What if?

I feel at a loss right now honestly. I have recently felt quite unsettled and disturbed at all the conflicts in Iraq and concerning the Palestine-Israel conflicts and the U.S. Military violence in countries all around the world, specifically within Iraq.

Diversions on Sabbath

On Sundays, all the houses of Hyaets are closed to the neighborhood unless there is an emergency. Hyaets consists of three couples (Greg and Helms, Jason and Joanie, Me and Jacob), and Anna. Each couple has their own home and Anna stays with a roommate in a duplex around the block. We are all in very close proximity to one another, able to see our homes from our windows, except Anna who lives just a short walk around the block.

The folks that are part of the intentional Christian community and ministry of Hyaets practice the Sabbath on Sundays. We close our homes to our neighbors so that we can each rest in our own ways. For most of us it involves attending a home church and then lunch with our immediate families and spending the day unwinding at home, maybe catching up on a few emails and such, but mostly just spending the day with family.

I really value this time of rest and regeneration. I think it is a practice that is not practiced enough within the Christian community.

However today, with the absence of my husband off working, I felt quite lonely. I was here with all my thoughts and emotions and only the diversions of the internet and the t.v. to keep me occupied. And that is just what I did. I used those diversions to keep myself from thinking and feeling. Now I have reflected on this and wonder just how often I do this. I use the noise of this world, whether it be the visual or audio noise, to divert my attention from myself, from others, and from God.

I spent time in prayer this evening while Jacob was writing. During that time I sensed this deep connection to God and to myself. It has been a while since I spent individual time in prayer, other than my short one line prayers throughout most days.

I wonder how different my days would be if I spent a little more time in active prayer and reading of God's word or the words of others who have lived out holy lives? I wonder how much further I would be in my emotional life if I stopped diverting my attentions and paid attention to myself and shared these emotions with God.

It is so much easier to ignore myself than to really pay attention. It is easier to ignore the reality of life. Unfortunately, as I ignore myself and life, I miss out on many joys and beautiful moments. I know this. I want this to change in my life. I am thankful that I have been able to grab a bit of this understanding today and hopefully, with this insight, I will move a little further along the path to loving myself, to loving God more, and loving others more.

That's A Nice Peace

I feel a new sense of peace recently. I am not certain when it really arrived but sitting on our couch downstairs today, with the light streaming through the cracks of the blinds, I felt the sun coming over the horizon of peace and hope within my soul. For once in a good long while I did not find myself worrying over and obsessing about money, the bills, or Jacob's job situation, my job situation, my friends or relationships or how God sees me. I felt a sense of acceptance and peace about all of these and it felt quite good. I felt like a child of God, resting in his ever strong and capable hands.

Peace has never been a very easy thing for me to fall into and stay in. Peace is scary for me. I have lived my life constantly worried about the worst outcomes. I have spent years telling myself that something bad is going to happen so just be prepared for it, all the while I miss the beauty of life that is right before me. I miss out on the beauty of spending time with friends, neighbors and family. I miss the beauty of a peaceful sleep. I miss out on the beauty of a messy house and cleaning it up, even though my husband will certainly twirl through like the tazmanian devil and leave it in a terror of mess again...and yes, I miss the beauty of that too. I miss the beauty of my husband's intellect, his deep wisdom that he has to offer me and to those around him and the beauty of his goofy antics rooted in his deep sense of trust in God.

Jacob has truly exemplified for me what trusting God should look like. He doesn't worry too much about many things. He doesn't consume himself with knowing how much is due when or thinking we might have to pack and live under a bridge. He just trusts God that it will all work out and if we do end up under a bridge somewhere, God too will be there with us and it will not be for nothing.

I have even began to feel a sense of peace about my physical medical problems. I know that no matter what, I'll be okay, if even not necessarily out of pain, I will have the support and strenghth I need to get by from my husband, from God, and from my family and friends.

I thank God for this peace for it is from Him and Him alone. I thank those who have prayed prayers of peace for me and asked God to move in me in this area. I hope that I can only pass along my peace to others and not hoard it all for myself...though I wonder if in giving peace you lose peace...which I suppose is quite silly to think. I suppose if anything, to give peace will only multiply my own peace because the economy of God is oh so different from ours.

With love to myself
Peace

In The Shadows

I was sitting on the couch this evening and I was just relating some thoughts to God. One of them was this apology for the sake of not offending God. Then I took it back. I told God that I wasn't sorry really, because honestly I really wasn't sorry, and that I knew He knew that and that really I was sorry for being disingenuous. Then I got to wondering just how often I am disingenuous for the sake of appeasing the angry god on a throne, that I often picture as God, waiting to strike me down at any moment . Not to mention all the implications of this belief and my response to this belief and how it so deeply impacts my life in so many different ways.

I also got to thinking about how it seems folks all around me seem way more spiritual than me, as if I am constantly in the shadows of spiritual giants. I'll bring up a topic that may be a bit uncomfortable or not commonly spoken of and I'll either get silence or a variety of other responses intended to close the conversation down. And usually the responses are phrased in such a way that I am left feeling a tad less spiritually advanced. Phrases like: "Oh, well, I've already asked that question before but it is so neat to see you grow in that area" or "That isn't the point of being a Christian" or "Maybe you're asking the wrong question or dwelling on the wrong thing". Then there's the whole other side of the more spiritually advanced person. The person who seems to turn everything into a praise and a blessing. This is the person who turns becoming a quadriplegic at age 26 in a car accident on their way to the Olympics into an awesome blessing; how they wouldn't be the person they are today had that not happened. Well, sure they wouldn't be the person they are without certain events, but is that the means by which we measure our spirituality and how we gauge a blessing? This is a person that never complains or if they do, they then apologize for it and pray to God in prayer time to have a heart that is more thankful.

Since I'm not one of the people that is spiritually advanced in the aforementioned ways I have to admit that I am quite disgusted with those sort of folks. Each person leaves me feeling inadequate or simply bad about myself. Maybe I do focus on things that I shouldn't, spiritually speaking. Maybe I am not asking the right questions. I guess I think that as long as I am asking questions that is better than not. And I'm not a person that can take everything in life and turn it into a praise or consider it a blessing. I have been called a cynic and told I do complain too often. Honestly, sometimes I don't think I complain enough. I think people are just content to live in some fantasy land where they never have to face the tough questions that I struggle with every damn day.

Maybe I struggle with my faith in such a raw and real way that I leave people feeling uncomfortable. I really don't know.

Maybe it isn't me, maybe it is them. Maybe I just need not compare my spiritual state to others' spiritual states. Maybe, as the Al-Anon program suggests, I should mind my own business.

But I do think that I bring about another point of interest in all of my blabbering here. What is the point of we Christians gathering together to share our lives if we never get down to business? What good is it if we never work out together our frustrations, our fears, our anger, our sorrow, our hopelessness, the struggle of relationships, and the struggles within ourselves, and our never-ending grappling with a being that we can neither see nor hear or feel but that we are to serve and love and worship and ultimately die and live for?

Where is my voice?

I have recently decided that my voice should be heard. That I am not just a whisper in the wind. I have also decided that I deserve to be respected. I deserve to be seen for who I am and not for what people think I am or want me to be.

No easy feat I will tell you. This decision requires more than merely saying what I think and feel or insisting that someone look me in my eyes or give me the respect that should just be given for the mere fact that I am a human being.

To have my voice heard, to be seen, requires that I believe enough in myself to speak up and be seen for everything that I am. It also requires personal honesty with myself about who I am, where I am at, what I like and don't like, and what I want in relationships with others.

I feel that this decision that I have made has been a huge step in my personal healing and growth and is one more step closer to loving me and not hating me.

Take for instance this scene: I am situated at a dinner table with about ten other people. I ask my husband if there is a spoon for the mac & cheese. The person with the said spoon, a 20 year old (10 years my junior), chimes in "If you will just wait a minute!"

Before I made the decision in my life to speak up and be heard and seen I would have muttered something to myself or bitched about it to Jacob later on that evening when we were alone. Instead, I told her that I didn't realize she had the spoon and that I'm not sure I liked her tone. Some spectators at the table made it a bit more of a scene than I would have wished and the young lady tried to excuse herself from the responsibility of being disrespectful. Nonetheless, I made myself heard and expressed my feelings, set a personal boundary in no uncertain terms. I am still mulling it over in my head how I could have still yet handled it better...as I was a bit exasperated at the level of disrespect that I felt. But I am proud of myself for speaking up and letting this person know that what they did was not acceptable in our relationship.

Take for instance this scene: I am at a new physician's office. He comes into the room where I am waiting and examines me and asks me a multitude of questions. He then goes on to advise me he will stop giving me opioid pain medications as they don't really help Fibromyalgia and up the Ultram. I am not okay with this as I am not just a Fibromyalgia patient. I have RA, and OA as well as nerve pain. I struggle with pain all day every day. I do not sleep at night. This doctor whom has never met me, who talks to me for ten minutes, decides what is best for me. I did not speak up because I feared being viewed as a drug-seeker (someone addicted to pain medications).

The above scene has taught me a valuable lesson. I do not have to go along with a physician's treatment plan because it is my body and my treatment plan. He does not live my life or in my body. So, next time, I will express to him "Dr. Siar, you do not live in my body or deal with the pain that I deal with every day. I do not believe that you have accurately heard me or seen me. I do not care that your MRI says I should not be in pain...I am. Do you treat MRI's or do you treat patients? Have you heard me and seen me?" I will not just sit there and let him run my medical care.

I am thankful for my new found strength in myself and the confidence to carry out this conviction. I am not a victim or someone that can be walked all over. I have the right to be seen and heard. Doesn't everyone?

What you see and what you don't see at Enderly Park...hope nonetheless

Hyaets from Jason Williams on Vimeo.

Angels Bestowing Hope

I have had an emotional day today. Tears come strolling down my cheeks without notice and without permission. I cannot contain all this emotional turmoil any longer. It has been two years now that I have dealt with ongoing and progressive chronic pain. I do not know why I have it or where it exactly it all comes from. I just merely know that I am in pain nearly every minute of every day. I do not sleep because of this pain, at least not well. I am moodier because of this pain. I have been to doctor after doctor trying to figure out the source of the pain and each have their own answers with their tunnel vision due to being specialists. I have lost hope and faith in doctors and Western Medicine altogether quite honestly.

The problem with pain is that it is subjective. No one can really understand my physical and emotional pain because no one is me. My body is unique. My mind is unique. And in that, I have a body that has its own way of responding to the pain and a mind that handles it uniquely. So to be seen by doctor after doctor that simplify my dilemma to bunch of numbers on a pain scale or circling faces that match how I feel is belittling and frustrating. I am so depressed at this point about my physical situation that I just want to give up.

However, this evening, my friend Evelyn (an angel from heaven no less) reminded me that God is here with me and that he has it figured out. She reminded me that I have to stop trying to control every thing and give all this over to God. For me that is a really hard thing to do, Type A personality that I am. She also reminded me to remember all the times in the past where it seemed hopeless but in the end hope prevailed and it all really was okay.

Maybe every little thing will be alright. Maybe it won't. However, hoping for the best is better than fearing the worst.

I pray that I can give all my worries, my anxieties, my frustrations and anger to God above. At times this involves some yelling and shouting and fist shaking at Him...because sometimes that's all I have in me to do. Other times it involves crying my eyes out into my pillow on my bed holding my dog or my husband. Other times it means throwing it all into some canvas with some paint and then walking away with a new found reassurance that all the things that seem so big and monstrous will eventually seem so little when looking at them from years from now.

I don't have it all figured out. I don't know exactly how, in these circumstances, to give it all over to God or exactly why that is required of me. It seems a little absurd really. But maybe it is in the absurd that hope is realized and found and eventually practiced.

Hope Wrapped Up In Love

I spent most of my day worrying about financial burdens. I kept trying to tell myself that I have to take it one day at a time. That I have to "let go and let God" and "easy does it"...all Al-Anon slogans. But mostly, I spent the day sighing heavily, then throwing up all over my husband (verbally that is), then arguing with him about money, and then trying to occupy my time by cleaning this house. I do not rest. I cannot rest. Things that are wrong in my life keep me in a constant state of worry and fright. My therapist says that I sit on the watchtower, waiting and looking for disaster to strike. That I must come down from this imaginary, but oh so very real, watchtower and learn to have fun.

But how? How do I have fun when things are so f'd up all around me? My checking account is nearly on the brink of zero. Every day there is another collection bill that comes in my mailbox and then into the trashcan because I know I can't pay it. We barely make it. The job situation with Jake is so hopeless (aw...that word again). He has the brains to do any job yet gets very few responses from potential employers. He sits paralyzed by anxiety to even apply for jobs so I apply for him. I'm so burdened and overwhelmed with more than my fair share of responsibility.

While one person in my household tries to relax all day and calm their anxieties through playing any and all video games he can, I spend my days trying to resolve my anxieties by making phone calls, doing more chores around the house, and working numbers out on the calculator. Two very different ways of handling anxiety and worry...both not very effective because they rarely work to calm the person and resolve the issue at the same time.

Not to mention the constant and nagging pain that I have wracking my body all day and every day. It is so aggravating to be riddled with pain and it is exhausting.

And so my hope for rest...any hope that I have for fun all relies on many things that I cannot control. Not having control is very scary for me. It means that I must trust, or rather have faith in God, hoping he will pull through for us. I must hope for the best...in essence, I must choose to love because hope is wrapped up in love.

I must choose to love myself through all this...which honestly is a whole 'nother story (let's just say loving me isn't easy). I must choose to love my husband through this time of trial, supporting and encouraging him to persevere himself; to not let his worries, his fear and self-doubt get the best of him and to believe the best of himself-to love himself. I must also choose to believe that no matter what happens, we're going to be okay. In so choosing all of these things I am choosing hope. Not an easy feat for one so inclined to choose defeat and the plight of the hopeless.

Hope for Faith

Hope. Just as overwhelming a word as my very name, Faith. Both seem to be required to hold on to either concept. I can't hope without faith, and well, faith without hope doesn't seem to really be any sort of faith worth having. 

As I struggle with monstrous personal internal demons I have found that I despise my very name. In that realization, I have discovered it is because I have let go of the hope of ever living up to the profoundness of my name. My name comes with deep and weighted expectations of spiritual greatness. A greatness that I seem to fall short of and fear will never fulfill. 

I cannot understand why I was given such a grand name. I realize that both my mother and father must have had some of their own reasons, reasons that to me, really do not help me with my struggle. Because regardless of their reasons, Faith is now mine. It is not theirs. I must struggle to sort it out. I must find the faith to hope that one day I will be all that I am meant to be and that my name will not have been attached to me in vain.

This struggle with my name is at the center of my struggle with who I am and who I want to be. Who I am ashamed of and who I hope I can forgive one day. Each day I dip down into the depths of deep and dark valleys of hopelessness driven by intense feelings of abandonment; by God, by family and friends. In this state of paralysis I have come to realize that I must push through and not abandon myself. I have been abandoning myself for years now, neglecting my needs and desires and wants...wishing and hoping that others would do for me, feel for me, and give to me what only I can give to myself.

Though others can hope for me, their hopes are theirs. I must grab hold of hope and not let it go. It must permeate my deepest self and give me room to grieve and cry and then to forgive.

I hope this blog will allow me to express those feelings...openly and honestly. Sometimes with such a rare rawness that it may be offensive, however, hope is not always pretty. In fact, I would venture to say that hope is found in the ugliest and darkest places of the human soul and psyche...at least, that I think is where my hope is and where I must go to come out on the other side with a hope that is laced with joy and beauty.