Blah, blah, blahh?

So far it has been a very late, very wet summer. And there is even more rain  ... and showers ... and drizzle ... in the forecast. It's soo hard to get motivated with this kind of weather. Everything feels so BLAH.

So-o, it looks like I need to hold a private gratitude meeting with myself. Maybe by doing that, I can light a candle and dispel the darkness.

Okay-y, hmm. 

I'm grateful that my daughter was able to get the huge drywall compound stain off the brand new floor in the family room last night (where it had dropped from someone "mudding" the new ceiling); I'd been stressing out about whether the stain would ever come out. [Whew!!] I'm thankful that I have my husband and daughter to talk to and that we have good relationships and can talk about pretty much anything. 

I'm relieved that my daughter finally has an appointment to go see the orthopedic doctor in Halifax next month, and that she is continuing to learn to drive a car. Her progress in other areas is slow but positive and steady. I'm thankful for that too. Her totally accepting attitude about her lot in life just amazes me.

I'm pleased about my courses at my online grad school and that I will have the same classmates going into my upcoming fall course as I now have in the orientation. (From the winter semester onward, I won't have the same people in my classes, but that's then and this is now). The course for this fall will explore all different kinds and styles of therapy and the different underlying theories behind each - so it's kind of like a review for me ... but I'm sure I'll learn a lot too (it covers areas my previous program didn't have the time to cover) and continue to develop relationships I've started.  I've been assigned a faculty advisor that will be the same one throughout the program, so that's neat. Plus, I don't have to pay extra for my textbooks - a real bonus!

I am glad to have a pretty rewarding job ... and that my job is far less stressful now than it was six months ago due to some positive changes near the top. 

Photo "Candle" courtesy of phanlop88 at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

I'm grateful that hubby had a chance to make a few extra dollars in the last few months (thus being able to replace the ceilings in the basement with drywall and the lighting with something a bit brighter for the most part). It's not completely done, but the majority of it is, so our lives can resume their normal rhythms. I'm also grateful that hubby can now return to his normal schedule at home the rest of this year - it gives him more time with our daughter and allows him to be able to take her to her various (multiple) medical appointments. I am happy that my back (sacro-iliac) is doing well enough that I'm no longer using a cane, even though I need to be careful not to aggravate it by standing or sitting or walking for too long (hence my staying home today from church because those pews kill my back and standing up for any length of time is even worse). Nevertheless, it's doing better today (and I want to keep it that way) so for the moment, I'm okay. Okay is good. It's honest. An honest "okay" is better than a faked "great" any day.

I'm even grateful to be able to be there for a friend who just lost her 41-year-old daughter after a long fight against a congenital heart condition which left her susceptible to strokes. It's a rough road ahead for my friend, but I know she will make it - and I feel privileged to be there to help in any way I can. Mostly it's just by being there, and letting her know that her feelings are valid and normal for what she's going through. 

And although I am currently going through what I'd call an existential crisis at the moment (pertaining to the whole idea of fear-based obligation and ritual vs love-based freedom and service), I am grateful that I have a strong faith to ground me while I'm finding my way through what can be a mine-field of second-hand emotions that some people could attempt to put onto me. I have talked about my faith on this blog before, so most of you know that I'm a Christian, but most of my discussions on this topic are reserved for a different audience (different blog), so I won't repeat them here. Enough to know that there are some pretty fundamental changes going on within me, and even if the end result is a different way of living and spending time, it won't be because of a loss of faith. Rather, it will be as a result of returning to a more simple, less complicated (less guilt-based, less fear-based) faith. I see that as a positive thing, and I'm thankful for that.

There, that's much better. The rainy day has not succeeded in keeping me in a downward spiral. In fact, I can even feel the warmth of that candle now.

Rain Dance

The summer of 1978 in southeastern Maine was hot, sultry, and insolent.

At first we loved it. It was sunny every day, there was hardly a cloud in the sky, and the temperatures were hot, and got hotter as July wore on. 

I was working at a summer camp as a general staff member for ten bucks a week plus room and board. The work was steady, sometimes back-breaking, but since I was working with the horses, I had about three hours a day when I was in my element. The rest was tough slogging: sweat and biting critters (mosquitoes and blackflies) with no end to the joe-jobs: kitchen duty, food prep, and cleaning public toilets after every day of use by 8-year-old boys who had no parents around to monitor their TP usage (shudder!)

And the weather! The camp bordered a large lake, and we caught ourselves gazing longingly at the boats filled with sports fishermen from the fishing camp up the road, imagining how cool it would feel to be out on the water. The grass started to go yellow; the dirt got harder and harder. A creek ran through the center of the camp, and as the weeks wore on, we kicked up dust clods when we walked across the compound, and the creek dwindled from three feet deep down to ... barely a trickle. 

A similar moth invasion happened in British Columbia
in the summer of 2011

The first week of August was when the moth swarms hit. The streetlight just outside the dorms was eclipsed by thousands of moths in a mad frenzy to get to the light source - night after night for nearly a week - it was eerie. And just as quickly, they were gone. 

Yet still, no rain. We wondered when (or if) the skies would break. The heat was oppressive. Tempers flared. We tried to focus on our duties, and we tried not to complain, but we knew that every one of us was praying for a thunderstorm. In private conversations, we questioned how long this dry spell could last. The air was oppressively heavy. Everything was an effort. 

One afternoon around August 13, the guys and I (there were three of us who worked with the horses) decided to take the horses out for a ride in the woods and beyond the usual trail ride boundaries, to give them (and us) a break.

We'd gotten to the other end of the trail and into a farmer's field, about a half-mile away from the camp paddock, when we heard it. A low, distant rumble. "Is that...?" one of us asked. Then we heard another - this time much closer. We looked up. The sky had gotten dark with clouds. It had been sunny when we left. 

The field lit up with a blast of heat-lightning, followed closely by thunder. It was getting closer. We looked at each other, gulped, and wordlessly turned back toward the camp. 

The rain started just before we turned into the back part of the trail. It wasn't any kind of rain we'd ever seen though. The drops were about a half-inch in diameter, and they were pelting down ... straight down ... splashing off the hard-packed earth. Our clothes were soaked completely through in seconds. Lightning lit the trail path, coated now with soggy pine needles, criss-crossed with tree roots - the thunder was nearly constant. In the five minutes or so that it took to get back through the labyrinth - the trees lining both sides of the trail and and arching over our heads. Yet our canopy provided no protection from the pelting rain. 

Finally we reached the paddock and one of us hopped off his mount and opened the gate. Hurriedly we took our gear off the animals and led them back to the lean-to, where there was some shelter from the rain. We put some hay in the hay-rack and hung up the gear, and trudged back to the camp, another quarter mile - this time on foot. 

My comrades ran ahead of me... I figured I was already as wet as I could get, so I walked. As I did, I was aware of the rain pelting down on my head, running past my eyebrows and off my eyelashes; what didn't run off the eyelashes rolled down my face freely and ran off my chin in a little rivulet. 

It was raining.  It was RAINING!

I rounded the corner and saw the girls' dormitories: two large buildings. My room was in the left building, but my best girlfriend, whom I had met only a couple of months previously, stayed in the right-hand dorm. I turned right, went to her door, and knocked. She answered the door and I squinted at her astonished face. 

"It's raining!" I yelled above the thunder.

Her face brightened. "Yes! Yes it is!  Wait a sec!" She went to her bunk, slipped on her shoes, and came outside, where her hair immediately began to get as soaked as mine. She grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the dirt between the two buildings. There, we spread our arms wide, turned our faces toward the sky, and twirled, laughed and spun like little kids, splashing in the puddles and shrieking in delight. The creek was nearly flooding its banks, lapping up against the bridge in brown wavelets of mirth. Once she was as drenched as I was, and we had laughed so hard our sides ached and we were spent, we each headed back to our respective dorm rooms and began the process of cleaning up.

That girlfriend and I still stay in touch; our friendship has seen us through some pretty tough (and great) times. I think about that "rain dance" often. I think of it when I get too caught up in the past, or the future, and forget to enjoy the moment. It helps. 

It reminds me that even the things I think are bad ... can sometimes end up very good.

Caught unawares

It was 2:40 p.m.  I'd spent the day doing housework, listening to music, watching TV... nothing spectacular.  It was a day like every other day before it and like many days after it would be as well.  

I heard the roar of the school bus going up the road.  "Won't be long now," I murmured to myself, a slow smile on my lips.  

Five minutes later, the storm door slammed.  I heard a thump as her kitbag hit the floor, a couple of flubbling sounds as the winter boots came off and rolled a bit - and, wait for it - everything drowned out in a sound that was so common now that I didn't jump anymore.

"YYYYIPPEEEEEEEEE!" she whooped at the top of her lungs.  

I smiled.  She'd held herself in all day at school and it just HAD to come out.  

She's what a lot of parents might call a "difficult" child. I'd say rather that in comparison to other children, she's always been "more." More perceptive, more intuitive, more intense, more sensitive, more adventurous. I can't say that nurturing her hasn't been a challenge when she and I are so different in personality, but I CAN say that she has brought a never-ending source of variety and spice to my life.  Her positive attitude, her faith, her humour have brightened my days and inspired me, even given me strength to face some of the hardest times in our lives. There have been times that I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't been there to say that everything was going to be okay.  

And it was.

I don't know quite how or when it happened.  I think it might have been while I was dealing with finding myself after decades of being wrapped up in other people (and not in a good way), but she just ... grew up.  All of a sudden I looked around and I was ten years older - and - so was she.  It caught me unawares.

Got this photo at THIS SITE

And now she's talking about leaving.  Not just to get her own apartment in the city, but to go half a continent away into another country.  Never mind the travel cost, the price of health care, or the rules and regulations surrounding visitors to that country and how long they can stay, or whether they can work there (I've heard the job market is fiercely competitive!) 

No, never mind all that. I will miss her presence... that indomitable, relentless, boundless optimism.  And the funny things she says and does - she's had me laughing so many times - so hard the tears stream down my face and my stomach muscles ache.  I will miss knowing about her day, her friends, her hopes and fears. I will miss watching her care for her friends, witnessing her tenacity and her loyalty first-hand.  In my mommy-heart, I still hear her coming home, shouting at the top of her lungs from the sheer joy of living, of being home.  And I wonder where that little girl went, and at what point she said goodbye.  Part of me - the part that wasted so many years - wonders what I could have done or said differently.

I hope she knows that she is loved, so very much!  I trust that she knows that her father and I believe in her, want the best for her, and will always stand our ground if we need to defend her.  I hope she understands that she can always come to us - that our door is open.  I hope that she will always WANT to come to us.  

To come home.

Change by millimeters

Today I had another reminder of how gradual and almost imperceptible growth is. 

I'd been fretting about an upcoming event for weeks, because I knew it would place me in a situation which - all my life - I would avoid like the plague because it MIGHT be construed by someone (anyone, it doesn't matter who!) as confrontational.  And I hate confrontation.  There was a lot of preparation that went into it, and I got some really cool strategies for coping with the stress of the situation from someone who was way more seasoned a presenter than I am.

Well, today was the day.  And the event happened.  And not only did I not sit there like a bump on a log afraid to say anything, I spoke up.  And I held my own. And I wasn't afraid. Yes, I stumbled over some of my words, but you know what? the world didn't cave in on me when I struggled to express myself.  

And - truth be told - the whole thing went pretty well.  

Surprise!  (Well, nobody there was more surprised than I was at how much I said and how calm I was!)  I thought afterward (about myself and my performance today), "Who was that person? and how can I get to know her?" 

But I reminded myself that I entered this new realm, took this new endeavor upon myself in order to "stretch" me. Indeed, I discovered how much I had already been "stretched" by growing in my own recovery and getting comfortable inside my own skin the last few years - without even knowing it!!  

It's been in increments - in millimeters - and at times it's felt so slow, almost glacial.  But it's been happening nonetheless.  And it's days like today that show me just how far I've come in what (in hindsight) has been such a short time compared to the "before" picture of uncertainty, insecurity, fear, and anxiety - which took decades to create.  The change boggles my mind.

Calm.  Confidence.  Compassion.  Courage.  

The inner climate is warming. The glacier is moving.

The Hardest One to Forgive

I thought I was finished my list of people I had to forgive, people who hurt me.

In His usual gentle but persistent way, God brought me back to the list. "You forgot someone."

Forgot - who? I wondered.

"YOU."

Uh-ohhhhh. This was going to be a rough one. One of my favorite exercises was self-punishment. Even in front of people I would make disparaging comments about myself, my size, my looks, my habits. I didn't know how to take a compliment. "Oh this old thing? I paid $2.95 for it at Repeats." Or worse yet, I'd spiritualize my self-deprecation when someone complimented my singing voice - I'd totally take the wind out of their sails and slap their compliment in the face by saying, "Well, praise the Lord." (I've since learned to smile brightly and say "Thank you!" and mean it.)

I had taken to putting myself last. Always. Go to the department store, get something for everyone else but nothing for me. I didn't deserve anything. It wasn't like I didn't have the money either. It was that I just wanted to get in the store and out of it before someone noticed me. Time after time I would duck into an aisle to get out of someone's way, feeling like they were breathing down my neck, or wanting to get past me but couldn't because I was so fat. I remember going once to this one store, finding only something that I liked and wanted, but nothing on anyone else's wish list. So instead of making someone else stand behind me at the checkout just for my stuff, I put the thing back where I got it and walked out of the store.

I thought I was this horrible person because I acted the way I did toward people who mattered to me. Had to be right ALL the time. Had to win EVERY argument. Had to show off how much I knew. Had to make sure that my story of suffering was worse than anyone else's. If they had a cut on their knee I would show them the scar I had on mine from the 13 stitches I had when I was two years old...that kind of thing. Had to judge everyone's words, actions, beliefs, thoughts. My temper tantrums - well, the kids just avoided getting me angry because nobody wanted to be around that. My freak-fests: snooping around the house looking for secret stash, crawling around the bushes and under the deck outside, rummaging through all the cubby holes in the trunk of the car, under the seat.

Everything I did was fear-based. Even the fits of temper. Fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of anger. Fear of being wrong. Fear of being seen as stupid.

But as I looked at the things I did to hurt myself before getting into recovery, and then after I got into recovery, to sabotage it, I realized that I had never forgiven myself for having to go through what I did, for having to do what I felt I had to do to survive my childhood (I say survive, not go through; I was never allowed to be a child). I blamed myself for my own abuse. Huh. The sense of shame was hidden by several layers of "That didn't hurt" and "I'm warning you - don't corner me" - but it ran deep. It was very closely tied to that frightened, lonely little girl I talked about in "Beautiful" - the one who didn't at all believe she was worth anything.

My counselor explained to me that guilt and shame are two different things and that the first can be good while the second never is.

Guilt is feeling bad for what we've DONE. Shame is feeling bad for who we ARE.

It took a few weeks of constant digging and bringing to the surface all the ways I was hurting myself. I kept trying to wriggle away from it. Sometimes these self-defeating behaviors and attitudes resurface - they are that deeply ingrained. However, they are better than they were. I'm constantly learning of new ways to let go of the lies I was told, the lies I told myself after having been told them so long I believed them.

And I keep telling that little girl that she is something really very special, that she has a great purpose in life and she is only beginning to tap her potential. It's slow, but she's starting to believe me. One day at a time, she is starting to stop hiding in the closet.

At least now, if I see something I like in a store, and I want to get it, and I have the cash, I can allow myself that luxury.

It's a start.

Special days - special people

We had a birthday in the house today. Somebody turned 21. She was the star of the day. Everything revolved around her!! And we loved doing that for her!!

Birthdays are special times when we can lavish attention on the people we love and nobody criticizes us for spoiling them. We get outside ourselves, outside our little lives, pursuits, and schedules, and let something be about someone else for a change.

I wonder though. Why do we have to wait until someone's birthday or anniversary to tell someone how much they mean to us? How many of us have wished - after someone we love has moved away (in this world or out of it) - that we had told or showed that person how much he or she meant to us? How many hours, weeks, years have we wasted being so busy making a living that we forgot to make a life with the people we love? How many older people do we know who are alone and lonely because their family members only got criticism and never knew they were loved, so they never even phone home?

Who are the people in our lives who made us feel special? wanted? loved? accepted? I have known people like that in my life; most of them were people who never knew how much their attention, their openness meant to me when I was growing up. Special memories, made all the more special because they were so rare. Some of them I was able to approach and tell what their influence meant to me...and I am so glad that I did. It wasn't hard. A personal note in a greeting card. A thank you note. An email (a real one - not a forward!!) A text. And lately - just writing a message to someone or putting something on their wall on Facebook.

It's a whole new perspective on things. I remember what it's like to try and do something for someone and have him or her cut it all to pieces before I hear the words (if ever, that is), "Thank you." I decided that just for today, and for all the todays I can, I can try to look for the yes, the positive, the uplifting, the encouraging word. Not just for what others do, not just for what God does (although it starts there) but also for what I do. I am way too hard on myself, and I think that I am hard on others because of it. So - why not I give us both a break?

I'm learning that it doesn't take much effort to build someone up rather than tear him or her down. To see the positive first, rather than the negative.

It just takes a little re-training of my mind, a little bit of faith in myself and in others ... and a whole lot of gratitude to God.