I was willing to accept that there even WERE things I couldn't change.  So now, I am learning to accept: 

Source of this graphic is :
http://www.appleseeds.org/serenty2.htm

People

I cannot change people.  I cannot make them do what I want them to do.  If I try, they will do the exact opposite in the vast majority of cases - or they will do as I ask and then resent me.  Truth be told, as much as this society says that it's possible, I can't even change myself.  The only person who can is God.  When I try to change myself or change other people, I am playing God.  I am learning (slowly) to let God be who He is and to let Him do His work without trying to put my oar in.  To let go of people and let them be who they are, to let them bear the consequences of their own decisions and NOT to say "I told you so."  Ever.  To cut myself a break when I screw up and to thank Him for putting up with me.  To realize, when I hear of someone caught in a moral, marital, or financial failure, that "there, but for the Grace of God, go I."  To be there for people instead of judging them or their motives.

This has been a very big deal for me in my recovery from being a dedicated and obsessional control freak.  Accepting for me means taking my hands off - completely off - and watching what happens. The results have been nothing less than amazing as they unfold.

Places

I'm learning to say to myself that there are some places I can go and some places that are not good for me.  I am learning to accept this fact, and choose to go to the places that heal, build up, and encourage and to stay away from places (and truth be told, people) that send me messages that I am not wanted or worthy.  

Even in the mundane, I am learning to let go of what I want and accept what is - for example, recently I had to let go of what I wanted as a colour for my living room and accept the colour that it would now be - I couldn't very well go back.  Accepting it gave me the power to choose my level of happiness with the new reality instead of railing against it.  Now, with everything back in place and a new border put in to accent the room and pull the old and new colours together, I can honestly say I like it just fine, and there are things about it that I like better.  Go figure.  

Things

I'm also learning that I can't stop things from happening or make them happen a different way!  Circumstances occur, and I am learning to accept them as they are and not wish them away or prevent myself from enjoying the good things out of a sense of misplaced guilt. This applies to news stories as well as to my personal life.  Do I wish my dad was here? (He died of inoperable brain cancer in 1993.)  Yes, of course I do, especially when I am feeling sick or insecure.  I miss him and his "everything is going to be all right" attitude.  But I wouldn't wish him back - he's having far too much fun where he is and is happy, supremely happy, for the first time ever.  

As much as I would like it otherwise, there are horrible things that happen in the world every day.  Rather than get upset about them and allow them to have power over whether I am happy or not, I'm learning to let go of them and accept what is for what it is.  Tragedies happen.  People hurt people.  I can feel compassion for those who are hurt by these things because their lives are touched personally by them.  But I am not being disloyal or a bad person if I happen to not let their unhappiness make me unhappy.  I am learning the boundary between where others stop and I begin - or where I stop and others begin. This is huge for me.  

It takes God-given serenity to let go of these things, to accept people, places and things as they are without obsessing about changing them.  And I haven't fooled myself into thinking that my acceptance of them is perfect or that I've arrived.  But because of what God has done in me and for me (that which I could not do for myself) it's a lot better than it was.  

Talk about gratitude!

The skirl of the pipes

Yes.

Yes, I admit it.  I love the Scottish bagpipes.  Always have, ever since the first time I heard them.  I know that some folks call them "agony bags."  I know that so many people can't stand them.  But I love the sound of them!

And it's funny, you know.  Because to my knowledge, my ancestors weren't Scots.  They were English.  Some Irish.  Some Welsh.  

But I married someone of Scottish descent (both sides!)  And he loves the pipes too.  When we were first married, we used to go for long walks in the country where we lived - in a little community called South Pinette - which just happened to be across from an elementary school where the local pipe and drum band practiced their songs for the annual parade (held usually on the 2nd or 3rd Friday of August).  Their practices were on Thursday nights.  Quite a few times we would time our walks to coincide with their practices - they were GOOD!!  We'd walk and listen, and when the last notes had played and left only echoes in the night, we'd dream out loud to each other about all the things we would love to do someday.  

We used to go to the parade every year too.  Lots of people, lots of floats, and lots of pipe and drum bands from all over the Maritimes.  When our children were little, we took them to watch the parade and they enjoyed the clowns and the horses, the floats with the shiny displays and the ones with bands that played rock and roll.  

But it wasn't a parade for me ... until I heard the skirl of the pipes and the drum rolls that gave the rhythm and beat for the players to march to.  I looked forward to hearing all of them, but in particular I liked "The Scottish Soldier" and "Scotland the Brave."  I still do.

I don't go to street level to watch the parade any more, even though my boss allows me to go.  But my workplace is close enough to the parade route that if I go to a window, I can hear the music.  So today, when I went to the printer to get a print job, I heard the sound of the bagpipes coming through the window, and made a detour to go over to the window and listen for a few minutes.

The song I heard just so happened to be "The Scottish Soldier."  It stirred something in me : something noble, something nostalgic.  I started to mist over! 

Later, I had a great chat with a co-worker whose family celebrates Robert Burns' birthday and whose brothers compete in the Highland Games.  It was a wonderful conversation and she became quite animated as she talked about her family gatherings and how meaningful they were.  I left the encounter feeling grateful to have had the chance to have that talk. 

Sometimes I have days where nothing goes right.  And then there are days like today.  Thank God.

Old messages

The messages come at the most inopportune of times and wreak havoc with my peace of mind. 

They're messages I grew up with.  Some I heard from family members; some I decided to believe on my own, based on my own mistakes and failures.  

And now they come back to me, even when I experience triumphant moments.  The fears, the doubts, the insecurities.  

The lies.  

The old messages are like poison, debilitating me, keeping me back.

You're a social failure.  Nobody will ever like you.  Things will always go wrong for you.  What you do will never be good enough.  (They pile on, tightening my throat and making my stomach churn.)  You'll always be alone.  What are you, crazy or something?  They're only hanging out with you because they want something.  That's all you'll ever be: someone's slave.  Don't even think about dreaming of something more.   (Ad nauseum.)

I will be brutally honest here: sometimes those messages are still overwhelmingly powerful in my life.  But they started to lose their power when I realized (first of all) that they were false and (second of all) that they came from things that had been said to me and/or dumped on me when I was younger - by family members, so-called friends, and the people in elementary and high school whose mission it seemed to be to make my life a living hell, wrapping me up in graveclothes - like mummy wrappings - suffocating me.  I knew I had to break free of them.  

Even with those realizations, the old messages didn't go away automatically.  Someone I trust suggested to me that I create my own new list of messages, statements that were true and uplifting, affirmations that would build me up - to remind me that I was worth something after all: I am special.  God doesn't make junk.  I am likeable just the way I am.  I have something important to contribute. And so on.

Slowly, over time, some of those old messages started to slip away as I told my inner child the things she needed to hear, the things she never heard.  A large part of that was in spite of the feelings of disbelief and "this is stupid" that the old voices would tell me.  I recited my new affirmations anyway.  Not by rote - but speaking directly to that frightened little kid hiding away from the world.  After a while she started to relax and accept herself just a little.  From that point on, as the grave-clothes of self-doubt and self-loathing began to drop off, God and I together uncovered the roots of those messages: verbal, emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual abuse.  More messages were needed to combat those.  What happened to me wasn't my fault but someone else's choice.  I didn't need to fix people who were emotionally crippled and who tried to rely on me to meet their needs. I no longer need to fix those same people.  I am good enough.  I can feel good about what I do without needing others to say so.

Oooo.  These new messages were filled with healing words, healing thoughts.  And as they took hold, the old messages of self-destruction (with rare exceptions on occasion) gradually became less and less frequent.  

In that nurturing soil, healing - and growth - germinated.

Beating beetles

They arrive in early summer, as if drawn by the increase in humidity levels compared to the winter air.  

As a matter of fact, they do thrive in the humid weather because they don't drink water the way we do. They absorb water right out of the air. They're carpet beetles.  Tiny, 1 to 2 millimeters in length, there is one thing that they do really well.  They breed.  

We first noticed them about five years ago or so.  Little critters who seemed to love our dog's liquid (daily) medicine.  They'd crowd around the medicine syringes and suffocate themselves in the thick syrup.  Ughh.  

Thus began the perennial struggle to keep down or eliminate the beetle population.  They seemed to like our food.  They would wiggle their way into boxes of cereal, bags of dog food, and even our spices.  We had to throw out a LOT of stuff.  

One year we were fortunate enough to find their primary food source and remove it - along with hundreds of the little six-legged dots who move surprisingly quickly for the size of them.  We thought we were rid of them for good.  Alas, it was not to be.  Even one beetle left will produce hundreds more.

Most of the time you can't even see their legs or their feet.  They seem to operate on hovercraft principles.  We've seen them crawling on the ceiling, on the counters, on bedroom dressers, and dead inside glasses of water left out overnight and inside clean cups left open-side-up in the cupboards.  That's when we started turning the cups upside-down in the cupboards.

Getting rid of such small beings proves to be one of the hardest things to do as a homeowner, because (as we found out recently) you can't just spray insect repellent because they are hard-shelled and extremely resilient.  It doesn't kill them unless you spray them directly and thoroughly with it. (shudder)

After extensive research, we discovered that the way to get rid of them is to go looking for them - specifically, for their nest - and once that is found, remove it.  This means removing the container you find them breeding, living, crawling about in.  There will be larvae (which are slightly longer and look like maggots - sorry, but they do!) and adults, plus pupa casings.  Then you look for their primary food source - which may be the same as the nest (ew.)  If that's in a bag of dry dog food which is nearly full and you don't want to throw the food out (and yes, dogs can digest them) then take the whole bag, seal it up and put it in the deep-freeze for 2 days.  It will kill them, the eggs, the larvae and the pupae. The cold and the lack of accessible moisture in the air kills them.  The best idea, though, is to take them outside where the food sources are far more abundant - and most important, not in your house. And of course, replace any contaminated food with fresh, after thoroughly cleaning and sterilizing the containers with boiling water.


Eradicating the beetles completely requires that you must go looking for any secondary food sources or 'stashes' and do the same thing - prevention is important. Remove the spices from the spice drawer or rack, wipe it clean, check the spices to make sure there aren't any stowaways. Store cups and glasses upside down in the cupboards, keep flour in tupperware-style sealed containers, put away any unused food in the fridge or freezer: these things almost go without saying.  (But in a houseful of teenagers, we had to be told anyway.)  If ANY food residue is left out - before long the infestation will have taken over again.

As I was thinking about this beetle problem this morning, it dawned on me that self-destructive habits and tendencies are like the carpet beetles - insidious, if unchecked spreading everywhere, and extremely hard to eradicate, requiring a lot of soul-searching, rooting out of old stashes and associated habits and thoughts that feed them, and finally disposing of every trace of them, over and over again, until they're gone.  Trying to do that on our own is absolutely impossible because just when you think you have one thing licked, a hundred more things come in and take their place.  It's daunting!  It's ... exhausting.

Truly, as the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) says, "without help it is too much for us.... but there is one who has all power; that one is God; may you find Him now.  Half-measures availed us nothing.  We stood at the turning-point.  We asked his protection and care with complete abandon."  

It's the only way to beat the beetles.

Free Fall

I'm a "terra firma" kind of girl.  I like to feel something beneath my feet.  If I'm up in the air, there has to be a plane holding me up.  Or if in water, my feet have to be able to touch bottom and my head must be above the surface.  Anything less is terrifying.  The feeling of losing control, of falling and / or drowning - has been with me for as long as I can remember.  The predictable and safe has always been preferable to the unknown for me.  I could postulate theories as to why this is so: a bad fall when I was two (and no, I can't remember the fall, just the fear), a couple of experiences with near-drowning.  And of course the ever-present verbal abuse and added threat of physical abuse, which made me hypervigilant and edgy all the time, needing to know where I was, where everyone else was, so as to make my world safest for me.

Whatever the reason, the fact remains that I like to know where I am, to have something under my feet, to feel safe.  Picturing the origin of the words 'free fall' makes me panic.  To me those two words are an invitation to experience horribly disfiguring maiming, pain, and disablement - because that's the nature of the fear of what COULD happen.  

Emotionally as well as physically.  For many years as I was growing up, I prided myself on things and people not affecting me, of not 'losing it' emotionally.  

It was an illusion.

The truth was, I was afraid to let those feelings completely come to the surface because I wasn't sure - if I plumbed the depths of them - if I'd ever be able to stop and then I would be in 'free fall'. 

It was like my life was a pressure cooker.  Occasionally, the relief valve let off some steam, but always the contents were under that pressure to keep a lid on it. My subconscious had a field day. Don't let yourself feel this fully.  It's too painful.  Yes, cry if you must, but not too long and definitely not with the abandon you feel - someone could give you more to cry about because it's just not acceptable.  So deny it.  Push it down.  Stuff it inside, deep inside where nobody can see it.  Hide it so far away that not even you know where to find it.  


Wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The emotions we have are given to us to alert us to what's going on in our inner life.  Feeling them fully is not a sign of weakness but of maturity.  

True, while in an abusive situation, the mind creates defense mechanisms like 'numbing' to survive the experience.  And once away from it ... the mind can't shut those mechanisms off (on its own) and we end up stunted emotionally.  At least I did.  Viciously cycling between being the stoic and being the clinging vine, always feeling like an outsider, I really didn't know how to act around people.  It's hard to know what the rules are for acting around normal 'regular' people, when all you've ever known are dysfunctional 'irregular' ones.  

When I first admitted (out loud to myself and to someone else) those feelings of fear, panic, anger / rage, loneliness, abandonment, and resentment, my therapist gave me - as if a great and precious gift - those amazing words, "What you're feeling is perfectly normal for what you've been through."  What validation!  Then, it didn't seem so scary to go to those difficult places, to exteriorize the wounds that left scars on the outside of my soul and festering infection inside, infection which had no way to make it to the surface except by re-experiencing those trauma.  With God's enabling power, I could allow myself to explore the roots of my emotions, to discover why I felt the way I did, to acknowledge the pain, to fully feel those feelings, and to look at their root cause without shame or guilt for being "weak."  Only then could I start to heal - from the inside out.  

Was it hard?  OH yes.  Could I have done it on my own?  NO WAY.  Would I want to go through it again?  Most likely NOT!  Am I glad to have gone through it when I did?

Absolutely.