The Spousal Unit has been back for about two weeks now and we've settled into what I guess is a kind of normal for us. This is truly a set of experiences that I desperately wish there was some kind of road map to follow, left behind by others who have gone before.
Yeah...not so much.
Right now he has no funds except what little I managed to save from our joint account and the money I've put in from my own account every now and then when I can. I've kept him on my insurance so he has relatively inexpensive access to the meds he needs. I've bought him groceries each week.
Part of me feels the things I'm helping him with are unfair. He *censored* up yet it is still affecting me - has never stopped affecting me. I know rehab isn't a vacation, per se, but for those three months the SU didn't have to worry about groceries, bills, et cetera, while I did. I had to coordinate my move into my apartment as well as the closing down of our old apartment. NOT that I'm going to say God wasn't there in that because He was. His generosity along with the love and generosity of His people made these last three months something...good; in a way, even awesome.
But I struggle with the idea that I took care of things then and I'm still doing it now. Part of it, I know, is I have a money button. My dad was never very responsible with it and, for me, having a surplus on hand represents security. I wonder at times if that makes me akin to the parables about those who try to store treasures on earth. They store treasures. I look for a particular number that makes me comfortable. Although, come to think of it, they never stopped storing up treasure and I never found a number that made me comfortable. Ah, irony.
Maybe that's what God has been trying to drum into my head? Not to spend willy-nilly but to be generous with the Spousal Unit as my Abba has been generous with me. It was God who paved the way for the SU to be in rehab in four days from his initial request. It was God who showed his provision for me with all of his people who offered money, love, supplies and time. Now that I have the opportunity to model this for the Spousal Unit, I balk?
To give the Spousal Unit his due, he has set out to do exactly what he said he would: demonstrate a commitment to sobriety. He has attended a meeting each day since his return. He has a sponsor. He starts his new job on Monday. He is respecting my boundaries.
I think part of what makes this difficult for me is that there are so many triggers - some of which I don't even know about until they get set off. Let's take yesterday for example. We went to Walmart. He pulled the truck into a space and I started to get out just as he took his foot off the clutch. The truck jolted forward a couple feet. This is a normal "oops!" moment for anyone else. It's an "Oh no, he's been drinking!" moment for me even though there was no indication of it. It's a trigger. It's past behavior that is now inextricably linked to something bad even though, now, there may be a totally benign explanation.
I do my best to not ask about his meeting attendance or what he does with his sponsor. His recovery, not mine and controlling co-dependence is so unattractive :P. I definitely need not to try and control for my own recovery and mental health (scroll back through previous entries to see how well my attempts to control his drinking worked. Cliff's Notes answer? Not very well). But holy cow, it' shard! I want to know. And I want reassurances. And I want them in a language I can understand. But I also know that to "make" him do or say the things I want him to will not really assuage my fears in the end. They will be done or said because I demanded them and not because they came honestly from him. I have to...HAVE TO...let him say or not say, do or not do, what he will in terms of recovery and relationship repair. And all the time, I have to be working on my own healthier boundaries and expectations.
Separating and attempting reconciliation along with mental health is a ball of laughs, let me tell you.
We've had two date nights so far. He comes over on Saturday afternoons to do his laundry. We hang out on the sofa, watch Cops and cook frozen pizza. It's actually not a huge change from what we used to do but it has been a long time since we've done it. It's nice. We've both said how much we've missed doing things like this. No spending the night yet. I'm not ready and neither is he. I want my apartment to be my safe space a little longer; introduce him gradually into my new world.
To work on forgiveness and grace in such an active manner is painful at times. The SU was a blackout drinker, meaning he has no recollection of a lot of the things he did or said. BUT I DO. Vivid, technicolor memories. That means I also have to work past wanting my pound of flesh (carefully weighed and measured, mind you) for the pain he has caused me over the years.
However, I'm currently reading Timothy Keller's Jesus the King as part of my study. In it, Keller talks about the need to go deeper in a relationship with Jesus past the "I wants" and the attempts to carve out or preserve what we believe our identity should be instead of building it on Jesus. Doing that and letting Jesus go as deep as He needs to in order to be our foundation is risky and painful. Keller illustrates this with the chapters of C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Eustace has been turned into a dragon by his own greed and thoughts.
Just when Eustace thinks there is no hope left, Aslan appears, tells him to undress and jump in a pool of water. Eustace figures out "undress" means to shed his dragon skin and starts trying to do so layer by layer. But as much as he gnaws and tears, each shed layer only reveals another layer underneath.
It's at this point Aslan tells Eustace that "you're going to have to let me go deeper" (i.e. use his claws to divest Eustace of his dragon hide). Eustace is afraid because, hey, claws! (and remember Aslan is not a tame lion, either). But he agrees. In describing it, Eustace says, "The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt." Soon, though, the skin is off, dark and ugly-looking and piled to the side. Eustace is thrown in the pool and realizes he is a boy again.
Keller's point is that Eustace tried to do it little by little and could never have succeeded on his own. He desperately wanted to be a boy again but tried to do it just by taking Aslan's instruction as a suggestion and never asking him how to get the dragon hide off. It was only when he let Aslan take over that the change, the transformation, occurred. We have to - I have to - let Jesus "use his claws", as Keller puts it, and reconfigure the main thing my heart wants. The SU remaining sober is one of my most heartfelt wishes but as has been shown time and again, MY attempts to grant MY wish have ended in failure. I have to let Jesus act as Savior and know that even though He can grant me what I want with a snap of his fingers, I need to let Him go deeper, let him deal with and remove/change the anger and fear that threads through my relationship with the Spousal Unit. Forgive and be forgiven. That's the only way either of us will ever receive true healing.
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
01 June 2014
31 August 2013
Whose will is it anyway?
1 Peter 4:19: So if you are suffering according to God's will, keep on doing what is right, and trust yourself to the God who made you, for he will never fail you."
The SU is gone for the entire Labor Day weekend. He's visiting his father and learning what his dad wants of him as executor of his will. I'm here at home and, honestly, kind of enjoying the time alone.
Had an individual session with our therapist, K, yesterday. Although he and I have made the decision that I don't need to see him regularly since I've made my choices about my marriage and am now working on living them, I can still see him when I feel I need to, and I've been feeling like I need a bit of a tune-up to make sure I'm still reacting and acting as I should.
The one thing I really hate is that he can always make me cry. I give K crap about it and I'm sure that's partially a deflecting mechanism on my part since I don't like to cry in front of people (not that I haven't, you understand, I just don't like to). He says I cry because I need to - because I need to grieve and I need the catharsis. He says I need to grieve the things that are gone - the SU the way he was, what our marriage is not and may not ever be, my aloneness versus having a partner, and so on. I've cried over parts of these things but I've never grieved them as deaths and he says that's what I need to do.
What started it was when we talked about (again) how, even though I am married, I am functionally alone in a lot of important ways because my spouse is selfish and self-centered in his own dysfunctionalism and alcoholism. He asked if I would stay alone if the SU dies. I told him that, yes, I would for quite a long time if not forever. K had a couple of responses to that:
- it would be difficult/a new experience for me to be with someone new who treats me like a priority whereas right now I am not being treated as such.
- and the one that started the tears going was K's understanding of the whole dichotomy that exists between the husband I knew and the one I have now. I said (and K agrees) that the SU has been a very important part of my life, a hero in many respects. He taught me a lot about functional versus dysfunctional behavior early in our marriage when my only previous examples had been my parents (oh boy!). He prayed and waited for me for ten years to get my act together and come back to God. He has been instrumental in my job search, cheering me on, looking at job descriptions that I forward him and saying things like, "No, don't apply for this one. It's beneath you and your abilities." He has supported my slog towards my Master's degree (December 14! Yay!). All that is now mixed with someone whose main characteristics now include selfishness and emotional abandonment. BUT there is still that other side of the SU and the loss of that would be devastating - even more so because the person in question is choosing his own destruction.
I told K how I hate watching alcohol carve itself into my husband and he likened it to watching the progression of a terminal illness. Cue total and complete waterworks because, yeah, that's it in a nutshell. I see more and more physical issues that tell me the SU's body is not able to deal with what he's handing it. I see more and more life draining away each day and watching that is probably the worst experience of my life.
That led to something I don't ever really admit to out loud - that sometimes I think it would be easier if the SU just...did it fast instead of this slow, passive suicide. I do not want him to die by any stretch of the imagination. As I've written about, my absolute hope is for restoration and life for him but, sometimes, the thought that all this would be over is there. K gets it. He likened it to someone with cancer. You know they are in pain and you want them to live, want them to get better, but at the same time, you want them (and yourself) to be free from pain as well. I told him it feels like I am an unwilling witness to an execution. I am made to watch. It is not my choice. And it hurts. So much. Nouwen said that anyone who enters into any degree of discipleship with Christ not only doesn't avoid the world's pain but penetrates into its center and I feel like I'm there.
I have now spent parts of last night and this morning being all teary and crying (thanks, K!). This morning out on the patio, I spent some time with God and looked back over the past few days of my journaling. There were two verses I wrote down - 1 John 5:14-15 and Mark 11:24. When I went to look at the commentary, what it stressed was that there are two things that need to be a part of prayer: (a) ask in faith and (b) always add a particular qualifying statement which is "nevertheless, thy will be done". This is because prayer is petition and asking for God's will is to submit both myself and my requests, wants, hopes, dreams, et cetera to God. It doesn't mean I shouldn't bring all that to God but it does mean that I need to pray for them to be answered according to his will and not mine.
Brennan Manning, the author of The Ragamuffin Gospel (and also an alcoholic) points out that "compassion becomes a tad easier if you are conscientious in taking your own inventory rather than someone else's."
As I read back over the verses and commentary last night, I found myself wondering if, in all my prayers for the SU, I had remembered to turn them over to God and ask that his will be done versus what I wanted to see happen and...I'm not sure. Did I submit or did I just give God a laundry list in the nicest, most respectful way? I certainly believe God wants to see the SU restored and full of true life and that those are good things to pray for. But if I just toss them out there and do not submit myself and what I want to God's will, I don't think I will be open to how God may go about that because I haven't given up how I want the story to end. Just because I'm reasonably sure what I'm praying is what he would want also doesn't mean it's going to go according to my plan - and I might miss something he's doing if I stick to my plan and don't give it up to be part of his. And what appears to be my part in it are the thoughts and actions God keeps leading me back to: Be obedient. Be faithful. Love. Love furiously. Be Jesus. Don't miss now.
AA's Big Book says, "This was our course. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, piety and patience that we would a cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, 'This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God, save me from being angry. Thy will be done'."
The SU is gone for the entire Labor Day weekend. He's visiting his father and learning what his dad wants of him as executor of his will. I'm here at home and, honestly, kind of enjoying the time alone.
Had an individual session with our therapist, K, yesterday. Although he and I have made the decision that I don't need to see him regularly since I've made my choices about my marriage and am now working on living them, I can still see him when I feel I need to, and I've been feeling like I need a bit of a tune-up to make sure I'm still reacting and acting as I should.
The one thing I really hate is that he can always make me cry. I give K crap about it and I'm sure that's partially a deflecting mechanism on my part since I don't like to cry in front of people (not that I haven't, you understand, I just don't like to). He says I cry because I need to - because I need to grieve and I need the catharsis. He says I need to grieve the things that are gone - the SU the way he was, what our marriage is not and may not ever be, my aloneness versus having a partner, and so on. I've cried over parts of these things but I've never grieved them as deaths and he says that's what I need to do.
What started it was when we talked about (again) how, even though I am married, I am functionally alone in a lot of important ways because my spouse is selfish and self-centered in his own dysfunctionalism and alcoholism. He asked if I would stay alone if the SU dies. I told him that, yes, I would for quite a long time if not forever. K had a couple of responses to that:
- it would be difficult/a new experience for me to be with someone new who treats me like a priority whereas right now I am not being treated as such.
- and the one that started the tears going was K's understanding of the whole dichotomy that exists between the husband I knew and the one I have now. I said (and K agrees) that the SU has been a very important part of my life, a hero in many respects. He taught me a lot about functional versus dysfunctional behavior early in our marriage when my only previous examples had been my parents (oh boy!). He prayed and waited for me for ten years to get my act together and come back to God. He has been instrumental in my job search, cheering me on, looking at job descriptions that I forward him and saying things like, "No, don't apply for this one. It's beneath you and your abilities." He has supported my slog towards my Master's degree (December 14! Yay!). All that is now mixed with someone whose main characteristics now include selfishness and emotional abandonment. BUT there is still that other side of the SU and the loss of that would be devastating - even more so because the person in question is choosing his own destruction.
I told K how I hate watching alcohol carve itself into my husband and he likened it to watching the progression of a terminal illness. Cue total and complete waterworks because, yeah, that's it in a nutshell. I see more and more physical issues that tell me the SU's body is not able to deal with what he's handing it. I see more and more life draining away each day and watching that is probably the worst experience of my life.
That led to something I don't ever really admit to out loud - that sometimes I think it would be easier if the SU just...did it fast instead of this slow, passive suicide. I do not want him to die by any stretch of the imagination. As I've written about, my absolute hope is for restoration and life for him but, sometimes, the thought that all this would be over is there. K gets it. He likened it to someone with cancer. You know they are in pain and you want them to live, want them to get better, but at the same time, you want them (and yourself) to be free from pain as well. I told him it feels like I am an unwilling witness to an execution. I am made to watch. It is not my choice. And it hurts. So much. Nouwen said that anyone who enters into any degree of discipleship with Christ not only doesn't avoid the world's pain but penetrates into its center and I feel like I'm there.
I have now spent parts of last night and this morning being all teary and crying (thanks, K!). This morning out on the patio, I spent some time with God and looked back over the past few days of my journaling. There were two verses I wrote down - 1 John 5:14-15 and Mark 11:24. When I went to look at the commentary, what it stressed was that there are two things that need to be a part of prayer: (a) ask in faith and (b) always add a particular qualifying statement which is "nevertheless, thy will be done". This is because prayer is petition and asking for God's will is to submit both myself and my requests, wants, hopes, dreams, et cetera to God. It doesn't mean I shouldn't bring all that to God but it does mean that I need to pray for them to be answered according to his will and not mine.
Brennan Manning, the author of The Ragamuffin Gospel (and also an alcoholic) points out that "compassion becomes a tad easier if you are conscientious in taking your own inventory rather than someone else's."
As I read back over the verses and commentary last night, I found myself wondering if, in all my prayers for the SU, I had remembered to turn them over to God and ask that his will be done versus what I wanted to see happen and...I'm not sure. Did I submit or did I just give God a laundry list in the nicest, most respectful way? I certainly believe God wants to see the SU restored and full of true life and that those are good things to pray for. But if I just toss them out there and do not submit myself and what I want to God's will, I don't think I will be open to how God may go about that because I haven't given up how I want the story to end. Just because I'm reasonably sure what I'm praying is what he would want also doesn't mean it's going to go according to my plan - and I might miss something he's doing if I stick to my plan and don't give it up to be part of his. And what appears to be my part in it are the thoughts and actions God keeps leading me back to: Be obedient. Be faithful. Love. Love furiously. Be Jesus. Don't miss now.
AA's Big Book says, "This was our course. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, piety and patience that we would a cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, 'This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God, save me from being angry. Thy will be done'."
26 August 2013
WWTCHD?
He was sober when I got home late Saturday afternoon. He did drink Saturday night but it was more...mellow. Not just pounding it down.
The "fun" came Sunday morning. I was digging in our office closet where I keep my extra purses. The SU was in the shower. When I finally found the one I wanted, I yanked on it and an empty vodka bottle came tumbling out with it. I swear it was like there was suddenly a caption over my head and it read, "So, what are you going to do?"
My thoughts rewound to the woman caught in sin. Specifically, the part where Jesus did not require her to say she was sorry and wouldn't do it again or make her come up with some kind of promise or list of things she would do to atone. He just forgave her.
So I threw the bottle in the trash, didn't say a word, and went to church with my husband.
The "fun" came Sunday morning. I was digging in our office closet where I keep my extra purses. The SU was in the shower. When I finally found the one I wanted, I yanked on it and an empty vodka bottle came tumbling out with it. I swear it was like there was suddenly a caption over my head and it read, "So, what are you going to do?"
My thoughts rewound to the woman caught in sin. Specifically, the part where Jesus did not require her to say she was sorry and wouldn't do it again or make her come up with some kind of promise or list of things she would do to atone. He just forgave her.
So I threw the bottle in the trash, didn't say a word, and went to church with my husband.
21 August 2013
Moving Beyond Fear, part 1
You know, it's funny. You pray to God about something and you know intellectually that, yes, he will answer that prayer. Occasionally, however, getting that answer is like getting slapped in the face with a fish (Monty Python tm).
My readings and such have kind of revolved around fear - how it interferes and what should be in our lives in place of it. I've been asking God to reveal to me where I still have fear and he definitely slapped me upside the head with it (my God is a tactile God :)).
I am afraid of many things but chief among them is failure. That means failure of works done by my hands (no one else to blame), failure of things I have taken on that I should not have (but they are my responsibility now). I have fear that the Spousal Unit will drink a huge amount today. I have fear of his drinking problem, period. That one continues to stick around like kudzu. I have fear he will never stop drinking or that he will be unable to repair his relationships. And, sometimes, my fear is that I will be left alone in all of this.
The first question God pointed out is to determine if I am living by Christ or by the law. Am I looking to the one who cast out fear or to the law that gives pre-packaged responses of what I "should" do and how I "should" feel and forget the freedom I have in Jesus in whose love there is no room for fear (1 John 4:18). To do that, though, I have to let go of "what if" and just plain "if" because they do nothing except create scenarios for my fear to reside in when Jesus should be my safe place in the midst of this crazy world. He is the only experience truly worthy of being called "life" (Manning) and since he has already set me free, I should choose to remain free through living by faith (Galatians 5:1 and 3:11).
The other thing He pointed out was how I have never really considered the fact that Jesus might be proud of me, that I might make him smile or...happy. What a concept. But if he does delight in us, then why not? If David danced for joy, then why not his descendant? If I can feel joy, then why not the One who created me? Strange concepts to someone who grew up in a very performance-oriented environment to think someone just loves you because they love you...
The next day's reading brought up 2 Cor 5:7 which says that I am to walk by faith and not by sight. This has been a constant theme for me with the SU's alcoholism. I pray a lot about remembering the fact that I am on God's timeline and not mine and that God has specifically told me not to try and create a resolution for the Spousal Unit - that if I keep looking for when he is going to act, I will miss it. In thinking on that, I realized some of my responses to the SU about his drinking are very much responses based in fear. Not that some of my responses and requests aren't reasonable but I do things like try to keep him around me because than I can be "assured" he isn't drinking. In retrospect, that's kinda funny because, seriously, he's snuck alcohol into the house and drank. He's drank copious amounts with me in the next room or right in front of me. By trying to control where he is or what he does, I am not trusting God, my Abba, in this instance. I am trying to influence my surroundings for what really only amounts to a momentary victory in the battle with his alcoholism. And, really, what kind of victory except Pyrrhic? It's all just an illusion meant to make me comfortable.
All this is really coming down to the same question God keeps putting in front of me: do I love God enough to trust him and quit trying to offer him my attempts to be in control? ('Cause I'm sure he's thinking, "Hey, nice thought. But I keep telling you I've got this one. Don't make me get out the fish again.").
"Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else." - Manning
That means (to me) that I have to want God and what God wants. God wants the Spousal Unit to be sober but he doesn't necessarily want me sticking my nose in with my plans because my plans are full of "I want". I ask God a lot to give me direction to work within his plan and not try to graft on my own. Sometimes I think I need to remember that God's part for me in this may just be to sit down, shut up, and keep trying to be Jesus to my husband.
"Do I hear His word spoken to my heart, 'Shalom, be at peace, I understand'." - Manning
Sadly, no. Not all the time. What I have to move past is my acceptance of his understanding to the point I am comfortable with it, past the point of my feeling that if God truly understood, then the SU wouldn't still be drinking. That, though, is my fallacy, my wrong thought, and my error. In this, I unfortunately at times tend to echo Job when God asked Job where he was when God laid the foundations of the earth or if he's ever ordered the morning into being, et cetera. My plans are as ashes. They are a false sense of security that crumbles as soon as the vodka bottle comes out. The God of the universe knows ever so much more than I do and sees ever so much more than I see.
So I'm now asking the God that has revealed these strongholds to tear them down, turn them to dust and to replace them with his wants and remember that I am not in control. Security is in God and not my feeble machinations. He is doing a work. I know it. I see bits and pieces of it. I need to stop being impatient for the whole, bend my knee and submit to him.
It's all still very much a work in progress.
My readings and such have kind of revolved around fear - how it interferes and what should be in our lives in place of it. I've been asking God to reveal to me where I still have fear and he definitely slapped me upside the head with it (my God is a tactile God :)).
I am afraid of many things but chief among them is failure. That means failure of works done by my hands (no one else to blame), failure of things I have taken on that I should not have (but they are my responsibility now). I have fear that the Spousal Unit will drink a huge amount today. I have fear of his drinking problem, period. That one continues to stick around like kudzu. I have fear he will never stop drinking or that he will be unable to repair his relationships. And, sometimes, my fear is that I will be left alone in all of this.
The first question God pointed out is to determine if I am living by Christ or by the law. Am I looking to the one who cast out fear or to the law that gives pre-packaged responses of what I "should" do and how I "should" feel and forget the freedom I have in Jesus in whose love there is no room for fear (1 John 4:18). To do that, though, I have to let go of "what if" and just plain "if" because they do nothing except create scenarios for my fear to reside in when Jesus should be my safe place in the midst of this crazy world. He is the only experience truly worthy of being called "life" (Manning) and since he has already set me free, I should choose to remain free through living by faith (Galatians 5:1 and 3:11).
The other thing He pointed out was how I have never really considered the fact that Jesus might be proud of me, that I might make him smile or...happy. What a concept. But if he does delight in us, then why not? If David danced for joy, then why not his descendant? If I can feel joy, then why not the One who created me? Strange concepts to someone who grew up in a very performance-oriented environment to think someone just loves you because they love you...
The next day's reading brought up 2 Cor 5:7 which says that I am to walk by faith and not by sight. This has been a constant theme for me with the SU's alcoholism. I pray a lot about remembering the fact that I am on God's timeline and not mine and that God has specifically told me not to try and create a resolution for the Spousal Unit - that if I keep looking for when he is going to act, I will miss it. In thinking on that, I realized some of my responses to the SU about his drinking are very much responses based in fear. Not that some of my responses and requests aren't reasonable but I do things like try to keep him around me because than I can be "assured" he isn't drinking. In retrospect, that's kinda funny because, seriously, he's snuck alcohol into the house and drank. He's drank copious amounts with me in the next room or right in front of me. By trying to control where he is or what he does, I am not trusting God, my Abba, in this instance. I am trying to influence my surroundings for what really only amounts to a momentary victory in the battle with his alcoholism. And, really, what kind of victory except Pyrrhic? It's all just an illusion meant to make me comfortable.
All this is really coming down to the same question God keeps putting in front of me: do I love God enough to trust him and quit trying to offer him my attempts to be in control? ('Cause I'm sure he's thinking, "Hey, nice thought. But I keep telling you I've got this one. Don't make me get out the fish again.").
"Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else." - Manning
That means (to me) that I have to want God and what God wants. God wants the Spousal Unit to be sober but he doesn't necessarily want me sticking my nose in with my plans because my plans are full of "I want". I ask God a lot to give me direction to work within his plan and not try to graft on my own. Sometimes I think I need to remember that God's part for me in this may just be to sit down, shut up, and keep trying to be Jesus to my husband.
"Do I hear His word spoken to my heart, 'Shalom, be at peace, I understand'." - Manning
Sadly, no. Not all the time. What I have to move past is my acceptance of his understanding to the point I am comfortable with it, past the point of my feeling that if God truly understood, then the SU wouldn't still be drinking. That, though, is my fallacy, my wrong thought, and my error. In this, I unfortunately at times tend to echo Job when God asked Job where he was when God laid the foundations of the earth or if he's ever ordered the morning into being, et cetera. My plans are as ashes. They are a false sense of security that crumbles as soon as the vodka bottle comes out. The God of the universe knows ever so much more than I do and sees ever so much more than I see.
So I'm now asking the God that has revealed these strongholds to tear them down, turn them to dust and to replace them with his wants and remember that I am not in control. Security is in God and not my feeble machinations. He is doing a work. I know it. I see bits and pieces of it. I need to stop being impatient for the whole, bend my knee and submit to him.
It's all still very much a work in progress.
02 August 2013
The Word of the Day
Faith.
My reading and study this morning had a lot about faith which is something I've been praying about and asking God to work on - mainly being chained to *my* perception of how He is working related to the SU's alcoholism and my unbelief that crops up when the SU exhibits, well, standard drunken behavior instead of moving forward how *I* think he should move forward or what *I* think should be happening.
Basically, I've been trying to lose the "I". I want to believe as Galatians: because of what I have heard from God and not because of law which, in this case, would be the works I deem appropriate.
So, right after praying about that, the SU tells me he's going to stay home today because he "doesn't want to play anymore today". That's generally code for "I'm going to stay home and drink myself blind."
Me to God: "So...I guess we're not wasting any time working on this, huh?"
Abba, help me lose the shackles constructed by my point of view on things and have faith that what you have told me is true.
My reading and study this morning had a lot about faith which is something I've been praying about and asking God to work on - mainly being chained to *my* perception of how He is working related to the SU's alcoholism and my unbelief that crops up when the SU exhibits, well, standard drunken behavior instead of moving forward how *I* think he should move forward or what *I* think should be happening.
Basically, I've been trying to lose the "I". I want to believe as Galatians: because of what I have heard from God and not because of law which, in this case, would be the works I deem appropriate.
So, right after praying about that, the SU tells me he's going to stay home today because he "doesn't want to play anymore today". That's generally code for "I'm going to stay home and drink myself blind."
Me to God: "So...I guess we're not wasting any time working on this, huh?"
Abba, help me lose the shackles constructed by my point of view on things and have faith that what you have told me is true.
27 July 2013
The Word of the Day
Perseverance.
The Spousal Unit and I are still struggling with his drinking. There have been two times where I just wanted to leave. As P!nk says, "I think I've had enough of this/Want back my ignorance and bliss". However, both times God has shown me that this is not an option for me - at least not the way I want to use it. Both times I have been so emotionally overwhelmed and sick of it all - sick of feeling like the only one trying - that leaving would be simply to get away from the immediate problem and that is not the solution.
C.S. Lewis has that famous quote about how prayer changes him, not God; that he prays because he is helpless; that he prays because he can't NOT pray. I think I may be starting to understand what he means. Looking back through the six months of my current journal, I can see a change in the entries. Early entries are complaining about the SU, asking why, why do I have to do deal with this, why can't he just get his freaking act together and change...why, why, why? The thing I have learned about God is he doesn't always answer your "why" or, if He does, he may do it in a way you don't expect. My later entries have more...compassion, I guess you could call it. While I am still frustrated and angry in some of them, God has tempered them and interspersed them with study and Scripture and prayers I've written down.
Beth Moore says that "Christ's ultimate goal in any work He assigns us is to reveal Himself, either through or to us". I don't know how much/if He's been revealing himself through me but I do know He has been revealing Himself to me. There has been hardly a day that has gone by where I haven't had something in my study time stand out to me whether it is simply something to comfort or something I need to learn and incorporate.
Earlier this month, God gave me a pretty detailed word. One of the strongest parts of it was the reminder that He is the one in charge and it is His timing, His timeline that we are working in. I need to submit to that and understand that submission is strength. It lets me be empty enough to be filled with Him. It is hard to let him take over because I want to be in control just as much as the next person. But I'm not. I can't be. I cannot make the Spousal Unit stop drinking. I cannot make him confront the issues he needs to in order to heal and leave the past behind. I can only call daily on my Abba and trust in Him. He is the one who will change my unbelief, my fear. If I confess those to Him, I will be amazed at the things he does. Even if I cannot perceive what He is doing, Jesus is about his Father's work. I can't wait to "see" him act. I have to act in faith that He is working even though I can't point to anything tangible as the signpost of "Look! Here's the turning point!"
A week or two ago, He gave me Isaiah 43:19: "See! I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland". Last Sunday, the SU and I were in church and he went and asked for prayer for the first time in a long time, admitting to the people praying for him that he has a major drinking problem. In my linear, dim view, part of me grabbed on to that as "See? There's the sign" forgetting that the sign is not nearly as important as the One who gives the sign.
That is what makes today suck. Hard. He has essentially been drinking since 4 o'clock this morning and is now at home passed out/asleep while I'm sitting in a coffee shop and writing this because it is difficult to be around him when he is like this. I was sitting on our little apartment patio at about 6:30 to try and have some quiet time and talking to God about how I was trying to remember that I am to follow His will and be content in Him - not that I can't talk to Him about my sorrow and anger but I need to trust in His sovereignty in this situation (and apparently for my spelling of that word!).
I opened up the study book I am reading and this paragraph leaped out at me: "Beloved, have you forgotten something He told you? Christ, our Lord, is faithful to his promises. If you're not presently 'seeing' Him at work in your situation, do not live as if He's lifeless and you're hopeless. Believe Him and expect Him to reveal his resurrection power to you!"
I am truly blessed and thankful my Abba took the time to sit down with me this morning and specifically speak to me exactly where I am.
Nouwen writes that "prayer requires we stand in God's presence with open hands, naked and vulnerable, proclaiming to ourselves and to others that without God we can do nothing". Naked and vulnerable are freakin' scary states to be in! But God gives us an amazing promise that if we do this, we will find all our strength, hope, courage and confidence in Him. God has not given me a timeline nor will he, probably. What He has told me to do is to keep being obedient to Him, to take the things he's taught me and put them into practice day after day after day and stop looking for the quick solution. I need to trust Him and that He has the whole picture in mind. What He does will be beyond my imagining.
Came home. Made nachos for the Spousal Unit. I am not hopeless.
The Spousal Unit and I are still struggling with his drinking. There have been two times where I just wanted to leave. As P!nk says, "I think I've had enough of this/Want back my ignorance and bliss". However, both times God has shown me that this is not an option for me - at least not the way I want to use it. Both times I have been so emotionally overwhelmed and sick of it all - sick of feeling like the only one trying - that leaving would be simply to get away from the immediate problem and that is not the solution.
C.S. Lewis has that famous quote about how prayer changes him, not God; that he prays because he is helpless; that he prays because he can't NOT pray. I think I may be starting to understand what he means. Looking back through the six months of my current journal, I can see a change in the entries. Early entries are complaining about the SU, asking why, why do I have to do deal with this, why can't he just get his freaking act together and change...why, why, why? The thing I have learned about God is he doesn't always answer your "why" or, if He does, he may do it in a way you don't expect. My later entries have more...compassion, I guess you could call it. While I am still frustrated and angry in some of them, God has tempered them and interspersed them with study and Scripture and prayers I've written down.
Beth Moore says that "Christ's ultimate goal in any work He assigns us is to reveal Himself, either through or to us". I don't know how much/if He's been revealing himself through me but I do know He has been revealing Himself to me. There has been hardly a day that has gone by where I haven't had something in my study time stand out to me whether it is simply something to comfort or something I need to learn and incorporate.
Earlier this month, God gave me a pretty detailed word. One of the strongest parts of it was the reminder that He is the one in charge and it is His timing, His timeline that we are working in. I need to submit to that and understand that submission is strength. It lets me be empty enough to be filled with Him. It is hard to let him take over because I want to be in control just as much as the next person. But I'm not. I can't be. I cannot make the Spousal Unit stop drinking. I cannot make him confront the issues he needs to in order to heal and leave the past behind. I can only call daily on my Abba and trust in Him. He is the one who will change my unbelief, my fear. If I confess those to Him, I will be amazed at the things he does. Even if I cannot perceive what He is doing, Jesus is about his Father's work. I can't wait to "see" him act. I have to act in faith that He is working even though I can't point to anything tangible as the signpost of "Look! Here's the turning point!"
A week or two ago, He gave me Isaiah 43:19: "See! I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland". Last Sunday, the SU and I were in church and he went and asked for prayer for the first time in a long time, admitting to the people praying for him that he has a major drinking problem. In my linear, dim view, part of me grabbed on to that as "See? There's the sign" forgetting that the sign is not nearly as important as the One who gives the sign.
That is what makes today suck. Hard. He has essentially been drinking since 4 o'clock this morning and is now at home passed out/asleep while I'm sitting in a coffee shop and writing this because it is difficult to be around him when he is like this. I was sitting on our little apartment patio at about 6:30 to try and have some quiet time and talking to God about how I was trying to remember that I am to follow His will and be content in Him - not that I can't talk to Him about my sorrow and anger but I need to trust in His sovereignty in this situation (and apparently for my spelling of that word!).
I opened up the study book I am reading and this paragraph leaped out at me: "Beloved, have you forgotten something He told you? Christ, our Lord, is faithful to his promises. If you're not presently 'seeing' Him at work in your situation, do not live as if He's lifeless and you're hopeless. Believe Him and expect Him to reveal his resurrection power to you!"
I am truly blessed and thankful my Abba took the time to sit down with me this morning and specifically speak to me exactly where I am.
Nouwen writes that "prayer requires we stand in God's presence with open hands, naked and vulnerable, proclaiming to ourselves and to others that without God we can do nothing". Naked and vulnerable are freakin' scary states to be in! But God gives us an amazing promise that if we do this, we will find all our strength, hope, courage and confidence in Him. God has not given me a timeline nor will he, probably. What He has told me to do is to keep being obedient to Him, to take the things he's taught me and put them into practice day after day after day and stop looking for the quick solution. I need to trust Him and that He has the whole picture in mind. What He does will be beyond my imagining.
Came home. Made nachos for the Spousal Unit. I am not hopeless.
18 July 2013
Yes
Farther along we’ll know all about it
Farther along we’ll understand why
So, cheer up my brothers, live in the sunshine
We’ll understand this, all by and by
Tempted and tried, I wondered why
The good man died, the bad man thrives
And Jesus cries because he loves em both
We’re all cast-aways in need of rope
Hangin’ on by the last threads of our hope
In a house of mirrors full of smoke
Confusing illusions I’ve seen
Where did I go wrong, I sang along
To every chorus of the song
That the devil wrote like a piper at the gates
Leading mice and men down to their fates
But some will courageously escape
The seductive voice with a heart of faith
While walkin’ that line back home
So much more to life than we’ve been told
It’s full of beauty that wil unfold
And shine like you struck gold my wayward son
That deadweight burden weighs a ton
Go down into the river and let it run
Wash away all the things you’ve done
Forgiveness alright
Farther along we’ll know all about it
Farther along we’ll understand why
So, cheer up my brothers, live in the sunshine
We’ll understand this, all by and by
Still I get hard pressed on every side
Between the rock and a compromise
Like the truth and pack of lies fightin’ for my soul
And I’ve got no place left go
‘Cause I got changed by what I’ve been shown
More glory than the world has known
Keeps me ramblin’ on
Skipping like a calf loosed from its stall
I’m free to love once and for all
And even when I fall I’ll get back up
For the joy that overflows my cup
Heaven filled me with more than enough
Broke down my levees and my bluffs
Let the flood wash me
And one day when the sky rolls back on us
Some rejoice and the others fuss
‘Cause every knee must bow and tongue confess
That the Son of God is forever blessed
His is the kingdom, we’re the guests
So put your voice up to the test
Sing Lord, come soon
Farther along we’ll know all about it
Farther along we’ll understand why
So, cheer up my brothers, live in the sunshine
We’ll understand this, all by and by
10 June 2013
Some thoughts re: God and intimacy...
Moore: "Sometimes perhaps He is most obvious in aloneness and in darkness. He is with us to embrace, to hold so close we can hear His heart beat."
Nouwen: "Prayer is the way to let the life-giving Spirit of God penetrate all the corners of my being."
Me: Intimacy is hard. Although I know God already knows everything about me, I like to pretend that he doesn't. It's easier for me that way.
But his intimacy is not invasive or destructive. It doesn't demand. It waits for me-always on offer. Never failing.
My God is a generous God.
23 May 2013
Decisions, decisions
As always when I don't blog regularly, there is a lot that has happened in the meantime so let's just consider I said that and move on :).
As far as school, I passed the Spring semester with all A's and will be starting my two Summer classes next week. This is the home stretch - two classes this summer and my Capstone this Fall and I will be DONE with this Master's degree. I'm alternating between "Woohoo!" and "Oh crap, the semester's starting again!". (My glass is never half-empty or half-full. It's both :)).
I have also been inducted into two national honor societies and, in a total surprise to which Sara was a witness, was named Student of the Year for my program. Color me absolutely boggled.
I have also continued with some of my goals - working on my Master's without killing myself. Managed to take most weekends off to spend with the Spousal Unit or at home. We did move to a lovely new apartment that I will post pictures of. I have also found some Bible-study type books and have been digging into those...which in turn is sending me into the dreaded character growth territory.
I also changed my ringtone to Fat-Bottomed Girls but that's neither here or nor there. Just hilarious to see people look around when my phone rings :).
Before I get into the rest of this, I want to say these are my thoughts about my own personal marital situation and I'm not advocating a one-size-fits-all mentality. Everyone needs to seek out God's answers for their own situation. So (deep breath), here we go:
Our therapist says that the SU and I have reached a crossroads. In his words, "at the risk of talking myself out of a job", it's time to make a choice. That choice is either separate or decide that I am okay/resigned to living with what the SU will give me for now and not count on anything changing (although in the therapist's POV, he believes there is potential for change for the better). In the words of Mutant Enemy: "Grrrr. Argh."
This has been and continues to be an incredibly difficult path to walk. I am very lucky to have a core group of women who have been praying for me and offering counsel or just a shoulder to cry on 'cause, believe you me, I've been doing some crying (and I am someone who hates to cry). After our session last week, I was pretty darn sure that separation was the next step until I got up the next morning at 5:30 and read Henri Nouwen's Turning My Mourning into Dancing for about two hours before the SU woke up.
One of Nouwen's points about experiencing solitude is that it should be time when you dare to stand alone before God and so, for me, any type of separation should be for that (if that is the route I take) and not just because I want to get away from the SU. If God is to be at the center of my marriage, I cannot just put him aside for the sake of my own mental and emotional comfort. To love someone is to be open to suffering (per Nouwen) and there is a need to trust that the risk to love someone is worth it.
Something Nouwen also talked about was how Jesus related to people for *their* sake and not his. His focus was not on satisfaction but responding to someone's real, deep need. Over these months of counseling with the SU, I have discovered very deep, unmet needs in my husband that make me grieve; things I had not really known or really thought about beyond the few times he mentioned them. Do I think there are things he needs to get kicked in the pants on? Oh, yes. But some of those kicked-in-the-pants behaviors are outward expressions of things he has never dealt with or maybe ever been able to deal with. How can I not at least feel compassion towards those places in my husband that are so wounded?
To do that, though, to stay and wait for God's timing versus my own, versus my own desires and expectations involves a big leap of faith. I want the fairy tale. I want the grand gesture and the passionate attempts to change. But I may not get anything like that and I may not get anything even close to it for a long time. I may very well be asking for things in a language the SU does not speak.
"But our lives are renewed every time we trust more. We take a leap of faith and trust only to see the next layer of possibility" (Nouwen, p. 53). If I am to trust God, I cannot expect to know the whole plan nor can I expect to use *my* definitions as the end result. If I take the leap of faith, I can only trust that God will see it and respond. What is the next layer of possibility? I don't know. It may be better communication. It may be the SU believing more that I love him and I do not have a list of pluses and minuses that I keep tallied up in my head which in turn releases him from some of his bondage. It may be me learning how to love in the midst of my own discomfort. It doesn't mean I can't want to know the outcome but it does mean that I don't necessarily know what it will look like nor should I put a label on it because the label immediately brings it back to ME and I start trying to bend things to what I feel the result should be rather than letting God work as he will. If I try to hard to create the result, I lose my trust. If I lose trust, I lose hope.
I don't want to do that.
I need to look beyond my own expectations. Is the SU where I want him to be? No. But God knows where he is.
God also knows where I am. In his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son , Nouwen talks about Rembrandt's painting of when the prodigal son returns home and he talks about having felt like both sons in the picture. His words concerning the elder son struck me:
"I came to see how I had lived a quite dutiful life...had always been obedient to my parents, my teachers, my bishops and my God. I had never run away from home, never wasted my time and money on sensual pursuits, and had never gotten lost in 'debauchery and drunkenness'. For my entire life, I had been quite responsible, traditional, and homebound. But with all of that, I may, in fact, have been just as lost as the younger son. I suddenly saw myself in a completely new way. I saw my jealousy, my anger, my touchiness, doggedness and sullenness, and most of all, my subtle self-righteousness. I saw how much of a complainer I was and how much of my thinking and feeling was riddled with resentment...I was the elder son for sure, but just as lost as his younger brother, even though I had stayed 'home' all my life" (Nouwen, p. 20).
He then goes on to talk about a friend of his with whom he shared his view of himself as the eldest son several months later. His friend said to him, "Whether you are the younger son or the elder son, you have to realized that you are called to become the father" (Nouwen, p. 22).
If I was to leave the SU now, I am pretty sure no one would fault me. They would say I have done everything I can reasonably be expected to do. But is that definition of "reasonable" accurate? Have I given myself and everything involved with this situation up to God including how I think it should go or does part of me sit in subtle judgment of the SU because he does not conform to expectations, because he does not seem to quickly and obediently respond to the good counsel and advice he has been given over and over by many who care for him?
That's not to say I can't be tired or need to vent or seek counsel. Trying to live in faith doesn't mean I am superhuman or that it all becomes easy. Trust me, my inner child is having a tantrum over this. "But I don't wanna!!" But two words keep coming back at me: all in. They were words I used when the SU asked me why I wasn't mad at God over what happened to our shop. I told him then that the things we lost were just stuff and I had to decide if the stuff was more important or if I was all in for God. Our pastor used those words in last week's sermon as well. "All in" means I can't hold back, can't choose what to experience and have to give. up.
That scares the pants off me. "Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be."
Am I called to wait?
"...marriage is foremost a vocation. Two people are called together to fulfill a mission that God has given them. Marriage is a spiritual reality. That is to say, a man and a woman come together for life, not just because they experience deep love for each other, but because they believe that God loves each of them with an infinite love and has called them to each other to be living witnesses of that love. To love is to embody God's infinite love in a faithful communion with another human being" (Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit).
God -
Help me to hear you and your desire for not just myself but my marriage. Help me to give up my expectations, my desires, my wants, for yours. Give me strength when I need it but also help me to be weak and rely upon you as well. Help me love when I feel I cannot or do not want to, to remember that the Spousal Unit is just as much yours as I am. Give me your heart for him.
Thank you for my husband. Thank you for the love he has given me and the joy he has brought me. Help me to remember those times when all I want to do is point out how 'bad' he is and be superior in that. Let me live in your timeline and not mine and to remember this prayer in the midst of the moment when I most want to lash out.
Help me change from the elder son into the father.
I want to be all in.
Amen
As far as school, I passed the Spring semester with all A's and will be starting my two Summer classes next week. This is the home stretch - two classes this summer and my Capstone this Fall and I will be DONE with this Master's degree. I'm alternating between "Woohoo!" and "Oh crap, the semester's starting again!". (My glass is never half-empty or half-full. It's both :)).
I have also been inducted into two national honor societies and, in a total surprise to which Sara was a witness, was named Student of the Year for my program. Color me absolutely boggled.
I have also continued with some of my goals - working on my Master's without killing myself. Managed to take most weekends off to spend with the Spousal Unit or at home. We did move to a lovely new apartment that I will post pictures of. I have also found some Bible-study type books and have been digging into those...which in turn is sending me into the dreaded character growth territory.
I also changed my ringtone to Fat-Bottomed Girls but that's neither here or nor there. Just hilarious to see people look around when my phone rings :).
Before I get into the rest of this, I want to say these are my thoughts about my own personal marital situation and I'm not advocating a one-size-fits-all mentality. Everyone needs to seek out God's answers for their own situation. So (deep breath), here we go:
Our therapist says that the SU and I have reached a crossroads. In his words, "at the risk of talking myself out of a job", it's time to make a choice. That choice is either separate or decide that I am okay/resigned to living with what the SU will give me for now and not count on anything changing (although in the therapist's POV, he believes there is potential for change for the better). In the words of Mutant Enemy: "Grrrr. Argh."
This has been and continues to be an incredibly difficult path to walk. I am very lucky to have a core group of women who have been praying for me and offering counsel or just a shoulder to cry on 'cause, believe you me, I've been doing some crying (and I am someone who hates to cry). After our session last week, I was pretty darn sure that separation was the next step until I got up the next morning at 5:30 and read Henri Nouwen's Turning My Mourning into Dancing for about two hours before the SU woke up.
One of Nouwen's points about experiencing solitude is that it should be time when you dare to stand alone before God and so, for me, any type of separation should be for that (if that is the route I take) and not just because I want to get away from the SU. If God is to be at the center of my marriage, I cannot just put him aside for the sake of my own mental and emotional comfort. To love someone is to be open to suffering (per Nouwen) and there is a need to trust that the risk to love someone is worth it.
Something Nouwen also talked about was how Jesus related to people for *their* sake and not his. His focus was not on satisfaction but responding to someone's real, deep need. Over these months of counseling with the SU, I have discovered very deep, unmet needs in my husband that make me grieve; things I had not really known or really thought about beyond the few times he mentioned them. Do I think there are things he needs to get kicked in the pants on? Oh, yes. But some of those kicked-in-the-pants behaviors are outward expressions of things he has never dealt with or maybe ever been able to deal with. How can I not at least feel compassion towards those places in my husband that are so wounded?
To do that, though, to stay and wait for God's timing versus my own, versus my own desires and expectations involves a big leap of faith. I want the fairy tale. I want the grand gesture and the passionate attempts to change. But I may not get anything like that and I may not get anything even close to it for a long time. I may very well be asking for things in a language the SU does not speak.
"But our lives are renewed every time we trust more. We take a leap of faith and trust only to see the next layer of possibility" (Nouwen, p. 53). If I am to trust God, I cannot expect to know the whole plan nor can I expect to use *my* definitions as the end result. If I take the leap of faith, I can only trust that God will see it and respond. What is the next layer of possibility? I don't know. It may be better communication. It may be the SU believing more that I love him and I do not have a list of pluses and minuses that I keep tallied up in my head which in turn releases him from some of his bondage. It may be me learning how to love in the midst of my own discomfort. It doesn't mean I can't want to know the outcome but it does mean that I don't necessarily know what it will look like nor should I put a label on it because the label immediately brings it back to ME and I start trying to bend things to what I feel the result should be rather than letting God work as he will. If I try to hard to create the result, I lose my trust. If I lose trust, I lose hope.
I don't want to do that.
I need to look beyond my own expectations. Is the SU where I want him to be? No. But God knows where he is.
God also knows where I am. In his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son , Nouwen talks about Rembrandt's painting of when the prodigal son returns home and he talks about having felt like both sons in the picture. His words concerning the elder son struck me:
"I came to see how I had lived a quite dutiful life...had always been obedient to my parents, my teachers, my bishops and my God. I had never run away from home, never wasted my time and money on sensual pursuits, and had never gotten lost in 'debauchery and drunkenness'. For my entire life, I had been quite responsible, traditional, and homebound. But with all of that, I may, in fact, have been just as lost as the younger son. I suddenly saw myself in a completely new way. I saw my jealousy, my anger, my touchiness, doggedness and sullenness, and most of all, my subtle self-righteousness. I saw how much of a complainer I was and how much of my thinking and feeling was riddled with resentment...I was the elder son for sure, but just as lost as his younger brother, even though I had stayed 'home' all my life" (Nouwen, p. 20).
He then goes on to talk about a friend of his with whom he shared his view of himself as the eldest son several months later. His friend said to him, "Whether you are the younger son or the elder son, you have to realized that you are called to become the father" (Nouwen, p. 22).
If I was to leave the SU now, I am pretty sure no one would fault me. They would say I have done everything I can reasonably be expected to do. But is that definition of "reasonable" accurate? Have I given myself and everything involved with this situation up to God including how I think it should go or does part of me sit in subtle judgment of the SU because he does not conform to expectations, because he does not seem to quickly and obediently respond to the good counsel and advice he has been given over and over by many who care for him?
That's not to say I can't be tired or need to vent or seek counsel. Trying to live in faith doesn't mean I am superhuman or that it all becomes easy. Trust me, my inner child is having a tantrum over this. "But I don't wanna!!" But two words keep coming back at me: all in. They were words I used when the SU asked me why I wasn't mad at God over what happened to our shop. I told him then that the things we lost were just stuff and I had to decide if the stuff was more important or if I was all in for God. Our pastor used those words in last week's sermon as well. "All in" means I can't hold back, can't choose what to experience and have to give. up.
That scares the pants off me. "Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be."
Am I called to wait?
"...marriage is foremost a vocation. Two people are called together to fulfill a mission that God has given them. Marriage is a spiritual reality. That is to say, a man and a woman come together for life, not just because they experience deep love for each other, but because they believe that God loves each of them with an infinite love and has called them to each other to be living witnesses of that love. To love is to embody God's infinite love in a faithful communion with another human being" (Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit).
God -
Help me to hear you and your desire for not just myself but my marriage. Help me to give up my expectations, my desires, my wants, for yours. Give me strength when I need it but also help me to be weak and rely upon you as well. Help me love when I feel I cannot or do not want to, to remember that the Spousal Unit is just as much yours as I am. Give me your heart for him.
Thank you for my husband. Thank you for the love he has given me and the joy he has brought me. Help me to remember those times when all I want to do is point out how 'bad' he is and be superior in that. Let me live in your timeline and not mine and to remember this prayer in the midst of the moment when I most want to lash out.
Help me change from the elder son into the father.
I want to be all in.
Amen
14 March 2013
Back in the saddle again
Didn't realize it had been so long since I'd written anything. I'd written lots of posts in my head but until they perfect that head-to-blog transfer, I guess I'm kinda out of luck...
I haven't kept up with posting twice a month to Project 365 so I'll have to see if I can do better with that. I do think I've made progress in having a life along with finishing my Master's. I don't spend nearly as many Saturdays at the coffee shop as I was last semester. It's been kind of nice to wake up on Saturdays and just be able to sip coffee, play some Fishdom and leisurely get ready to start my day.
I am also now in maintenance on the diet and have been for about a month. I've lost about 4 more pounds because I am getting back to pre-diet, pre-injury levels of exercise. I am still being careful about my spine but I am able to do more and have less pain overall (and be able to walk upright) so I'm cautiously testing where my new limits are.
The SU continues his battle. We agreed he would go on Antabuse and he asked me to give him the pills every day so I would be sure he took them. He made a comment about how he would probably test it at some point and I told him I reserved the right to point and mock if it made him vomit his organs out his nose. Well, he first achieved 30 days sobriety, then decided to test the drug and it was rather frightening.
I did not point and mock. I'm not going to go all into the details but there was one point I thought he had died in front of me and another point when he was responsive that I thought he must be having a stroke. When I went to grab my phone to call 911, he told me what he'd done. I started crying and he kept telling me he was sorry. When he could finally get up and went into the bedroom, I followed to grab my pillow and spend the night on the couch as is general procedure (that or a hotel) when this happens.
I was sitting out there and flipping through Ephesians on my phone (book we're studying in church) and came across part of Chapter 3 (14-19) and felt I was supposed to pray those for the SU so I did. Then God told me to go into the bedroom and tell him I loved him - that my love was firm. That brought about the "Really, God?" conversation He and I have on occasion.
But I did what He asked and hauled my carcass off the couch to go in and talk to the SU. I am glad I did. I have seen changes in him as he's prayed consistently and worked on his sobriety for the past month and those changes were apparent and helped to keep my heart soft. There seemed to be some genuine sorry and repentance in his apology and I got the impression he was relieved I came back to talk with him. I also shared with him how scared he'd made me and my anger is not necessarily at *him* but rather the foolhardy and dangerous risks he takes with his life and health - that he is better than he tells himself he is and has value to many people. He told me the next day that he's learned some things: he actually prefers sobriety to drinking, he can do 30 days and more, and Antabuse is nothing to mess with (no kidding on the last one!). He also said we deserve better and he wants to work to give it to us.
So we are back in the beginnings of sobriety and at Step One again. I'm okay with it. I love my husband. He can do this.
I haven't kept up with posting twice a month to Project 365 so I'll have to see if I can do better with that. I do think I've made progress in having a life along with finishing my Master's. I don't spend nearly as many Saturdays at the coffee shop as I was last semester. It's been kind of nice to wake up on Saturdays and just be able to sip coffee, play some Fishdom and leisurely get ready to start my day.
I am also now in maintenance on the diet and have been for about a month. I've lost about 4 more pounds because I am getting back to pre-diet, pre-injury levels of exercise. I am still being careful about my spine but I am able to do more and have less pain overall (and be able to walk upright) so I'm cautiously testing where my new limits are.
The SU continues his battle. We agreed he would go on Antabuse and he asked me to give him the pills every day so I would be sure he took them. He made a comment about how he would probably test it at some point and I told him I reserved the right to point and mock if it made him vomit his organs out his nose. Well, he first achieved 30 days sobriety, then decided to test the drug and it was rather frightening.
I did not point and mock. I'm not going to go all into the details but there was one point I thought he had died in front of me and another point when he was responsive that I thought he must be having a stroke. When I went to grab my phone to call 911, he told me what he'd done. I started crying and he kept telling me he was sorry. When he could finally get up and went into the bedroom, I followed to grab my pillow and spend the night on the couch as is general procedure (that or a hotel) when this happens.
I was sitting out there and flipping through Ephesians on my phone (book we're studying in church) and came across part of Chapter 3 (14-19) and felt I was supposed to pray those for the SU so I did. Then God told me to go into the bedroom and tell him I loved him - that my love was firm. That brought about the "Really, God?" conversation He and I have on occasion.
But I did what He asked and hauled my carcass off the couch to go in and talk to the SU. I am glad I did. I have seen changes in him as he's prayed consistently and worked on his sobriety for the past month and those changes were apparent and helped to keep my heart soft. There seemed to be some genuine sorry and repentance in his apology and I got the impression he was relieved I came back to talk with him. I also shared with him how scared he'd made me and my anger is not necessarily at *him* but rather the foolhardy and dangerous risks he takes with his life and health - that he is better than he tells himself he is and has value to many people. He told me the next day that he's learned some things: he actually prefers sobriety to drinking, he can do 30 days and more, and Antabuse is nothing to mess with (no kidding on the last one!). He also said we deserve better and he wants to work to give it to us.
So we are back in the beginnings of sobriety and at Step One again. I'm okay with it. I love my husband. He can do this.
08 October 2012
Issues. We all got 'em. (Some of us even have subscriptions)
It's nice and quiet in the office right now. That will probably end in the next few minutes *g* but I thought I would take a few moments and try to update since my goal is to become semi-regular at this blog thing!
The Spousal Unit and I continue to move forward, stumbling sometimes but still together. I received a very polite slap upside the head from a good friend about setting up an initial counseling appointment. I keep meaning to do so, however, I will admit that I have let work and school continually push that task down the line into the "do later" column. I have promised I will call the two provided names this week and figure out who I want to set up the appointment with. The only requirement the SU has put forth is whichever one we use has to be okay with cursing (you can take the man out of the Navy, but...).
The SU agreeing to go is good. It's agreement more on the side of "if you want to go/think we need to go, I'll go" but I'll take it. It's better than outright refusal. The only thing I really wonder about is how open and honest he will be. When I've asked him that, I get a variety of answers. Most of them seem to revolve around some convoluted version of "I'll try"; his walls have walls by this point. He has said some things to me that have just broken my heart because I know that is not how other me, God or our friends see him. But to hear him talk about how he sees himself...is just heart-wrenchingly painful. My hope is that with working his sobriety and continued pastoral and other counseling, he will be able to start being honest about the things that truly, truly bother him or that are hard to deal with for him; that he'll be able to start putting that stuff in the garbage pile and rebuild his self-image the way God sees him. And rebuild his relationship with God while he is at it.
Yeah...nothing too big :P.
I see my first new advisee today and then the appointments slowly start ramping up (please see pics of boxes o'students in Project 365 post below :)). I've advised in the past - some planned, some impromptu - so I should be okay with it and will learn more of the ins and outs of this particular program as I go. Having things to do is good, yes?
My main thought at this point is I'm almost halfway through the semester. This semester continues to feel like an albatross around my neck for some reason. It might be because I'm having to deal with a finance course and that is not my bailiwick. At all. When the instructor asked us to introduce ourselves and what we wanted to get out of this course, I said that finance was like a foreign language to me and I wanted to become more proficient than being able to ask where the bathroom is :).
I think I'm grasping enough and I was able to create my annotated bibliography for my literature review and pull out necessary threads to make a coherent paper but it *feels* harder than other semesters have - even the semester I took Research Methods. I spent three hours Saturday (8am-11am) and three hours Sunday (6am-9am) working on the lit review so I can try and have the rough done by this week and start on the policy paper. Both are not due until the week of Thanksgiving but there are several analytic essays *also* coming down the pike and it makes me all Kermit the Frog:
And, finally:
Dear Providers of My Doctor's Office Supplement/Diet Program -
I would like to make a suggestion. When confronted by the first supplement of the day, perhaps one should not have to look at a drink that is the color of a urine sample that bodes no good for the donor.
Just a thought...
TCH
The Spousal Unit and I continue to move forward, stumbling sometimes but still together. I received a very polite slap upside the head from a good friend about setting up an initial counseling appointment. I keep meaning to do so, however, I will admit that I have let work and school continually push that task down the line into the "do later" column. I have promised I will call the two provided names this week and figure out who I want to set up the appointment with. The only requirement the SU has put forth is whichever one we use has to be okay with cursing (you can take the man out of the Navy, but...).
The SU agreeing to go is good. It's agreement more on the side of "if you want to go/think we need to go, I'll go" but I'll take it. It's better than outright refusal. The only thing I really wonder about is how open and honest he will be. When I've asked him that, I get a variety of answers. Most of them seem to revolve around some convoluted version of "I'll try"; his walls have walls by this point. He has said some things to me that have just broken my heart because I know that is not how other me, God or our friends see him. But to hear him talk about how he sees himself...is just heart-wrenchingly painful. My hope is that with working his sobriety and continued pastoral and other counseling, he will be able to start being honest about the things that truly, truly bother him or that are hard to deal with for him; that he'll be able to start putting that stuff in the garbage pile and rebuild his self-image the way God sees him. And rebuild his relationship with God while he is at it.
Yeah...nothing too big :P.
I see my first new advisee today and then the appointments slowly start ramping up (please see pics of boxes o'students in Project 365 post below :)). I've advised in the past - some planned, some impromptu - so I should be okay with it and will learn more of the ins and outs of this particular program as I go. Having things to do is good, yes?
My main thought at this point is I'm almost halfway through the semester. This semester continues to feel like an albatross around my neck for some reason. It might be because I'm having to deal with a finance course and that is not my bailiwick. At all. When the instructor asked us to introduce ourselves and what we wanted to get out of this course, I said that finance was like a foreign language to me and I wanted to become more proficient than being able to ask where the bathroom is :).
I think I'm grasping enough and I was able to create my annotated bibliography for my literature review and pull out necessary threads to make a coherent paper but it *feels* harder than other semesters have - even the semester I took Research Methods. I spent three hours Saturday (8am-11am) and three hours Sunday (6am-9am) working on the lit review so I can try and have the rough done by this week and start on the policy paper. Both are not due until the week of Thanksgiving but there are several analytic essays *also* coming down the pike and it makes me all Kermit the Frog:
And, finally:
Dear Providers of My Doctor's Office Supplement/Diet Program -
I would like to make a suggestion. When confronted by the first supplement of the day, perhaps one should not have to look at a drink that is the color of a urine sample that bodes no good for the donor.
Just a thought...
TCH
13 August 2012
Posting twice in one month...where's my handbasket?
The Spousal Unit and I went to see The Dark Knight Rises Saturday. It was a good end to Nolan's version of Batman although probably not the best of the three. That honor, IMO, goes to The Dark Knight. While Batman Begins started off Nolan's version of Batman in a credible way, it still has Katie Holmes (pre-Crazy Tom Cruise) and nothing can overcome the black hole that is Katie Holmes attempting to act.
The only thing I really didn't care for was the way the sound was mixed. Tom Hardy (Bane) is already acting with a handicap since he has a mask over the majority of his face that electronically distorts his voice. That alone made some lines hard to understand. It was worse when the soundtrack came booming in. Now, I loves me some Hans Zimmer but Hans also loves his percussion for the Batman movies, and the sound mixer constantly left the soundtrack at levels above the speaking/looped voices of the actors, leading to unprecendented levels of "What did he just say?" looks between the Spousal Unit and me. Still, it was not nearly the nausea-inducing experience that seeing The Avengers in IMAX *and* 3D was. Gah. Never, ever doing that again.
After the movie, we re-created our second date ever when we went grocery shopping :).
The SU is doing all right. He's maintaining at this point and I have give him the room and the grace to make his own decisions - although that doesn't mean I don't search his usual hidey-holes. I did go to a support group on Friday night but I don't think it's a format/group that is going to work for me. The church that is running it is obviously doing something right based on the number of people there but there were some drawbacks to my experience:
1. It took me three calls over two days just to get someone to verify that the support groups still met there and the groups weren't simply issue-centric (e.g. AA versus Al-Anon). I understand the guy who is in charge and his assistant were in a conference at the church over those two days but nobody I talked to on the phone seemed to know anything and that was a little disheartening and not very welcoming.
2. The small group I was in was *very* small - as in I was the only other person besides the leader for about the first five minutes. The leader also didn't seem to be very good at facilitating. I understand about crosstalk, etc., but if no one had anything to say, we just sat there...in silence. *singsong voice* Awkward! *end singsong voice*
I may look at some other, similar groups to try them out or I may look at one or two other avenues as far as support and confidentiality.
On other topics:
Question for anyone that has a Kindle. Do you buy books that you already have paper copies of and, if so, are you keeping the paper copies? I buy a mix of both new-to-me books and books I already have. I have been giving away some of them and keeping those that are out of print or hard to find but I'm debating not keeping those, either. We live in an apartment and it is a small apartment. What does anyone else do?
(Oh, and Bug, I found one more Mary Russell hiding in the back of my bookcase that apparently missed being sent in the first batch. If you want it, send me your address again...)
Went to the doctor Friday and the low dose of the meds wasn't working at all. No change. At this point, it's starting to come down to the Hail Mary pass (thank you, John Sheppard) because nothing really seems to be getting the point across to my pancreas that it is not on an indefinite vacation, thankyouverymuch. So, I talked with my doc who apologized for being just about out of ideas, and I'm going to do the medicine one more month at the high level to see if it will at least jump start the stupid organ like it did the first time I used it. Then, I'm going to attempt a particular diet plan that is supposed to help restore pancreatic function. If that doesn't work, then I will just consider myself beautiful at whatever size I remain.
Reason #487,592,293 why I don't use Bing as a search engine: it keeps trying to suggest that I am somehow interested in Jennifer Aniston. Um, no.
And I am ridiculously addicted to this game:
$140 million and rising...
The only thing I really didn't care for was the way the sound was mixed. Tom Hardy (Bane) is already acting with a handicap since he has a mask over the majority of his face that electronically distorts his voice. That alone made some lines hard to understand. It was worse when the soundtrack came booming in. Now, I loves me some Hans Zimmer but Hans also loves his percussion for the Batman movies, and the sound mixer constantly left the soundtrack at levels above the speaking/looped voices of the actors, leading to unprecendented levels of "What did he just say?" looks between the Spousal Unit and me. Still, it was not nearly the nausea-inducing experience that seeing The Avengers in IMAX *and* 3D was. Gah. Never, ever doing that again.
After the movie, we re-created our second date ever when we went grocery shopping :).
The SU is doing all right. He's maintaining at this point and I have give him the room and the grace to make his own decisions - although that doesn't mean I don't search his usual hidey-holes. I did go to a support group on Friday night but I don't think it's a format/group that is going to work for me. The church that is running it is obviously doing something right based on the number of people there but there were some drawbacks to my experience:
1. It took me three calls over two days just to get someone to verify that the support groups still met there and the groups weren't simply issue-centric (e.g. AA versus Al-Anon). I understand the guy who is in charge and his assistant were in a conference at the church over those two days but nobody I talked to on the phone seemed to know anything and that was a little disheartening and not very welcoming.
2. The small group I was in was *very* small - as in I was the only other person besides the leader for about the first five minutes. The leader also didn't seem to be very good at facilitating. I understand about crosstalk, etc., but if no one had anything to say, we just sat there...in silence. *singsong voice* Awkward! *end singsong voice*
I may look at some other, similar groups to try them out or I may look at one or two other avenues as far as support and confidentiality.
On other topics:
Question for anyone that has a Kindle. Do you buy books that you already have paper copies of and, if so, are you keeping the paper copies? I buy a mix of both new-to-me books and books I already have. I have been giving away some of them and keeping those that are out of print or hard to find but I'm debating not keeping those, either. We live in an apartment and it is a small apartment. What does anyone else do?
(Oh, and Bug, I found one more Mary Russell hiding in the back of my bookcase that apparently missed being sent in the first batch. If you want it, send me your address again...)
Went to the doctor Friday and the low dose of the meds wasn't working at all. No change. At this point, it's starting to come down to the Hail Mary pass (thank you, John Sheppard) because nothing really seems to be getting the point across to my pancreas that it is not on an indefinite vacation, thankyouverymuch. So, I talked with my doc who apologized for being just about out of ideas, and I'm going to do the medicine one more month at the high level to see if it will at least jump start the stupid organ like it did the first time I used it. Then, I'm going to attempt a particular diet plan that is supposed to help restore pancreatic function. If that doesn't work, then I will just consider myself beautiful at whatever size I remain.
Reason #487,592,293 why I don't use Bing as a search engine: it keeps trying to suggest that I am somehow interested in Jennifer Aniston. Um, no.
And I am ridiculously addicted to this game:
$140 million and rising...
15 June 2012
10 May 2012
Wow.
I saw this in a news article and clicked on the link to the video. Lacey (his mom) is right. I fell in love with Christian just watching her hold him and tell their story.
20 April 2012
Wandering
"Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith. And yet I continue to live in a world the way a religious person lives in the world; I keep living in a world that I know to be enchanted, and not left alone. I doubt; I am uncertain; I am restless, prone to wander. And yet glimmers of holy keep interrupting my gaze."
- Lauren Winner "Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis"
- Lauren Winner "Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis"
28 March 2012
Weddings, Midterms and Various, Assorted Other Junk
Well, I *finally* finished the blanket I was working on for Rylie's (my oldest granddaughter) birthday next month:
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That's the second thing I've ever knitted. It was 150 stitches for each row and ended up being about 42" long and 35" wide. I bound a multi-colored skein of yarn and used that for the fringe. There were one or two missed stitches but, all in all, I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. We took it to my Kristy's wedding (my oldest daughter) since Jess (youngest daughter and holder of grandchildren) was going to be there with our granddaughter, Emery. It got use for Emery's nap so I guess that's kind of a seal of approval :).
I'm also wanting to try something more complicated now that I've finally figured out purling. I kept making unintentional yarnovers until I watched Yarn Store Lady (YSL) again a few weeks ago. The light bulb moment came when I realized YSL was bringing the working yarn around in front *before* she purled. Duh! So I have in mind a lace pattern scarf made from silk alpaca and a blanket for Emery that alternates knitting, purling, and slipping...or using the yarn to strangle myself when I go insane from trying this! It's a tossup :).
Kristy's wedding was really nice. They were originally going to get married in August but it was becoming a hassle. They had planned a small wedding but there was apparently some potential drama with people thinking they were invited, wondering why they weren't invited, etc. So they moved it up to March and basically had family and just a few friends. God was very awesome in the manner of our Federal tax return so we could afford the plane tickets, rental car and hotel and not have to worry about it, and it was lovely to watch the Spousal Unit give away our "little girl".
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We went up on Friday, came back Sunday night, and Monday was full of seeing old friends. Last night, though, was the dreaded Research Methods midterm. Professor X gave very few clues about the content of the midterm other than he expected us to write about 20 pages and that he expected us to fully explain and defend the choices we made in our answers. I wrote for about 2.5 hours straight. Here are some of the questions:
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That's the second thing I've ever knitted. It was 150 stitches for each row and ended up being about 42" long and 35" wide. I bound a multi-colored skein of yarn and used that for the fringe. There were one or two missed stitches but, all in all, I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. We took it to my Kristy's wedding (my oldest daughter) since Jess (youngest daughter and holder of grandchildren) was going to be there with our granddaughter, Emery. It got use for Emery's nap so I guess that's kind of a seal of approval :).
I'm also wanting to try something more complicated now that I've finally figured out purling. I kept making unintentional yarnovers until I watched Yarn Store Lady (YSL) again a few weeks ago. The light bulb moment came when I realized YSL was bringing the working yarn around in front *before* she purled. Duh! So I have in mind a lace pattern scarf made from silk alpaca and a blanket for Emery that alternates knitting, purling, and slipping...or using the yarn to strangle myself when I go insane from trying this! It's a tossup :).
Kristy's wedding was really nice. They were originally going to get married in August but it was becoming a hassle. They had planned a small wedding but there was apparently some potential drama with people thinking they were invited, wondering why they weren't invited, etc. So they moved it up to March and basically had family and just a few friends. God was very awesome in the manner of our Federal tax return so we could afford the plane tickets, rental car and hotel and not have to worry about it, and it was lovely to watch the Spousal Unit give away our "little girl".
.JPG)
We went up on Friday, came back Sunday night, and Monday was full of seeing old friends. Last night, though, was the dreaded Research Methods midterm. Professor X gave very few clues about the content of the midterm other than he expected us to write about 20 pages and that he expected us to fully explain and defend the choices we made in our answers. I wrote for about 2.5 hours straight. Here are some of the questions:
What is a variable?
What is the difference between an “independent” variable and a “dependent”
variable? What does it mean to operationalize a variable? How do variables
contribute to the research process? In your discussion, note the “stages” for
developing a variable, i.e., taking a variable from concept to application in
research?
What are three measures of central
tendency? Discuss each fully. Which of these three measures is the
preferred measure of central tendency?
Why? What is dispersion? How do we measure it? How does this concept
work with central tendency? In your
response, you must demonstrate deficiencies of other measures as well as the
strengths of the measure you select, i.e., you must discuss each fully. Which of these two concepts
(dispersion/central tendency) is most important and why?
My only thought as I left last night was "why did I think a Master's was a good idea again?" I'm honestly worried about how I did on this exam. I don't feel like I answered the questions as fully as I should have and it's going to bring down my grade in a bad, ugly way. I know, realistically, there is nothing that I can do about it now and I wrote down everything I did know and tried to explain and/or defend but...yeah, not happy.
The good part of this week is we got to see some really good friends of ours who, now that we've moved to Arkansas, we don't get to see unless they are coming through the state on their way to Texas. But, lo and behold, they did and we got to spend some time with John and Jen and their kids - three out of four whom we've known gestationally :). Aidan (or Monkey) is my special bud and his sister Eleasa (Beanie) loves me too (and I love them). Samuel, the oldest, had been writing a worship song on the trip and showed it to both Mike and me. Mike made sure to give him his very best worship leader critique :).
.JPG)
We met them while they had dinner and then agreed to meet them at their hotel pool a little later. It was when we were getting into the car that I noticed Mike making a face and rolling his eyes. I told him that I could go to the hotel by myself if he wanted and he said, no, that wasn't it. Later on, he told me that God had chosen that exact moment to explain why He had told us not to put down roots in Arkansas (e.g., not buy a house, etc). According to God, it's because we will ultimately be returning to our old stomping grounds to once again to work with John and Jen in their new church at some point. The reactions of the Spousal Unit and me to this news were largely the same:
*look up at the sky* "Really? I mean...really? You're kidding, right?"
'Cause, dang, it's not like I don't have people I love back there (hello, see pictures above) but I *like* where I am now. I like my town, my apartment, my job, my friends. If God really wants us to go back, He's going to have to make it quite readily apparent.
(oh man, that's just like throwing down the gauntlet, isn't it?)
The Spousal Unit and me...we're just gonna let that one percolate for a while.
07 February 2012
The State of WTF
(which is actually the initials for my on-line name but, in some ways, also encompasses my life lately...)
I have good intentions of getting more blogging done, taking pictures, etc., but my brain and my general emotional state seem to have me in a state of overall inertia.
First, there is school. There is always school. I'm taking two classes this semester for my Master's and I'm kind of freaking out over one of them. When I took an undergrad Research Methods class, I did well. I understood the material, I was able to write my paper using the necessary procedures, design my survey, etc. This time, it seems a LOT more stats-based which is the first thing that is wigging me out. I have never taken a stats course in my life. Once I passed the requisite high school and college math, I have not bothered with another math course ever.
Second is the idea we are having a midterm based on the book and the lecture notes. Now, I read and I study and I listen in class. But the book itself is so chock-full of vocabulary and examples and the lectures are also very dense. The midterm itself will consist of one question (one of those questions that is actually made up of several questions and you have to unravel it like you would a ball of yarn) and we have to be able to demonstrate - using the info from the book and the lectures but not having access to them - how we would set up the study, define the variables, what scales we would use, etc. Pardon me while I do my Kermit the Frog impression again:
I *was* able to piggyback both my projects off each other which helps in that I am at least not researching two entirely different subjects but I'm also seizing about trying to get these journal articles read, follow the research and write a coherent paper for both classes - not to mention create a Powerpoint presentation which will be part of the fifty percent of our final grade for Research Methods.
(The topic I am researching this semester is sexual assault on female military personnel looking specifically at Iraq and Afghanistan active duty and veterans. I have several years of stats, what each branch of the military has attempted to do re: prevention and education, statistics on end results of prosecuted cases, and if the changes in how the crime can be reported has changed the amount being reported and so on.)
So, you know, add all that in to my regular work day and my brain keeps freaking out over how I'm not going to get done, how I'm so far behind (these projects will be due in May) and just general OMGWTFBBQ!! going on in the back of my head...and all still in Homer Simpson's voice...which is at least entertaining in a weird, twisted way :).
On the home front, there have been some really good things happening. We filed our state and federal returns and, since we sucked it up so bad last year, we get money back. Enough to get us to our daughter's wedding this summer (yay!). We've also gotten some of the shop bills paid off and should have nearly all of them completed by April (yay again!). However, in the midst of all that...long story short, the Spousal Unit has an issue he has been working on. I found out about it last January and it was a long road back with regaining trust. Just last month, I found out he has been letting me think he has been successful in working on this issue but has, in fact, been stumbling regularly. So now we're full circle back to the trust and some anger again.
I believe he is truly sorry and is working in earnest again. And I'm finding it...not "easier" but, having been here before, I know more what to expect, I guess? To that end, I work on being the wife God has called me to be versus the wife I sometimes want to be when the anger comes up again. However, I'm finding that it is affecting me differently this time and it took me a while to pinpoint it. I spent a lot of the last year cheerleading and supporting and I just feel like the well is dry at this point both in that arena and my relationship with God. I'm trying to still spend time each morning with Him before I start work with my reading and some prayer, but I can see where I'm just reading to check the block and my prayers are either very short or I just tell Him "hey, I got nothin'." I know I need to keep in God's word and presence so that I have the reserves I need to be the helpmeet and to (hopefully) beat back the times when I really just want to verbally eviscerate him (which I can be scarily good at). Still, I just don't seem to care about keeping my morning "date", so to speak, all that much right now. It's pro forma rather than because I want to.
Shoot, knitting's about the only thing I enjoy right now because it's mindless and I can just watch my hands do stitch after stitch and I don't have to think - except about keeping the cats away from my working yarn :). Anyway, I don't mean to be all depressing but I figure if I'm going to have a blog, I need to write about the good as well as the bad. I know God is here and I know He will help but I'd like to get it back out of the solely intellectual "knowing" and back more into the relationship "knowing", if that makes sense.
A little less Kermit the Frog would be nice...
I have good intentions of getting more blogging done, taking pictures, etc., but my brain and my general emotional state seem to have me in a state of overall inertia.
First, there is school. There is always school. I'm taking two classes this semester for my Master's and I'm kind of freaking out over one of them. When I took an undergrad Research Methods class, I did well. I understood the material, I was able to write my paper using the necessary procedures, design my survey, etc. This time, it seems a LOT more stats-based which is the first thing that is wigging me out. I have never taken a stats course in my life. Once I passed the requisite high school and college math, I have not bothered with another math course ever.
Second is the idea we are having a midterm based on the book and the lecture notes. Now, I read and I study and I listen in class. But the book itself is so chock-full of vocabulary and examples and the lectures are also very dense. The midterm itself will consist of one question (one of those questions that is actually made up of several questions and you have to unravel it like you would a ball of yarn) and we have to be able to demonstrate - using the info from the book and the lectures but not having access to them - how we would set up the study, define the variables, what scales we would use, etc. Pardon me while I do my Kermit the Frog impression again:
I *was* able to piggyback both my projects off each other which helps in that I am at least not researching two entirely different subjects but I'm also seizing about trying to get these journal articles read, follow the research and write a coherent paper for both classes - not to mention create a Powerpoint presentation which will be part of the fifty percent of our final grade for Research Methods.
(The topic I am researching this semester is sexual assault on female military personnel looking specifically at Iraq and Afghanistan active duty and veterans. I have several years of stats, what each branch of the military has attempted to do re: prevention and education, statistics on end results of prosecuted cases, and if the changes in how the crime can be reported has changed the amount being reported and so on.)
So, you know, add all that in to my regular work day and my brain keeps freaking out over how I'm not going to get done, how I'm so far behind (these projects will be due in May) and just general OMGWTFBBQ!! going on in the back of my head...and all still in Homer Simpson's voice...which is at least entertaining in a weird, twisted way :).
On the home front, there have been some really good things happening. We filed our state and federal returns and, since we sucked it up so bad last year, we get money back. Enough to get us to our daughter's wedding this summer (yay!). We've also gotten some of the shop bills paid off and should have nearly all of them completed by April (yay again!). However, in the midst of all that...long story short, the Spousal Unit has an issue he has been working on. I found out about it last January and it was a long road back with regaining trust. Just last month, I found out he has been letting me think he has been successful in working on this issue but has, in fact, been stumbling regularly. So now we're full circle back to the trust and some anger again.
I believe he is truly sorry and is working in earnest again. And I'm finding it...not "easier" but, having been here before, I know more what to expect, I guess? To that end, I work on being the wife God has called me to be versus the wife I sometimes want to be when the anger comes up again. However, I'm finding that it is affecting me differently this time and it took me a while to pinpoint it. I spent a lot of the last year cheerleading and supporting and I just feel like the well is dry at this point both in that arena and my relationship with God. I'm trying to still spend time each morning with Him before I start work with my reading and some prayer, but I can see where I'm just reading to check the block and my prayers are either very short or I just tell Him "hey, I got nothin'." I know I need to keep in God's word and presence so that I have the reserves I need to be the helpmeet and to (hopefully) beat back the times when I really just want to verbally eviscerate him (which I can be scarily good at). Still, I just don't seem to care about keeping my morning "date", so to speak, all that much right now. It's pro forma rather than because I want to.
Shoot, knitting's about the only thing I enjoy right now because it's mindless and I can just watch my hands do stitch after stitch and I don't have to think - except about keeping the cats away from my working yarn :). Anyway, I don't mean to be all depressing but I figure if I'm going to have a blog, I need to write about the good as well as the bad. I know God is here and I know He will help but I'd like to get it back out of the solely intellectual "knowing" and back more into the relationship "knowing", if that makes sense.
A little less Kermit the Frog would be nice...
21 September 2011
At the tone, please leave a (new) message...
Continuing on over here in my little corner of the world...
Had a wee bit of a financial setback when the Spousal Unit's car blew up. Say hello to a new head gasket and goodbye to...well, a good chunk of change. It isn't like we haven't been here before but, still, there was that bit of holding my breath and waiting for the next shoe to drop as had been happening pretty regularly over the past few years. Sometimes it's a lot more work to remember my brain needs to be more on the "God has provided and will continue to provide" side of things and less on the Chicken Little in the back of my brain yearning to break free and declare DOOOOOOOOOM.
(and while my brain tends to hear "DOOOOOOOOOM!" in a more stentorian, Darth Vader-ian voice, Chicken Little looks more like this:
Had a wee bit of a financial setback when the Spousal Unit's car blew up. Say hello to a new head gasket and goodbye to...well, a good chunk of change. It isn't like we haven't been here before but, still, there was that bit of holding my breath and waiting for the next shoe to drop as had been happening pretty regularly over the past few years. Sometimes it's a lot more work to remember my brain needs to be more on the "God has provided and will continue to provide" side of things and less on the Chicken Little in the back of my brain yearning to break free and declare DOOOOOOOOOM.
and that tends to make the Darth Vader voice start sounding like Foghorn Leghorn. It's a vicious cycle, I tells ya!)
The first semester of grad school is going pretty well from what I can see to date. I got my first assignments back and received an A- and a B+, which was where the old messages hit the fan. I can be somewhat hard on myself although I've improved over the years and, while I was bummed they weren't both A's, I was pleased that I'd navigated the assignments well enough to get good grades and I can see where I can improve.
Where I really got smacked in the face was when I talked to my mom. I try to call her regularly and was just chatting with her about school and told her I'd received my grades. She asked what they were and I told her. Her immediate comment was "Well, there is always room for improvement."
Cue me getting smacked upside the head with the Two-by-Four of My Childhood. In my family, it was always time for comparison shopping and I usually came out on the losing end whether it was me being compared to my brother, to other kids of my parent's friends, about my weight, or...pick anything. Through much of my life, I have never been good enough. There has always been something "wrong" with me and my family has been only too happy to tell me what it is - sometimes in excruciating detail.
What's the upshot of all that, er, feedback? God became a performance-based God. Love was conditional, based on how close I was able to come to the standard someone else believed I should aspire to. It took me years to work my way out of that and to understand that God loves me regardless of what grades I get, what my weight is, or how often I mess something up. I mean, yes, there are rules and I don't get to tiptoe through the daisies while setting off nuclear warheads a la Lyndon Johnson's famous commercial...
But. But God loves me and sees me as someone of worth to the point He came to Earth and died an excruciating, humiliating death to take away the need for a relationship based on performance, on law while daily running the risk that I (or any of us) could decide, eh, this is too much trouble and just turn our backs. And, like the prodigal son, if I did turn away and then come back, there wouldn't be any recriminations or lectures. It wouldn't matter what I'd done. He would throw a party.
So I sat in my chair after hanging up with my mom and thought about all that and I remembered a friend back from my old church. It was shortly before we moved and they had prayed for me in the service. As we were walking back to our seats, she said something (I don't remember what) in a teasing tone and I jokingly responded with "God likes me." Her response was. "He likes you a lot."
Yes. Yes, He does.
12 July 2011
The Power of Ugly
Been reading "The Power of Ugly" by Jamie Stilson on the recommendation of a friend. It's about taking off religious masks and understanding that we are flawed, that God's grace is reflected in our weaknesses and not in our ability to handle everything that comes at us with grace and aplomb.
Some quotes that have stood out to me:
"It is so easy to give others the truth of the Bible and never care enough to hear their story."
"...the truth that Jesus' resurrection was the beginning of the New Creation that God has promised - the restoration of all things. His resurrection promised that our bodies will live again in a new heaven and new earth (2 Pet 3:13) - and this gives hope to all of creation! This hope is the guarantee that nothing we do in Jesus' name is ever wasted."
"In the midst of all his loss and suffering, Job's answer to all of God's questions was to lay his understanding at the feet of the one he worshipped."
"Trust must replace questions if we are going to move past pretty worship and experience Ugly Worship. Who God is must be enough, or the answers to our questions will become our god."
"After meany years of seeking and following Jesus, I have found this to be my experience, too. It does not weaken my faith to have more questions than answers; it strengthens it."
"Isaiah saw himself in the light of the glory of who Jesus was...All Isaiah could say, as he marveled at this glorious Jesus, was 'Woe is me!' (Isa 6:5, KJV). He was being broken. Like grapes, the sweetness doesn't come until after the crushing. What feels like being brutally broken often transforms us into people who are more like Jesus."
It's a reminder that God can use us despite our imperfections rather than us needing to be or act like some perfect creature. It's not that bumper sticker adage of "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven"; rather that sometimes being broken, being flawed and being "ugly" to use Jamie's phraseology can serve God much better than attempted perfection.
Some quotes that have stood out to me:
"It is so easy to give others the truth of the Bible and never care enough to hear their story."
"...the truth that Jesus' resurrection was the beginning of the New Creation that God has promised - the restoration of all things. His resurrection promised that our bodies will live again in a new heaven and new earth (2 Pet 3:13) - and this gives hope to all of creation! This hope is the guarantee that nothing we do in Jesus' name is ever wasted."
"In the midst of all his loss and suffering, Job's answer to all of God's questions was to lay his understanding at the feet of the one he worshipped."
"Trust must replace questions if we are going to move past pretty worship and experience Ugly Worship. Who God is must be enough, or the answers to our questions will become our god."
"After meany years of seeking and following Jesus, I have found this to be my experience, too. It does not weaken my faith to have more questions than answers; it strengthens it."
"Isaiah saw himself in the light of the glory of who Jesus was...All Isaiah could say, as he marveled at this glorious Jesus, was 'Woe is me!' (Isa 6:5, KJV). He was being broken. Like grapes, the sweetness doesn't come until after the crushing. What feels like being brutally broken often transforms us into people who are more like Jesus."
It's a reminder that God can use us despite our imperfections rather than us needing to be or act like some perfect creature. It's not that bumper sticker adage of "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven"; rather that sometimes being broken, being flawed and being "ugly" to use Jamie's phraseology can serve God much better than attempted perfection.
03 May 2011
Exhaustion, Endurance and Encouragement
I've been thinking (I know, you're shocked, aren't you?) over the past few days and weeks about the theme of exhaustion, endurance and encouragement. Most of it was in kind of an offhand way until I went to the Beth Moore conference with Sara . Most of my time at that event was more getting to know some of the women in the church since the Spousal Unit and I have only been in town and at our church for just about a year now and, let's face it, if you have (1) a blog descriptor that describes you as a hermit, and (2) a subject line that indicates misanthropy is an option, it might take you a bit of time to get to know folk :).
Anyway...
The thing that Beth said that made my brain perk up and take notice was this: "Endure the hard for the sake of the good." I've mused on or close to this topic before in earlier blog entries that talked about the coffee shop or some other things we have been through since then, but my brain started drawing some parallels to past experiences and then linking them up to current situations, moments and encounters, and...I dunno...maybe God just wanted to tap me on the shoulder and say, "Hey, think about this..."
Admittedly, my first thought when I heard Beth say that was "Yeah, but can someone tell me when the 'hard' is going to stop?" But, then again, sarcasm is my mother tongue so that thought went in and out fairly quickly 'cause it's nothing new.
What I started thinking about after my knee-jerk response faded was kinda two-pronged. One aspect was how tired I am physically, mentally, emotionally...just about any "ally" you can add. The other was about the good and bad of self-reliance and that's the one I'm gonna hit, I think.
I've been pretty self-reliant from a very young age - about the time I learned that I really could only count on me to watch out for me. On the good side of self-reliance is the ability I have to get out and get things done. On the not-so-good side is the shell I built up because I put everyone in the "can't really depend on them" category. Oh, I like people well enough but my normal modus operandi is you will get so far in a relationship/friendship with me and no farther. My ready answer to how I'm doing is "I'm fine." I don't even have to think about it. It just rolls off the tongue.
I think that is one of the reasons I was so drawn to mixed martial arts. You're loosely part of a team in that you all train together or around each other but your only real opponent is yourself. How far can you go? How much are you willing to push yourself to improve your skills? You get walloped in practice? You accept it and move on. You ignore the bloody nose and proudly point out the black and blue bruises to your teammates. Heck, I left one day with a hematoma on my shin the size of a baseball and tried to come in to train the next day. (Its name was Henry and I have pictures. It was cool :)). 'Cause when the cage door closes, it's just you and your skills against the person standing across from you.
But relying solely on yourself and your ability to endure is not necessarily a good thing. In my case, I took it past the level of "pain is weakness leaving the body" to "Hey, idiot. Pain is your body's way of telling you that you now have a permanent spinal injury. Congratulations." Go me!
I can see that same strain of self-reliance/endurance in my spiritual life. Just like in training, I get tired - really tired - but the little voice in my head says to suck it up and move on; get back to enduring. Otherwise, I feel so totally exposed. When I called Sara about potentially not going to see Beth Moore because of the SU's ill health, I suddenly found myself crying and I was absolutely mortified. I think I even apologized to her for what I felt was such an unseemly moment. Where was all my endurance? (Well, apparently snotting up the phone line but that's beside the point...:P).
And that thing I said about it just being you when the cage door closes? Not entirely true. Every fighter has what's called a "corner". Your corner generally consists of your trainer and at least one other person. They know your strengths and weakness and generally have experience of their own as well. They stand right outside the ring. Since you, as the fighter are in the middle of the action and can't really take an objective look at what's happening and are mostly relying on instinct, it's their job to call out strategy and encouragement during each round. A good fighter relies on their corner because he or she knows they have the fighter's best interests at heart.
What God reminded me of via his usual method (the clue-by-four that I've mentioned before) is that our Life Group and the friends I've made at the church are my corner. During the Beth Moore weekend, our Life Group gave the Spousal Unit and I an envelope with some gift cards in it just to cheer us up and let us know they love us. When the SU had to go in for surgery last week, they got together and picked nights to deliver dinner to us throughout the week. I had no idea about it - which is probably good because I'm sure I would have said that I was fine and I'd be able to deal with a husband recuperating from surgery and cook dinner. It was very humbling and initially almost hard to accept in a way because my mindset was such the opposite. Nobody was saying I couldn't do it; rather, they were coming alongside to offer encouragement and a little rest between rounds.
Allowing others inside, strengthening myself by relying on others is something I will have to continue to work on as it hasn't ever really been something I've been comfortable with. Yet if God has brought me these people, these friends, who am I to say no just because it isn't something within my comfort zone? So, "endure the hard for the sake of the good", yes. Nothing in there, though, said I had to endure it alone.
Anyway...
The thing that Beth said that made my brain perk up and take notice was this: "Endure the hard for the sake of the good." I've mused on or close to this topic before in earlier blog entries that talked about the coffee shop or some other things we have been through since then, but my brain started drawing some parallels to past experiences and then linking them up to current situations, moments and encounters, and...I dunno...maybe God just wanted to tap me on the shoulder and say, "Hey, think about this..."
Admittedly, my first thought when I heard Beth say that was "Yeah, but can someone tell me when the 'hard' is going to stop?" But, then again, sarcasm is my mother tongue so that thought went in and out fairly quickly 'cause it's nothing new.
What I started thinking about after my knee-jerk response faded was kinda two-pronged. One aspect was how tired I am physically, mentally, emotionally...just about any "ally" you can add. The other was about the good and bad of self-reliance and that's the one I'm gonna hit, I think.
I've been pretty self-reliant from a very young age - about the time I learned that I really could only count on me to watch out for me. On the good side of self-reliance is the ability I have to get out and get things done. On the not-so-good side is the shell I built up because I put everyone in the "can't really depend on them" category. Oh, I like people well enough but my normal modus operandi is you will get so far in a relationship/friendship with me and no farther. My ready answer to how I'm doing is "I'm fine." I don't even have to think about it. It just rolls off the tongue.
I think that is one of the reasons I was so drawn to mixed martial arts. You're loosely part of a team in that you all train together or around each other but your only real opponent is yourself. How far can you go? How much are you willing to push yourself to improve your skills? You get walloped in practice? You accept it and move on. You ignore the bloody nose and proudly point out the black and blue bruises to your teammates. Heck, I left one day with a hematoma on my shin the size of a baseball and tried to come in to train the next day. (Its name was Henry and I have pictures. It was cool :)). 'Cause when the cage door closes, it's just you and your skills against the person standing across from you.
But relying solely on yourself and your ability to endure is not necessarily a good thing. In my case, I took it past the level of "pain is weakness leaving the body" to "Hey, idiot. Pain is your body's way of telling you that you now have a permanent spinal injury. Congratulations." Go me!
I can see that same strain of self-reliance/endurance in my spiritual life. Just like in training, I get tired - really tired - but the little voice in my head says to suck it up and move on; get back to enduring. Otherwise, I feel so totally exposed. When I called Sara about potentially not going to see Beth Moore because of the SU's ill health, I suddenly found myself crying and I was absolutely mortified. I think I even apologized to her for what I felt was such an unseemly moment. Where was all my endurance? (Well, apparently snotting up the phone line but that's beside the point...:P).
And that thing I said about it just being you when the cage door closes? Not entirely true. Every fighter has what's called a "corner". Your corner generally consists of your trainer and at least one other person. They know your strengths and weakness and generally have experience of their own as well. They stand right outside the ring. Since you, as the fighter are in the middle of the action and can't really take an objective look at what's happening and are mostly relying on instinct, it's their job to call out strategy and encouragement during each round. A good fighter relies on their corner because he or she knows they have the fighter's best interests at heart.
What God reminded me of via his usual method (the clue-by-four that I've mentioned before) is that our Life Group and the friends I've made at the church are my corner. During the Beth Moore weekend, our Life Group gave the Spousal Unit and I an envelope with some gift cards in it just to cheer us up and let us know they love us. When the SU had to go in for surgery last week, they got together and picked nights to deliver dinner to us throughout the week. I had no idea about it - which is probably good because I'm sure I would have said that I was fine and I'd be able to deal with a husband recuperating from surgery and cook dinner. It was very humbling and initially almost hard to accept in a way because my mindset was such the opposite. Nobody was saying I couldn't do it; rather, they were coming alongside to offer encouragement and a little rest between rounds.
Allowing others inside, strengthening myself by relying on others is something I will have to continue to work on as it hasn't ever really been something I've been comfortable with. Yet if God has brought me these people, these friends, who am I to say no just because it isn't something within my comfort zone? So, "endure the hard for the sake of the good", yes. Nothing in there, though, said I had to endure it alone.
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