If you've never read The Book Thief, you're missing out.
Found for a quarter at a garage sale down the road, this book was a steal in and of itself.
The Holocaust is not something to be taken lightly, but it gets as close as you can without crossing any lines. Why is that important? Because humor, even dark, is part of the human experience, and Book Thief's purpose is to show the human experience as colorfully as possible, the whole of it, not just in part.
The entire narration is from the point of view of Death. It's the first I've read of its kind, but the most interesting part is how Death describes himself. As "amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's" (Zusak 1). He calls himself a result. And, when asked to describe himself, he says for humans to only but look in a mirror. Humans, he posits, are the real carriers of death.
However, in my English II course, we explore how that's the most powerful and hopeful statement. We have the capacity to carry death, but that also means we have the power to carry life, to promote joy and healing and goodness.
Death searches, throughout the entire novel, to answer the question of why human existence is worth it. He knows it is, but he is on a quest to show how.
So, that is our course thesis for this novel: Human existence is worth it.
At the end of each class period, we spend time answering the half statement, "Human existence is worth it because..."
It's my second time teaching through this book, but this semester has hit nerves so much deeper inside me and, I believe, my class.
There's something about this semester at my university that has just been a little off-kilter, a darkness felt by so many of our students, faculty, and staff. As a believer, I do believe that spiritual warfare is alive and well and that the enemy seeks to steal, kill, and destroy, especially when there is so much life and light in a place.
I have, thus far, had 3 students drop my course out of overload. Two stayed at the university, one withdrew due to suicidal ideations. Another yet is taking next semester off because of similar mental and psychological stress. And then there's [Claire].
If we are being honest, Claire bothered me. She came to even the first day of class late. She would sit there and I just felt uncomfortable by her presence because it came off as almost hostile. She rarely turned in assignments. It was as if school--and my class--were below her. Which surprised me, as she is an English major.
Then, one day at Walmart, I saw her with another student of mine who I had recruited, a student I dearly love. Call it Jones' Effect, but if she's friends with my student, she is a good person. My whole perspective changed, and I felt it deeply that I needed to reach out. Her tardiness had gotten much worse, if she showed up at all.
She shared with me of her depression, how she wasn't coming because she couldn't get out of bed. She hadn't turned in her major paper because she had never even started her paper.
We talked. We met together. We made compromises and worked through her missing pieces. I told her how valuable her feedback in class was to course discussion. She didn't even know she had been "seen."
She started showing up to class right on time. With assignments. Good assignments. Blew me away with her next paper. I thought everything was going better, going better than better.
Then came an email telling me she was hospitalizing herself for self harm.
Then came emails from the registrar asking if she would succeed if she came back; I confirmed.
Then came an email from her asking what work she had to make up, if she could.
Then came the first day of class back after Thanksgiving. Late. No paper.
Then came the second day of class back after Thanksgiving. No Claire.
Then came the classified ad posts desperately asking for help toward this "new treatment" and a public expose on her mental illness.
Then came the text from the university at 10pm last night saying they were searching for a student they believed had self harmed.
Then came heartbreak.
A reassurance of her life was sent about 20 minutes later, but so much damage had already been done. There isn't anything that could convince me that it wasn't her. I'd be delighted to know it wasn't, but it was. I know the evidence too well.
Human existence is worth it because...
The heartbreak is because I know the answer to that question. I know it for me, and I know it for her. In fact, I could write a full list for any one of my students about why their specific human existence is worth it.
It doesn't matter if a person is Christian or not. Their human existence is worth it because they each have the capacity to love and be loved. To bless and be blessed. To care. To listen. To give. To write and think and create and dream and dance and play and BE.
To me, today, human existence is worth it because I know the Lord. I know that he has the capacity and desire to restore the broken and to pour love and compassion and grace out on us. Human existence is worth it because I am known by name by the creator of the world, and he has given me life and the ability and opportunity to love and individually care for so many people around me--and to forgive me when I sometimes suck at loving and individually caring for those around me.
I know that he sees Claire. I know that he sees her hands full of tears and the pieces of her life and that he loves her and has a plan for how to make her broken world into a stained glass mosaic full of light and color and loveliness.
Human existence is worth it because we have potential. No matter how old or young or broken or ignorant, we have potential.
There is so much more than we can see in our frozen moments of life.
*student name changed to protect privacy
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Friday, December 1, 2017
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Slip into Spandex and Live Your Live
Texting a friend overseas today about the life-crushing "disorder" of perceived self-rejection.
It's a topic currently dominating her life and one I am not unfamiliar with in the least.
My childhood was full of love, but I was not a happy child. In fact, I spent the majority of my first 17 years wallowing in a depressive state I could not escape from. I was utterly convinced everyone hated me, thought I was ugly and stupid and were talking about me. I didn't get invited to the parties and, when I was, I was convinced they invited me because they pitied me.
One of my "life philosophies" is the theory of capacity. I've mentioned it before, and it's not complicated or wise. I just think about it a lot when I'm processing past actions.
At each stage of life, though many choices may be available, I believe that you are only capable of making a select few of those many choices based on your emotional/spiritual/psychological capacity at that time. And, unfortunately, it takes making some "life growing" choices to increase that capacity. Good doesn't always feel good.
When I was 17, I saw a sign advertising a new sport in my high school. The word saber was mentioned. For the first time in my teenage life, I went alone: autonomous action. Not one person in that meeting understood why I was there, as they were all band members, and I had no connection to their world. I joined. The next two years were full of spandex, face-hits from wandering flags, and mockery from classmates that I would be involved in something so absolutely ridiculous. For the first time, though, I did not give one flying crap what they thought. Winter guard made me indescribably happy. There was mockery, but there was not shame.
I felt more comfortable dancing in a blue spandex onesie than I ever had in my own skin. My freedom started to seep into my real life, as I was happy. I was truly happy. Clearly, I was a teenager, so happiness is relative to whatever mood swing was going on that day, but it was a marked difference in personhood. I began to believe good things and behave out of that perception. The last two years of high school were fun.
Sometimes, the solutions to problems come in unconventional solutions. I wasn't in counseling or doing any mental exercises. I was doing something silly that had no direct or obvious "purpose."
The devil doesn't always speak to us like a trenchcoated man trying to sell contraband in a dark alleyway. Sometimes, he helps us "focus". And we focus and focus and focus on the problem until we can't see the solution without somehow spiraling deeper into the problem.
Alleviate. Escape. Breathe. Do things that scare you, that inspire you, that refine you.
Stop trying to force a solution and start letting yourself live your life.
It's a topic currently dominating her life and one I am not unfamiliar with in the least.
My childhood was full of love, but I was not a happy child. In fact, I spent the majority of my first 17 years wallowing in a depressive state I could not escape from. I was utterly convinced everyone hated me, thought I was ugly and stupid and were talking about me. I didn't get invited to the parties and, when I was, I was convinced they invited me because they pitied me.
One of my "life philosophies" is the theory of capacity. I've mentioned it before, and it's not complicated or wise. I just think about it a lot when I'm processing past actions.
At each stage of life, though many choices may be available, I believe that you are only capable of making a select few of those many choices based on your emotional/spiritual/psychological capacity at that time. And, unfortunately, it takes making some "life growing" choices to increase that capacity. Good doesn't always feel good.
When I was 17, I saw a sign advertising a new sport in my high school. The word saber was mentioned. For the first time in my teenage life, I went alone: autonomous action. Not one person in that meeting understood why I was there, as they were all band members, and I had no connection to their world. I joined. The next two years were full of spandex, face-hits from wandering flags, and mockery from classmates that I would be involved in something so absolutely ridiculous. For the first time, though, I did not give one flying crap what they thought. Winter guard made me indescribably happy. There was mockery, but there was not shame.
I felt more comfortable dancing in a blue spandex onesie than I ever had in my own skin. My freedom started to seep into my real life, as I was happy. I was truly happy. Clearly, I was a teenager, so happiness is relative to whatever mood swing was going on that day, but it was a marked difference in personhood. I began to believe good things and behave out of that perception. The last two years of high school were fun.
Sometimes, the solutions to problems come in unconventional solutions. I wasn't in counseling or doing any mental exercises. I was doing something silly that had no direct or obvious "purpose."
The devil doesn't always speak to us like a trenchcoated man trying to sell contraband in a dark alleyway. Sometimes, he helps us "focus". And we focus and focus and focus on the problem until we can't see the solution without somehow spiraling deeper into the problem.
Alleviate. Escape. Breathe. Do things that scare you, that inspire you, that refine you.
Stop trying to force a solution and start letting yourself live your life.
Thursday, October 27, 2016
On Prayer and Pens
Lately, I've been feeling the crux between who I am and who I could be.
The could be isn't necessarily a good one.
I, like all humans, have the propensity for both good and evil.
Creativity, excitement, book worm-iness vs. numbness, depression, anxiety
Sometimes, I delude myself into thinking that I do not do the good for me because I don't have the time. Time-filled days call my bluff, though. I do not do good because I can't make myself.
And what's so funny and terrible is that if I would move, the rest of me would follow. If I would move, I would keep moving. It takes practice.
One good day doesn't mean that the next will be just as productive. But that also doesn't mean to give up. It means to practice, in the smallest of ways, discipline. Be consistent. Be persistent.
I got a letter today from my friend and now long time penpal Leslie.
Together we discussed prayer and pens, how difficult prayer can be and how settling and clearing writing can be.
Several years ago, an author named Lauren Winner came and spoke in chapel at JBU. She was super zany with her big ole butterfly glasses, electrocuted looking hair, and Miss Frizzle clothes. Her content didn't help build a case for her either. The most dynamic moment in my memory is of her holding up an invisible squash as though it were the skull in Hamlet and asking if that squash were prayer.
That question has quietly gnawed at me for all the years since.
Was that squash prayer? She had tilled the soil and planted the seed and remembered to water the sprout and weeded the garden and pruned the dead leaves and protected the small plant from bugs and squirrels and then, squash. Was that squash prayer? Well...yeah.
Does that mean that prayer may be more fluid a concept than we think it is sometimes?
I think yes.
The deep breath I take to center myself before a phone call, the conscious mercy shown to a persnickety coworker or friend or student, the serotonin supplement I remember to take, the dishes I put up even though it isn't my turn, the letter I write to a friend, the moments spent reading a book and using my mind, all of that might just be prayer. All of that is pursuing righteousness and godliness.
And prayer, connection, propels us forward, even if at a glacial pace.
Leslie ended her letter in a way I found poetic in the most beautiful way, and it works as a "call to action", I believe, in a way I'd like to share (pieces of which are paraphrased).
I hope life is moving forward for you in the best ways. Writing these letters reminds me that life has substance, structure, and is in need of redemption, though the process of writing in itself presses me to pursue a better ending. And seeing your thoughts reminds me that I am not alone in my inward struggles, that everyone has them; an ever-needed "of course other people live life too" moment is always found when I open your envelopes.May we all pursue better endings and good words.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Into the Fold
I cried at work today.
We were doing our morning devotions, and today, we decided to do a devotional thought over "O Come O Come Emmanuel", which happens to be my favorite Christmas song.
It also happens to correlate with my favorite Bible verse, which had been weighing on me heavily for the past week or so. This is what I shared and what brought me to big tears of remembrance and of thankfulness and humility.
It re-appeared in my heart last Thursday. I was sitting there beside my boyfriend, our mothers, and our fathers, in the Candlelight service at my university.
As I sat there, I marveled at how far removed and redeemed both our families (and us) had been in the past two years. In the past two years, both our parents had been at places where they thought they had lost their children to darkness forever.
We had thought the same about ourselves.
And in the past two years, we have been restored to joy, to God, and to our families. Granted, more work is yet to be done, but God is so good.
My heart felt full to burst, and the words of Psalm 126 pushed their way into my thoughts:
That's the verse I shared this morning after we sang.
I reflected on my own "return from Babylon" two years ago tomorrow.
I was broken. I was ugly. I was beyond all reckoning.
And my parents opened their arms up and loved me. My aunt, my uncle, my cousin, my grandmother. They loved me and took me as I was: broken. ugly. lost.
And yet, and yet!! the Lord has done great things for me.
Though Decembers cause me to get way too deep in my head and heart and ache with the past woundedness, I know too of the deep joy of restoration to hope and light and life.
The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.
We were doing our morning devotions, and today, we decided to do a devotional thought over "O Come O Come Emmanuel", which happens to be my favorite Christmas song.
It also happens to correlate with my favorite Bible verse, which had been weighing on me heavily for the past week or so. This is what I shared and what brought me to big tears of remembrance and of thankfulness and humility.
It re-appeared in my heart last Thursday. I was sitting there beside my boyfriend, our mothers, and our fathers, in the Candlelight service at my university.
As I sat there, I marveled at how far removed and redeemed both our families (and us) had been in the past two years. In the past two years, both our parents had been at places where they thought they had lost their children to darkness forever.
We had thought the same about ourselves.
And in the past two years, we have been restored to joy, to God, and to our families. Granted, more work is yet to be done, but God is so good.
My heart felt full to burst, and the words of Psalm 126 pushed their way into my thoughts:
When the people returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon, they became as those who dreamed. Their hearts were filled with laughter; their tongues with shouts of praise. The people of Earth said to them, "The Lord has done great things for you." Indeed, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.
That's the verse I shared this morning after we sang.
I reflected on my own "return from Babylon" two years ago tomorrow.
I was broken. I was ugly. I was beyond all reckoning.
And my parents opened their arms up and loved me. My aunt, my uncle, my cousin, my grandmother. They loved me and took me as I was: broken. ugly. lost.
And yet, and yet!! the Lord has done great things for me.
Though Decembers cause me to get way too deep in my head and heart and ache with the past woundedness, I know too of the deep joy of restoration to hope and light and life.
The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
In Decembers
In Decembers, I miss God.
I recognize that that's an odd sentiment to share (and to have) but it's the closest way I can think to communicate how I feel.
Belfast and I have reconciled. We are good friends now. My second semester there was beautiful in every way, and even the first semester was necessary.
But in Decembers....I get in my own head. Can't shake it.
Decembers taste like unending, UK-attempted green bean casserole, apples, puzzle dust, cold tea, grief, and vomit. It smells like I need to shower. It sounds like "Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More" and "Dark Horse" and songs I still can't listen to. It feels like darkness crushing into each cell.
Last December, I spent my time with friends at graduation in Belfast, laughing with my housemates, loving and being loved by my handsome boyfriend, holding my family. It was a good time.
This December, I'm so happy at work, at home, in Tulsa. I am so blessed. I am so happy.
and yet.
and yet.
In Decembers...I feel it all. As though nothing present were present.
As though I were still there.
Still alone.
Still dying.
Which, I recognize, seems like an incredibly hyperbolic thing to say. But I never felt as dead-souled as then. In all the other months, I don't think about it, I don't feel about it, I don't write about it. In this month, though, it is around every email, song choice, nap, bend in my drive.
You know when you're sick and all you want is your mom?
No matter your age or situation, your mom is your first instinct to call out for. You want her. You need her.
Even though I'm better--wonderful, in fact--that's how I feel. I feel sick. My mom wasn't there, couldn't be there, the first time it happened. The one who took care of me--geez. the only one in that whole stinking country who cared about me, it seemed at the time--was God.
So now, when I feel sick at heart and soul from feel-backs and uncontrollable sentiments, I miss God. We aren't separated, but we aren't together in the same way.
My mom and I talk all the time. We go shopping, we enjoy one another, but our relationship is very different when I'm ill.
It's the same with God. We spend time together, but it just isn't the same kind of need.
Either way, here I am. Feeling. Sick at heart with no reason to be. Missing God, and thankful for my savior. Thankful to have been saved and loved and have my life and my favorite country redeemed.
I recognize that that's an odd sentiment to share (and to have) but it's the closest way I can think to communicate how I feel.
Belfast and I have reconciled. We are good friends now. My second semester there was beautiful in every way, and even the first semester was necessary.
But in Decembers....I get in my own head. Can't shake it.
Decembers taste like unending, UK-attempted green bean casserole, apples, puzzle dust, cold tea, grief, and vomit. It smells like I need to shower. It sounds like "Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More" and "Dark Horse" and songs I still can't listen to. It feels like darkness crushing into each cell.
Last December, I spent my time with friends at graduation in Belfast, laughing with my housemates, loving and being loved by my handsome boyfriend, holding my family. It was a good time.
This December, I'm so happy at work, at home, in Tulsa. I am so blessed. I am so happy.
and yet.
and yet.
In Decembers...I feel it all. As though nothing present were present.
As though I were still there.
Still alone.
Still dying.
Which, I recognize, seems like an incredibly hyperbolic thing to say. But I never felt as dead-souled as then. In all the other months, I don't think about it, I don't feel about it, I don't write about it. In this month, though, it is around every email, song choice, nap, bend in my drive.
You know when you're sick and all you want is your mom?
No matter your age or situation, your mom is your first instinct to call out for. You want her. You need her.
Even though I'm better--wonderful, in fact--that's how I feel. I feel sick. My mom wasn't there, couldn't be there, the first time it happened. The one who took care of me--geez. the only one in that whole stinking country who cared about me, it seemed at the time--was God.
So now, when I feel sick at heart and soul from feel-backs and uncontrollable sentiments, I miss God. We aren't separated, but we aren't together in the same way.
My mom and I talk all the time. We go shopping, we enjoy one another, but our relationship is very different when I'm ill.
It's the same with God. We spend time together, but it just isn't the same kind of need.
Either way, here I am. Feeling. Sick at heart with no reason to be. Missing God, and thankful for my savior. Thankful to have been saved and loved and have my life and my favorite country redeemed.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Prozac Nation: A Confession of Allegiance
Today, I am starting anti-depressants.
It's a decision I have made willingly but have a history of staunchly refusing for the majority of my life.
No, I'm not depressed, but episodes of depression, headaches, nausea, and a whole host of other symptoms have added up to a long, frustrating history with chronic anxiety.
Whether it's social anxiety or the anxiety disorder I've been struggling to conceal since I was a child, anxiety has dominated most every conversation and interaction and self-reflection I've ever had.
I have long feared making this decision because I feared the consequences of what would happen if I were to go off of the medication. Would I be plunged into an even deeper pit than before I started them?
I think I was also scared of feeling "normal."
I've never felt normal.
My happiest moments in life have all been tinged with anxiety. Happiness in itself scares me. I've always worried that if I'm happy, it just means that unhappiness is about to catapult itself toward me in the subsequent moments.
I've gone to counseling, I've joined support groups, I have an accountability partner from group I don't even know the last name of, I've coped, I've exercised, I've gotten fidget tools, I've taken homeopathic helpers, I've prayed. It. Doesn't. Help. Not long-term, at least.
There's a weird mentality about being Christian that if I am a good enough Christian, if I pray hard enough, if I am prayed over, then this will subside. There's a mentality that this is spiritual warfare, not serotonin.
The truth is, this doesn't have anything to do with my faith:
I love God.
I lack the necessary amounts of serotonin receptors.
It is as uncomplicated as that.
I've never wanted to start them in the midst of a major depressive episode because that would be admitting defeat. If there's one thing anyone knows about me, it's that I'm tenacious. I'm insanely tenacious. If I can fix it, I will fix it.
Another frustration in friends and family pushing pills is that they don't deal with my anxiety. They may deal with the effects of my anxiety, but they have no idea what my disorder feels like. They just want me to chill the heck out.
You aren't taking pills! You don't know!!! Don't sell me on something you know nothing of other than researching them.
A year ago, I joined a support group. It's all online, just enough to troll through responses and whatnot. Through that, I met Lubs. She and I are similar ages, struggle with the same thing at the same level of severity, and get on really well. I never went back to the forums after that; we communicate, commiserate, and collaborate.
Her symptoms temporarily subsided around 6 months or so ago, and we lost touch.
Last week, she reappeared and we started our talks again. She had tried all that I had as well and finally had given in to trying medication for her anxiety.
For me, now, the timing is perfect. I'm still striving against my anxiety, but I'm not debilitated. I have a friend who is starting this process with the same struggles I do. I have camaraderie and I have sensibility. No one is pressuring me. It's finally my choice.
Shocker, I'm worried.
What is life without anxiety? Or rather, what is life with chemical stabilization?
I guess I'll find out.
It's a decision I have made willingly but have a history of staunchly refusing for the majority of my life.
No, I'm not depressed, but episodes of depression, headaches, nausea, and a whole host of other symptoms have added up to a long, frustrating history with chronic anxiety.
Whether it's social anxiety or the anxiety disorder I've been struggling to conceal since I was a child, anxiety has dominated most every conversation and interaction and self-reflection I've ever had.
I have long feared making this decision because I feared the consequences of what would happen if I were to go off of the medication. Would I be plunged into an even deeper pit than before I started them?
I think I was also scared of feeling "normal."
I've never felt normal.
My happiest moments in life have all been tinged with anxiety. Happiness in itself scares me. I've always worried that if I'm happy, it just means that unhappiness is about to catapult itself toward me in the subsequent moments.
I've gone to counseling, I've joined support groups, I have an accountability partner from group I don't even know the last name of, I've coped, I've exercised, I've gotten fidget tools, I've taken homeopathic helpers, I've prayed. It. Doesn't. Help. Not long-term, at least.
There's a weird mentality about being Christian that if I am a good enough Christian, if I pray hard enough, if I am prayed over, then this will subside. There's a mentality that this is spiritual warfare, not serotonin.
The truth is, this doesn't have anything to do with my faith:
I love God.
I lack the necessary amounts of serotonin receptors.
It is as uncomplicated as that.
I've never wanted to start them in the midst of a major depressive episode because that would be admitting defeat. If there's one thing anyone knows about me, it's that I'm tenacious. I'm insanely tenacious. If I can fix it, I will fix it.
Another frustration in friends and family pushing pills is that they don't deal with my anxiety. They may deal with the effects of my anxiety, but they have no idea what my disorder feels like. They just want me to chill the heck out.
You aren't taking pills! You don't know!!! Don't sell me on something you know nothing of other than researching them.
A year ago, I joined a support group. It's all online, just enough to troll through responses and whatnot. Through that, I met Lubs. She and I are similar ages, struggle with the same thing at the same level of severity, and get on really well. I never went back to the forums after that; we communicate, commiserate, and collaborate.
Her symptoms temporarily subsided around 6 months or so ago, and we lost touch.
Last week, she reappeared and we started our talks again. She had tried all that I had as well and finally had given in to trying medication for her anxiety.
For me, now, the timing is perfect. I'm still striving against my anxiety, but I'm not debilitated. I have a friend who is starting this process with the same struggles I do. I have camaraderie and I have sensibility. No one is pressuring me. It's finally my choice.
Shocker, I'm worried.
What is life without anxiety? Or rather, what is life with chemical stabilization?
I guess I'll find out.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Wish Says, 'Gotta Keep Movin'
My Aunt Joycie used to be integral to the coordination of an event in Tulsa called the Wish Lemons run.
The run was designed to raise money for missions, and it fit Wish well because he himself was an avid runner. On all the cups and t-shirt designs, his mantra, "Gotta Keep Movin'" made you feel like you could actually accomplish something.
Moving isn't running, isn't sprinting, isn't jogging. Moving is determined progress in an intentional direction.
You may be wondering if this is a post about running (it isn't, but I'll get there), since I've mentioned my running progress more than once recently, though I did, in fact, complete a 5K with my coworkers without walking once:
It was on the coast of Florida, and it felt like I was chewing my oxygen.
My stamina is pretty pathetic generally.
It took two months of training with the Couch to 5K app to be able to do it.
Have I run since?
No.
Running is the worst.
More to the point, though, building stamina through slow determination and a time-oriented goal can be really helpful.
If I had been asked to run a 5K in a week's time, I would have been miserable. Miserable miserable miserable. There would have been shin splints, vomit, walking, stopping, and a lot more complaining. Because I hadn't run in multiple years really. At least not with any consistency.
The app started me slow. Lots of walking, with spurts of running, just short enough that they were doable, but just long enough that they winded you.
By the end, I could do it. I did do it.
Reading is something that has been important to be since long before I could actually read. Words, movement of language, poetry, the poetry of communication, the communication of poetic experience. I love it. I have felt more known by books and language than by other people for most of my life. It's interwoven with my identity.
Then it was tidal waved out of my life.
There comes a point of fear when we realize that what we thought was a temporary phase of complacent mediocrity has become a sturdy "normal".
My diet of philosophy, history, historical fiction, modern poetry, creative nonfiction, and science fiction became replaced by pinterest, twitter, and facebook status updates. Neither my eyes nor my attention span could hold on for much longer than 8 or so seconds.
Scroll scroll scroll.
I missed movement, but I couldn't move.
Depression robs you of all you love.
Worse, it makes you feel as though you weren't robbed but rather have made a choice to abandon.
Perhaps because that's easier than admitting the truth. It's better, you think, to claim you have power, even if in doing so you're communicating that you knowingly want to make the choices that your life is now characterized by.
For me, that's been lethargy, apathy, and mass consumption of the digital world.
Where I had read nearly 60 books in 4 months, the next 4 were only 20, reduced to 8 in the 8-9 months after.
I can't even tell you how many more I started and failed to progress past the first chapter. Didn't even make it through the first chapter, actually.
My pen was just as dusty as my bookshelf. I used to fill pages a day with thoughts and curiosity and updates.
There's not a record of the existence of this past year. I have nothing to say.
Frustration with myself grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Is there a point in frustration that frustration becomes your new identity?
Where your words about your inabilities become who you are?
Yeah.
There is.
I also wasn't being very fair to myself.
The books I was choosing were either far above my "reading level" or so far below that they were children's books that I had already read.
Neither are something to build momentum on.
Then, I don't know, I chose one that looked fun and easy, but it was new and interesting, too.
And I finished it.
In two weeks.
After that, I finished A General Theory of Love, which I had started in October and a bunch more technical. The next day.
Two days after that, I finished a book on the history of JBU, which I had started a year to the day that I had started both the book and my work at JBU.
Then I started a totally new one last Thursday, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. And finished it yesterday.
That's more consistent reading than I have done in more than a year.
My pen has been more active, too, beginning to fill up the final pages of a tiny journal that's taken me more than a year to fill a quarter of.
It's now been a year since I moved back to The States.
This is the first time in that space or even more than I have begun to feel a return out of the ditches of my dead mindedness and back to me. I'm starting to feel ebbing relief in knowing that the part of me I love most isn't lost for good.
I no longer feel defeated. I feel like moving.
The run was designed to raise money for missions, and it fit Wish well because he himself was an avid runner. On all the cups and t-shirt designs, his mantra, "Gotta Keep Movin'" made you feel like you could actually accomplish something.
Moving isn't running, isn't sprinting, isn't jogging. Moving is determined progress in an intentional direction.
You may be wondering if this is a post about running (it isn't, but I'll get there), since I've mentioned my running progress more than once recently, though I did, in fact, complete a 5K with my coworkers without walking once:
It was on the coast of Florida, and it felt like I was chewing my oxygen.
My stamina is pretty pathetic generally.
It took two months of training with the Couch to 5K app to be able to do it.
Have I run since?
No.
Running is the worst.
More to the point, though, building stamina through slow determination and a time-oriented goal can be really helpful.
If I had been asked to run a 5K in a week's time, I would have been miserable. Miserable miserable miserable. There would have been shin splints, vomit, walking, stopping, and a lot more complaining. Because I hadn't run in multiple years really. At least not with any consistency.
The app started me slow. Lots of walking, with spurts of running, just short enough that they were doable, but just long enough that they winded you.
By the end, I could do it. I did do it.
Reading is something that has been important to be since long before I could actually read. Words, movement of language, poetry, the poetry of communication, the communication of poetic experience. I love it. I have felt more known by books and language than by other people for most of my life. It's interwoven with my identity.
Then it was tidal waved out of my life.
There comes a point of fear when we realize that what we thought was a temporary phase of complacent mediocrity has become a sturdy "normal".
My diet of philosophy, history, historical fiction, modern poetry, creative nonfiction, and science fiction became replaced by pinterest, twitter, and facebook status updates. Neither my eyes nor my attention span could hold on for much longer than 8 or so seconds.
Scroll scroll scroll.
I missed movement, but I couldn't move.
Depression robs you of all you love.
Worse, it makes you feel as though you weren't robbed but rather have made a choice to abandon.
Perhaps because that's easier than admitting the truth. It's better, you think, to claim you have power, even if in doing so you're communicating that you knowingly want to make the choices that your life is now characterized by.
For me, that's been lethargy, apathy, and mass consumption of the digital world.
Where I had read nearly 60 books in 4 months, the next 4 were only 20, reduced to 8 in the 8-9 months after.
I can't even tell you how many more I started and failed to progress past the first chapter. Didn't even make it through the first chapter, actually.
My pen was just as dusty as my bookshelf. I used to fill pages a day with thoughts and curiosity and updates.
There's not a record of the existence of this past year. I have nothing to say.
Frustration with myself grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Is there a point in frustration that frustration becomes your new identity?
Where your words about your inabilities become who you are?
Yeah.
There is.
I also wasn't being very fair to myself.
The books I was choosing were either far above my "reading level" or so far below that they were children's books that I had already read.
Neither are something to build momentum on.
Then, I don't know, I chose one that looked fun and easy, but it was new and interesting, too.
And I finished it.
In two weeks.
After that, I finished A General Theory of Love, which I had started in October and a bunch more technical. The next day.
Two days after that, I finished a book on the history of JBU, which I had started a year to the day that I had started both the book and my work at JBU.
Then I started a totally new one last Thursday, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. And finished it yesterday.
That's more consistent reading than I have done in more than a year.
My pen has been more active, too, beginning to fill up the final pages of a tiny journal that's taken me more than a year to fill a quarter of.
It's now been a year since I moved back to The States.
This is the first time in that space or even more than I have begun to feel a return out of the ditches of my dead mindedness and back to me. I'm starting to feel ebbing relief in knowing that the part of me I love most isn't lost for good.
I no longer feel defeated. I feel like moving.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Crucified at the Crux
We are a culture and a people of extremes.
Obese or anorexic.
Unshutupable or brick silent.
Dramatic or dead pan.
When I go to my work twitter or Facebook and read all my students posts, they are full of the feels. Just...all the feels. All screaming, "Notice me notice me notice me!!!"
They post about:
Loneliness
Not fitting in
Feeling stupid
"Love"
I am not saying their posts don't reflect their reality, but I think they make us believe that we're seeing the total reality.
Because the kids we're hearing from are the ones we expect to hear from, because they're the ones who never stop whining about how lonely they feel instead of wiping off some of their makeup and trying out their own skin. A lot of times, it's part of their identity to be misunderstood.
Don't get all huffy; I'm not being a jerk. If you find me offensive, it's probably because you were once one of those kids. I work with kids, I was a kid, I am a kid. I know kids. Let me talk.
What we don't get is the honest look at the structural identity of other human beings.
We either stigmatize to the point of normalcy or we cloister problems into oblivion.
Let's have an honest discussion about what happens when you come to "the crux."
"The Crux" has been on my mind today because we have been going through our promotional material for re-vamping. Several of the smiling faces on our shining boards are students I knew very, very well.
And they aren't here anymore.
They didn't graduate.
Their cruxes crucified them.
That doesn't make them lesser people, and that doesn't make them failures. They just lost that one particular round of mental monopoly.
Yet there they are, smiling, holding a stack of books, pointing to a white board, reading with friends, about to sing another original song.
They are literally our poster children.
I'm sure they can think of nothing more ironic.
In one sense, it's the perfect example of "putting on your church face".
We obliviate their stories with glossed on smiles, whether that's our goal or not.
At the same time, I don't find it ironic at all for them to be our poster children. I actually love that we didn't choose all the seemingly perfect students. Because that's not who we are. We're all broken people. Their "cruxes" just made that more obvious.
"The Crux" is the moment when what you have been taught and raised to be drops off, and you have to grow new skin all on your own. The Crux is when you are faced with something so personal, so intimate, that 20 years of "life lessons" are insufficient to suffice for an answer.
We search.
We listen.
But who do we listen to?
Though we would like to say, "God", like a good Sunday schooler, often we can't.
It's hard to admit, but we can't listen to him. We aren't ready.
More than that, maybe we truly do not yet have the capacity to hear the decibels he's speaking in.
Who do we listen to?
Them.
Whoever our "them" is.
And we "run to the things they said could restore [us]//restore life the way it should be".
And it doesn't work.
It doesn't work and doesn't work and doesn't work, and we're trapped in this horrible Dante-esque second circle of Hell running running running .
It breaks us.
It broke my friends.
It broke me.
Brokenness is ugly and unspoken.
In our shame, we hide because that's what feels correct to do. Because a snide "nobody loves me" comment on Facebook is one thing, but the genuine vacuum in our hearts, the kind that feels unrecoverable, isn't one you can post.
We publish the present.
We present the version of ourselves that we feel reconciled with, even if we don't love it. We can deal with it. We can stand by it.
The intimate pain is something we can't own because its muchness has too much muchness. That means, when we are sucked under the current, drop out of school, overdose, attempt suicide, no one sees it coming.
In times I have felt the most alone, the most broken, I have ached for someone to tell me they've been there too and not another God-awful repetition of Jeremiah 29:11 or a "I felt sad once, but I'm better now".
I wanted to read someone else admitting, with humor, hope, and honesty, that they were there as well.
At the same time, I am most usually unwilling to be that person for other people. The closest I've ever come to it is attempting to speak the truth of myself in my posts.
We're broken, but we retain such a capacity for forgiveness, for partnership, for love, and for redemption. We are capable of connection, to make pain into partnership, to turn someone's "I hope I can do this..." to "We can do this. I know we can do this."
How often do we opt to halt our thinking about our public images in deference to thoughts of how we can love other people through letting them in on the truth of our pain and of our regrowth?
We need the in-between.
That's what we're missing.
No more attention-seeking, connectivity-defying Facebook statuses of how nobody understands but no more hiding either.
Rather, with patience, with humility, and with discernment, let us all practice letting people join us where we stand. Or sit. Or kneel. Or are crawled up in.
Let's practice letting ourselves be seen.
Obese or anorexic.
Unshutupable or brick silent.
Dramatic or dead pan.
When I go to my work twitter or Facebook and read all my students posts, they are full of the feels. Just...all the feels. All screaming, "Notice me notice me notice me!!!"
They post about:
Loneliness
Not fitting in
Feeling stupid
"Love"
I am not saying their posts don't reflect their reality, but I think they make us believe that we're seeing the total reality.
Because the kids we're hearing from are the ones we expect to hear from, because they're the ones who never stop whining about how lonely they feel instead of wiping off some of their makeup and trying out their own skin. A lot of times, it's part of their identity to be misunderstood.
Don't get all huffy; I'm not being a jerk. If you find me offensive, it's probably because you were once one of those kids. I work with kids, I was a kid, I am a kid. I know kids. Let me talk.
What we don't get is the honest look at the structural identity of other human beings.
We either stigmatize to the point of normalcy or we cloister problems into oblivion.
Let's have an honest discussion about what happens when you come to "the crux."
"The Crux" has been on my mind today because we have been going through our promotional material for re-vamping. Several of the smiling faces on our shining boards are students I knew very, very well.
And they aren't here anymore.
They didn't graduate.
Their cruxes crucified them.
That doesn't make them lesser people, and that doesn't make them failures. They just lost that one particular round of mental monopoly.
Yet there they are, smiling, holding a stack of books, pointing to a white board, reading with friends, about to sing another original song.
They are literally our poster children.
I'm sure they can think of nothing more ironic.
In one sense, it's the perfect example of "putting on your church face".
We obliviate their stories with glossed on smiles, whether that's our goal or not.
At the same time, I don't find it ironic at all for them to be our poster children. I actually love that we didn't choose all the seemingly perfect students. Because that's not who we are. We're all broken people. Their "cruxes" just made that more obvious.
"The Crux" is the moment when what you have been taught and raised to be drops off, and you have to grow new skin all on your own. The Crux is when you are faced with something so personal, so intimate, that 20 years of "life lessons" are insufficient to suffice for an answer.
We search.
We listen.
But who do we listen to?
Though we would like to say, "God", like a good Sunday schooler, often we can't.
It's hard to admit, but we can't listen to him. We aren't ready.
More than that, maybe we truly do not yet have the capacity to hear the decibels he's speaking in.
Who do we listen to?
Them.
Whoever our "them" is.
And we "run to the things they said could restore [us]//restore life the way it should be".
And it doesn't work.
It doesn't work and doesn't work and doesn't work, and we're trapped in this horrible Dante-esque second circle of Hell running running running .
It breaks us.
It broke my friends.
It broke me.
Brokenness is ugly and unspoken.
In our shame, we hide because that's what feels correct to do. Because a snide "nobody loves me" comment on Facebook is one thing, but the genuine vacuum in our hearts, the kind that feels unrecoverable, isn't one you can post.
We publish the present.
We present the version of ourselves that we feel reconciled with, even if we don't love it. We can deal with it. We can stand by it.
The intimate pain is something we can't own because its muchness has too much muchness. That means, when we are sucked under the current, drop out of school, overdose, attempt suicide, no one sees it coming.
In times I have felt the most alone, the most broken, I have ached for someone to tell me they've been there too and not another God-awful repetition of Jeremiah 29:11 or a "I felt sad once, but I'm better now".
I wanted to read someone else admitting, with humor, hope, and honesty, that they were there as well.
At the same time, I am most usually unwilling to be that person for other people. The closest I've ever come to it is attempting to speak the truth of myself in my posts.
We're broken, but we retain such a capacity for forgiveness, for partnership, for love, and for redemption. We are capable of connection, to make pain into partnership, to turn someone's "I hope I can do this..." to "We can do this. I know we can do this."
How often do we opt to halt our thinking about our public images in deference to thoughts of how we can love other people through letting them in on the truth of our pain and of our regrowth?
We need the in-between.
That's what we're missing.
No more attention-seeking, connectivity-defying Facebook statuses of how nobody understands but no more hiding either.
Rather, with patience, with humility, and with discernment, let us all practice letting people join us where we stand. Or sit. Or kneel. Or are crawled up in.
Let's practice letting ourselves be seen.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Supposed to be Happy
Three times in the past two months, I have felt shame.
It shouldn't count, I know it shouldn't. I should be able to shake it off, shake off my "image" and embrace the reality of who I am and what I have been.
And when you're in the midst of it, sometimes it's easier to embrace it because you are incapable of fabricating another reality for yourself.
When you're out of the middle, you deaden the memory and try to live as though it didn't happen, try to prevent those around you from knowing the full extent of your darkness.
The worst part is, unlike drugs and alcohol addiction or eating disorders or the like, depression doesn't look good on a Christian testimony resume.
Depression makes people nervous.
They don't know how to respond.
Partly because it's not something that ends; it's something that becomes managed.
The potential for it to rear back up induces anxiety.
When we speak, we are not seeking for your pity, we are not seeking for you to feel bad for us retrospectively or to "hurt" with us. Not usually. And if we do, it's not to make ourselves feel better but to help you get some perspective as a human being.
Don't look at me like I'm a limping puppy on the side of a highway.
We're speaking the reality of who we are.
Belfast.
You have been my friend and enemy alike.
Students who don't know me want to follow my example and follow me to the Emerald Isle.
And for the fourth time this semester, I have been asked for my advice and to speak on my experience.
The first time, I was in the class I'm auditing. The topic of the day was clinical depression, and the professor (who is a friend of mine) asked me to speak on the "Dark Night of the Soul" and my hole of depression. Of course I spoke, but I was shocked, as I was speaking, how clearly I began to re-feel, though I had shut those emotions down for so long. It was like muscle memory. I spent my night wrecked, absolutely wrecked, near to the point of vomiting with grief. Took me completely off-guard.
The second time, a student who had been there with me asked for my advice.
While there, I had been so cloistered and such a whipping girl, that they did not understand me nor what my experience was like as compared to theirs.
I do not speak to those students.
The person who was their RA is not me. It was this weird depressive alter-ego of me that only existed for a year. I can't face them. I am ashamed.
We met and talked for multiple hours, as I explained to her the different levels of thought she needs to consider before making the same move as I did.
She's seriously dating someone. How serious is she about that? Because you can't make half-baked life decisions that take you across the globe without taking them into consideration or hearing out their opinion. It gets messy.
She's prone to depression. That concerned me. Climate is a HUGE aspect of living there.
You can't just think about the academic program and the "adventure" and the story you'll be able to tell people. Life is not a fairy tale. You have to live it day by day, hour by hour, both with those you love and completely alone.
And, while I tried to remain objective in speaking about the different categories she needed to think about, my own life colored behind the facts, and she looked at me with this face...
The third put me on a panel of other graduated and post graduated English majors (JBU graduates) in front of the English faculty and current English students.
We spoke on the process of applying to postgraduate programs and what they are like to be in.
They were specifically interested in me, the international student.
The moderating professor, who knew me well as a fiery student with enormous plans and enormous love, pushed and pushed and pushed with very specific questions, first to the whole group then to me personally, until finally I had to admit my whys.
Why I had had to come back home for a bit in December/January.
Why I was no longer dating Noah.
Why I was back at JBU and not at Denver Seminary.
And the whys are just so messy, and even without admitting any of the specifics, admitting to people I had been viewed by as so strong and passionate, was shameful.
Then it ended.
Then the looks.
Then the gentle hand on my arm.
Then the car ride to Fayetteville to Bible study and the gush of tears and shadows I couldn't help.
Such pieces of me I want to forget.
Such pieces of me, if forgotten, will recur.
I needed to change, and I needed Jesus so badly to wreck into me.
But there are things too sacred even to remember, especially to admit to people who cannot possibly understand the heart of what you are trying to communicate.
God is good.
and maybe also, Think clearly about enormous life choices.
That is my message.
You hear:
Depression sucks. Feel so bad for me and my misery.
The fourth is yet to come. I've just received an email from a student, on referral from her history professor. What am I to say?
Her mere email is enough to bring tears to my eyes, in anticipation for the way it will drag my heart through its own muck.
My mother and boyfriend would chastise me with something to the tune of, "People don't need to know everything, Jamie."
Duh. I'm not some kind of self-named martyr with an agenda to broadcast her past wounds, but I am honest. And I answer questions with honesty.
Sometimes, though, that honesty makes me feel very small. Very very small.
It shouldn't count, I know it shouldn't. I should be able to shake it off, shake off my "image" and embrace the reality of who I am and what I have been.
And when you're in the midst of it, sometimes it's easier to embrace it because you are incapable of fabricating another reality for yourself.
When you're out of the middle, you deaden the memory and try to live as though it didn't happen, try to prevent those around you from knowing the full extent of your darkness.
The worst part is, unlike drugs and alcohol addiction or eating disorders or the like, depression doesn't look good on a Christian testimony resume.
Depression makes people nervous.
They don't know how to respond.
Partly because it's not something that ends; it's something that becomes managed.
The potential for it to rear back up induces anxiety.
When we speak, we are not seeking for your pity, we are not seeking for you to feel bad for us retrospectively or to "hurt" with us. Not usually. And if we do, it's not to make ourselves feel better but to help you get some perspective as a human being.
Don't look at me like I'm a limping puppy on the side of a highway.
We're speaking the reality of who we are.
Belfast.
You have been my friend and enemy alike.
Students who don't know me want to follow my example and follow me to the Emerald Isle.
And for the fourth time this semester, I have been asked for my advice and to speak on my experience.
The first time, I was in the class I'm auditing. The topic of the day was clinical depression, and the professor (who is a friend of mine) asked me to speak on the "Dark Night of the Soul" and my hole of depression. Of course I spoke, but I was shocked, as I was speaking, how clearly I began to re-feel, though I had shut those emotions down for so long. It was like muscle memory. I spent my night wrecked, absolutely wrecked, near to the point of vomiting with grief. Took me completely off-guard.
The second time, a student who had been there with me asked for my advice.
While there, I had been so cloistered and such a whipping girl, that they did not understand me nor what my experience was like as compared to theirs.
I do not speak to those students.
The person who was their RA is not me. It was this weird depressive alter-ego of me that only existed for a year. I can't face them. I am ashamed.
We met and talked for multiple hours, as I explained to her the different levels of thought she needs to consider before making the same move as I did.
She's seriously dating someone. How serious is she about that? Because you can't make half-baked life decisions that take you across the globe without taking them into consideration or hearing out their opinion. It gets messy.
She's prone to depression. That concerned me. Climate is a HUGE aspect of living there.
You can't just think about the academic program and the "adventure" and the story you'll be able to tell people. Life is not a fairy tale. You have to live it day by day, hour by hour, both with those you love and completely alone.
And, while I tried to remain objective in speaking about the different categories she needed to think about, my own life colored behind the facts, and she looked at me with this face...
The third put me on a panel of other graduated and post graduated English majors (JBU graduates) in front of the English faculty and current English students.
We spoke on the process of applying to postgraduate programs and what they are like to be in.
They were specifically interested in me, the international student.
The moderating professor, who knew me well as a fiery student with enormous plans and enormous love, pushed and pushed and pushed with very specific questions, first to the whole group then to me personally, until finally I had to admit my whys.
Why I had had to come back home for a bit in December/January.
Why I was no longer dating Noah.
Why I was back at JBU and not at Denver Seminary.
And the whys are just so messy, and even without admitting any of the specifics, admitting to people I had been viewed by as so strong and passionate, was shameful.
Then it ended.
Then the looks.
Then the gentle hand on my arm.
Then the car ride to Fayetteville to Bible study and the gush of tears and shadows I couldn't help.
Such pieces of me I want to forget.
Such pieces of me, if forgotten, will recur.
I needed to change, and I needed Jesus so badly to wreck into me.
But there are things too sacred even to remember, especially to admit to people who cannot possibly understand the heart of what you are trying to communicate.
God is good.
and maybe also, Think clearly about enormous life choices.
That is my message.
You hear:
Depression sucks. Feel so bad for me and my misery.
The fourth is yet to come. I've just received an email from a student, on referral from her history professor. What am I to say?
Her mere email is enough to bring tears to my eyes, in anticipation for the way it will drag my heart through its own muck.
My mother and boyfriend would chastise me with something to the tune of, "People don't need to know everything, Jamie."
Duh. I'm not some kind of self-named martyr with an agenda to broadcast her past wounds, but I am honest. And I answer questions with honesty.
Sometimes, though, that honesty makes me feel very small. Very very small.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Wanting to Want
When I was in middle school, my brother drove me around a lot.
Technically, for the entirety of my life, my brothers drove me around a lot. Not even necessarily for my own purposes; I was just very portable and someone had to make sure I wasn't left running around falling in empty pool shells (again).
Middle school, though, was another chapter to my angsty growing up phase (it lasted most of years 8-21).
Chon always asked me how I was.
I always said, "Tired."
Once, on my way to somewhere--it was probably Haley's house, but along the far end of 91st street--he gave up and asked me if I was ever going to stop being tired.
In fairness, we found out months later that I'd had mono for most of my seventh grade year. Never missed a day of school or swim practice either (read: I was an exhausted punk but at least I was determined).
I think about that interaction often, though, because often I ask myself the same thing.
Was I always like this?
Was my college extroversion and GO GO GO nature a hiatus from my hibernative temperament?
Was my year of depressive sleep and darkness enough to suck away years of future waking?
I'm not unhappy. Actually, I'm very content.
But shouldn't I want more from life than naps?
At a certain point, you begin to wonder if this is a phase or if this is your life.
Because it feels as though no amount of sleeping or working out or joy or attempts to read and write can pull me back up to my former capacities to engage and devour language and pour my own language out.
Technically, for the entirety of my life, my brothers drove me around a lot. Not even necessarily for my own purposes; I was just very portable and someone had to make sure I wasn't left running around falling in empty pool shells (again).
Middle school, though, was another chapter to my angsty growing up phase (it lasted most of years 8-21).
Chon always asked me how I was.
I always said, "Tired."
Once, on my way to somewhere--it was probably Haley's house, but along the far end of 91st street--he gave up and asked me if I was ever going to stop being tired.
In fairness, we found out months later that I'd had mono for most of my seventh grade year. Never missed a day of school or swim practice either (read: I was an exhausted punk but at least I was determined).
I think about that interaction often, though, because often I ask myself the same thing.
Was I always like this?
Was my college extroversion and GO GO GO nature a hiatus from my hibernative temperament?
Was my year of depressive sleep and darkness enough to suck away years of future waking?
I'm not unhappy. Actually, I'm very content.
But shouldn't I want more from life than naps?
At a certain point, you begin to wonder if this is a phase or if this is your life.
Because it feels as though no amount of sleeping or working out or joy or attempts to read and write can pull me back up to my former capacities to engage and devour language and pour my own language out.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
A Three Post Day: Mastered
Timing is everything.
It was this time last year that the lights started closing in on me.
All manners of darkness swam into my heart, and, folks, to be frank, my very life is a miracle.
I was delivered via airplane into the arms of my parents and friends, who were unnerved by the damage a few months had wrought on me.
My first semester papers scored poorly, but I am shocked they were even brought into existence.
My memories of those 40 days at home are few. The depression I fought so terribly hard against while away consumed me when it realized I was back in safety (literally).
But Belfast was where God had sent me.
And he hadn't unsent me. I just needed fuel.
February first had me back and miracles happened. Four months of miracles followed four months (plus one) of nightmares.
I was resurrected but I wasn't the same.
Since December, I haven't been able to complete a single book, not in full.
My second semester papers were written, but it was with difficulty.
Writing that thesis was one of the most challenging academic experiences of my life. Culture shock, a new job, facing old realities with new perspective, a new relationship, finding friends, just...struggle.
But sentence by sentence, God pulled those paragraphs out of me, and I turned it in.
Now, three months later, I am so humbled to announce that I have passed, with flying colors and every synonym for the word "eccentric" written on my paper's critiques.
I am proud not because I accomplished anything.
Last December gives every indication that when I rely on my own strength, I run out, to the point of near death or permanent destruction.
This work, friends, was the Lord's.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Old Wounds
We've all got them.
Whether it's from those rough ugly years as a fat adolescent, the brutal times when you thought your best friend hated you or hated herself (and she did, on both accounts), or when just plain awful was going down for a good long while.
Suck eras aren't surprising.
What I find surprising are the "triggers" you didn't know got left behind after you had been put together post-suck. They come up in the most random of times and places, no?
For instance, at one point, I lived with someone who had very strict ideas about what should be done with left over food. The chastisement I received when I failed to follow those guidelines was severe, but I soon fell into habit of doing things "correctly."
Later, when my housemate moved out and another moved in, I saw her throwing something out and started to have a panic attack. It was so strange. Because I had been conditioned to one way of life. Her violation of that rule unearthed serious anxiety in me as I recalled my chastisements of the past.
It happens.
The important step when your triggers get tripped (because they will) is how you respond.
Do you take the time to understand the root cause or to explain to whoever you are with why you flipped out so "unnecessarily" for the given situation?
Do you sort through what is legitimate and what is illegitimate?
And do you take the time to pray through those long-ago pains and find peace and security in Jesus?
It doesn't make you "unhealed" to still have your past in your blood, but it will if you let it have power over your present.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
It's All In Your Head
No, I haven't been writing.
No, I haven't been writing at all.
Not letters, not content for my job, not in my journal, not on my blog.
The only word document that's gotten any love from me over the last month is my dissertation.
Let's be honest, it isn't going very well.
Sure, the research is done and the brainstorming has happened, and I've organized all my quotes and primary sources, but the actuality of writing this is just not coming along.
Wrote 4400 words.
Submitted them.
Received comments back saying it was interesting but needed an entirely different focus and direction.
I have a secret for you.
Please don't tell.
The literary community as a whole will for sure judge and ostracize me.
I don't get it.
I don't get literature.
Or its purpose.
Or why anyone would spend years of their life writing about literary theory.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love literature--to a fault really.
I also enjoy reading up on the theory of it.
But what is the purpose?
I can't find it.
And because I can't find it, I can't write it.
Somehow, literary theory is like math to me.
And results in very near hysteria from me.
Okay, so not "very near".
Actual hysteria.
The hissy fit kind.
The truth is, professor, that I can't write on how the knowledge of family structure and mental health illuminates a global understanding of the literature because I don't know myself.
It's the same struggle I have with other human beings.
I can see when they are feeling something, but I don't know what it is or why or how to go about deciphering it.
My vision is so literal. It isn't for lack of study or effort on my part. It feels as though I am blind and deaf to that sort of thinking.
So yes. This is me admitting that I have spent four years of university coping, finding alternative strategies to writing my literature papers in order to avoid literary theory.
Remember that "impostor syndrome"?
In this area, it really isn't so much of a syndrome so much as it that I really have been tricking people into thinking I know what I'm doing and have now been found out.
I haven't the faintest idea of what I'm doing.
So yes, my life is full of wonderful things.
I'm so glad to be here in Siloam.
I love my job.
I like being around my friends and housemates so so much.
My blog writing will probably be filled primarily with strategies, small wins, and struggles of writing a dissertation for a few weeks.
No, I haven't been writing at all.
Not letters, not content for my job, not in my journal, not on my blog.
The only word document that's gotten any love from me over the last month is my dissertation.
Let's be honest, it isn't going very well.
Sure, the research is done and the brainstorming has happened, and I've organized all my quotes and primary sources, but the actuality of writing this is just not coming along.
Wrote 4400 words.
Submitted them.
Received comments back saying it was interesting but needed an entirely different focus and direction.
I have a secret for you.
Please don't tell.
The literary community as a whole will for sure judge and ostracize me.
I don't get it.
I don't get literature.
Or its purpose.
Or why anyone would spend years of their life writing about literary theory.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love literature--to a fault really.
I also enjoy reading up on the theory of it.
But what is the purpose?
I can't find it.
And because I can't find it, I can't write it.
Somehow, literary theory is like math to me.
And results in very near hysteria from me.
Okay, so not "very near".
Actual hysteria.
The hissy fit kind.
The truth is, professor, that I can't write on how the knowledge of family structure and mental health illuminates a global understanding of the literature because I don't know myself.
It's the same struggle I have with other human beings.
I can see when they are feeling something, but I don't know what it is or why or how to go about deciphering it.
My vision is so literal. It isn't for lack of study or effort on my part. It feels as though I am blind and deaf to that sort of thinking.
So yes. This is me admitting that I have spent four years of university coping, finding alternative strategies to writing my literature papers in order to avoid literary theory.
Remember that "impostor syndrome"?
In this area, it really isn't so much of a syndrome so much as it that I really have been tricking people into thinking I know what I'm doing and have now been found out.
I haven't the faintest idea of what I'm doing.
So yes, my life is full of wonderful things.
I'm so glad to be here in Siloam.
I love my job.
I like being around my friends and housemates so so much.
My blog writing will probably be filled primarily with strategies, small wins, and struggles of writing a dissertation for a few weeks.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Hurt People Hurt People
One of my university professors from back home, Dr. Nick Ogle, says, "Brokenness cries out to brokenness."
Those two catch phrases, if you will, are very similar, I think.
It's similar to the old cliche, "Misery loves company."
We're all pretty messed up, it's true. And we're all messed up both the same and different than one another.
And yet, and yet, we all like to think our messed-up-ness is completely unique. Nobody in the entire world understands!!!! To a certain degree, that's true. There has never been another person like you, so no other person has experienced or processed pain in the same way as you.
However, in our confusion and in our partial/poor processing and understanding of our problems, we act out.
We become cagey, reckless, electric.
We find people who are similarly cagey, reckless, and electric and form destructive, dependent bonds with them.
Or/and we lash out at everything that moves.
"She looked at me weird."
"He sent me a smileyface emoticon as her entire text response."
"How hard is it to take two seconds and return an email?!."
"GET OFF MY TAIL, JERK! I'M GOING THE SPEEDLIMIT"
"Slam that door one more time. C'mon. I dare you."
Anything can set off the trigger.
All that self-anxiety and tumbles of frustration (that honestly we may not even recognize what the source of it is) is then tunnel-visioned onto whomever gave that twitchy finger the go-ahead.
In response, the squinter/emoticon abuser/slow emailer/butt-face driver (who, in defense of shootey-mcgee over there, probably deserve at least a paintball to the gut or an airsoft gun bruise or two) receives an avalanche of venomous slush.
Nearly all of it deserves displacement.
That's not what it seems, though. And it's definitely not how it feels.
But we don't take the time to analyze that.
We let it happen.
We, the offended, leave that interaction burning hot with rage, all at the offenders.
The offenders leave angry, hurt, and confused at what the heck just happened??
And, in response, transfer their anger, hurt, and confusion onto their own personal trigger people.
And honestly, at the end of the day, it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot difference if we do recognize what we have done and why we have done it.
Apologies are great. Recognizing and verbalizing that you have wronged is an incredible step forward. And it could indeed mend that acid-burned relationship.
But it still happened. And those dominos still fell.
Your words have power. Your actions have power. Don't be so smallminded as to think you can do whatever you want without broad consequence.
Be careful not to let tumble from your lips words that do not deserve existence.
That's not to say hoard offense. Rather, seek God, seek truth, seek understanding, and seek ways to word your pain which demonstrates knowledge that you are not only one in the battle.
Everybody's got their stuff.
Take the time to ask.
To give the benefit of the doubt.
To exercise mercy even if they deserve your wrath.
Because hurt people hurt people, yes.
But blessed people bless people.
It works both ways.
Those two catch phrases, if you will, are very similar, I think.
It's similar to the old cliche, "Misery loves company."
We're all pretty messed up, it's true. And we're all messed up both the same and different than one another.
And yet, and yet, we all like to think our messed-up-ness is completely unique. Nobody in the entire world understands!!!! To a certain degree, that's true. There has never been another person like you, so no other person has experienced or processed pain in the same way as you.
However, in our confusion and in our partial/poor processing and understanding of our problems, we act out.
We become cagey, reckless, electric.
We find people who are similarly cagey, reckless, and electric and form destructive, dependent bonds with them.
Or/and we lash out at everything that moves.
"She looked at me weird."
"He sent me a smileyface emoticon as her entire text response."
"How hard is it to take two seconds and return an email?!."
"GET OFF MY TAIL, JERK! I'M GOING THE SPEEDLIMIT"
"Slam that door one more time. C'mon. I dare you."
Anything can set off the trigger.
All that self-anxiety and tumbles of frustration (that honestly we may not even recognize what the source of it is) is then tunnel-visioned onto whomever gave that twitchy finger the go-ahead.
In response, the squinter/emoticon abuser/slow emailer/butt-face driver (who, in defense of shootey-mcgee over there, probably deserve at least a paintball to the gut or an airsoft gun bruise or two) receives an avalanche of venomous slush.
Nearly all of it deserves displacement.
That's not what it seems, though. And it's definitely not how it feels.
But we don't take the time to analyze that.
We let it happen.
We, the offended, leave that interaction burning hot with rage, all at the offenders.
The offenders leave angry, hurt, and confused at what the heck just happened??
And, in response, transfer their anger, hurt, and confusion onto their own personal trigger people.
And honestly, at the end of the day, it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot difference if we do recognize what we have done and why we have done it.
Apologies are great. Recognizing and verbalizing that you have wronged is an incredible step forward. And it could indeed mend that acid-burned relationship.
But it still happened. And those dominos still fell.
Your words have power. Your actions have power. Don't be so smallminded as to think you can do whatever you want without broad consequence.
Be careful not to let tumble from your lips words that do not deserve existence.
That's not to say hoard offense. Rather, seek God, seek truth, seek understanding, and seek ways to word your pain which demonstrates knowledge that you are not only one in the battle.
Everybody's got their stuff.
Take the time to ask.
To give the benefit of the doubt.
To exercise mercy even if they deserve your wrath.
Because hurt people hurt people, yes.
But blessed people bless people.
It works both ways.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Reading in the Rain, Through the Fog
There are all sorts of rains here in NI.
There's the kind that falls even when the sun is shining like the liquid version of sifted powdered sugar: light and sweet.
Then there's "wet rain" (previously discussed, I think) in which you can't really hide from it no matter how big your umbrella is. It just kind of saturates the air; the tiniest water buds falling in such slow motion as to seem as though they're not moving at all.
Then there's the kind that actually smells of rain and comes down straight and hard like at home. I've only experienced it once here.
And then, of course, there's what's been coming down nonstop I hear for the past two months to today. Sideways, holding onto the sides of the wind, coming in just as hard and from what seems like every direction but up.
Tireless stuff. From inside, it's hard to tell if you're hearing the wind or the rain, the sounds have become so congruous. Either sound is nice, though.
Inside is me, snuggled into a pile of pillows, with my journal and laptop, an oscillating heater and an oscillating reading list: Oswald Chambers (I'm behind), The Elements of Philosophy (an old textbook I'm reading for fun), Dubliners (James Joyce. Again, for fun), Connecting (A reread by Larry Crabb).
Cozy, cozy.
2.5 hours until my first class of the semester starts.
Many would question the sanity of such thick reading before I get smacked with my semester heap's.
It makes sense to me, though (which I guess is all that matters).
You see, I really do love to read. That isn't a surprise to anyone, but what may be is that in the 42 days I was home, I only read one book. One. It was one I'd already read and YA at that.
I started 9.
Never seemed able to make it past the first page of any. My mind wouldn't do what I wanted. Didn't do any content developing either.
My mind, which I've always felt able to bend to my academic will, sat down and fell into an unwakeable sleep.
A bit before I left, I started writing copious letters to send out to my students of last semester, people I attended the OneThing conference with, and a few other JBUers I appreciated.
I planned those letters a month before I actually wrote them. It took me that long to make myself do it.
Those two ideas are connected. I started to judge myself and get frustrated, knowing the degree to which I am capable of accomplishing such feats as note writing and book reading.
The thing was, though, I was also coping with an extended period of depression. My mind literally wasn't functioning as I had become accustomed to.
I had to change my outlook on myself, start lowering my expectations and raise my commitment, as Pastor Tom Harrison would say.
Grace, with myself.
One day, I may read three pages. But that was more than the day before!!! So I celebrate. Or I wrote five notes in a row! So great! Well done! That was more than the zero of yesterday!
As I explained this process to someone, they asked me the very valid question: "How do you avoid becoming complacent or underachieving?"
My answer was "Thankfulness." I see where I want to be. I'm not "content," necessarily, with where I am, but I recognize that I am, in fact, here. Therefore, I have to celebrate every step that I take toward becoming who I want to be.
If I don't achieve as highly today as I did yesterday, very well. I am thankful for what I did happen to accomplish today (comparison is the thief of joy. Let yesterday's victories be yesterday) and hope for at least as wonderful, if not more so, tomorrow, with the knowledge that if I "fail" tomorrow, I am not a failure and it is not a signal for perpetual failure in the days to come.
My current reading is varied so as to allow me to trick myself. I can only get through 10 pages of Dubliners? Awesome. I can do that and maybe half a chapter of Crabb and one wee article of philosophy.
By the end, I've accomplished much more than I would have out of just one subject and my mind has gained a little more grid in its goo.
I needed to practice before put back in the big leagues of grad school, and what better weather to practice in than the glowey green raininess of Ireland?
Thursday, January 23, 2014
The Powerful Play Goes On
We all fall apart. That's the naked truth of it.
Despite what I felt was a miraculous recovery from my depression, I, once again, dissolved just a few days ago in a pretty major way. It seems when faced with the actual pressure and reality of my return to Northern Ireland, my mind ceased to act out of its state of renewal and repair.
I got sent to counseling later that afternoon and, in the space of three days, have completed three sessions.
It's been good, but it's also been a solid reminder that "getting better" is a process of ebs and flows, a one step forward two steps back kind of situation. That won't change when I go back to NI either.
Not all, certainly, but many of the same struggles will be waiting for me the moment I get off the plane there. I'm not going to be able to (nor do I want to) wean off the Lord's grace or sufficiency or daily bread.
No matter where I go, no matter who I'm with, I will always be an Israelite with a full dependency and hope in the fact that when I walk out of my tent in the morning, there will be manna enough to sustain and strengthen me for the day ahead. In exact measure for my needs.
So, I leave yesterday and the day before where they are in their graves of time and tomorrow in its den, and I hold up the 12 hours in front of me for inspection and growth.
We are well aware that "in a minute there is time/For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
But we are equally aware that every decision, every minute is a chance to change the world.
Every decision, every minute we are writing new sentences in the books of our lives.
The neverending story continues.
Despite what I felt was a miraculous recovery from my depression, I, once again, dissolved just a few days ago in a pretty major way. It seems when faced with the actual pressure and reality of my return to Northern Ireland, my mind ceased to act out of its state of renewal and repair.
I got sent to counseling later that afternoon and, in the space of three days, have completed three sessions.
It's been good, but it's also been a solid reminder that "getting better" is a process of ebs and flows, a one step forward two steps back kind of situation. That won't change when I go back to NI either.
Not all, certainly, but many of the same struggles will be waiting for me the moment I get off the plane there. I'm not going to be able to (nor do I want to) wean off the Lord's grace or sufficiency or daily bread.
No matter where I go, no matter who I'm with, I will always be an Israelite with a full dependency and hope in the fact that when I walk out of my tent in the morning, there will be manna enough to sustain and strengthen me for the day ahead. In exact measure for my needs.
So, I leave yesterday and the day before where they are in their graves of time and tomorrow in its den, and I hold up the 12 hours in front of me for inspection and growth.
We are well aware that "in a minute there is time/For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
But we are equally aware that every decision, every minute is a chance to change the world.
Every decision, every minute we are writing new sentences in the books of our lives.
The neverending story continues.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
The Christmas that Could
I love my family.
Anyone that knows me knows that one fact. That, and my deep love for the three best friends, but that's a given. :)
My family, no matter how uncommunicative or overcommunicative or awkward or spazzy, is where I intrinsically sense to go when I feel unsure or so sure. They're the ones I want to share my most happy moments with and the ones my heart immediately needs when it gets broken.
They're the base line. Even when I lose sight of my identity and everything else in my life, I know who I am with them. I am a little sister to three big brothers, a sister-in-law to three as well, a niece, a cousin, an aunt of five, a daughter. I am my family. And what a wonderful one to be known by.
I needed them. And by the grace of God I got them.
Christmas Eve went as expected. Jansie and Daisy Ree whirlwind cleaned, and I putsed about, wandering, disappearing, holding the dog so it looked like I was actually doing something. Useless creature, me. I think it's my learned defensive behavior. My ma gets frenzied near holidays (or any event of any kind at our home. Though, admittedly, she has gotten so much better) and cleans/throws away everything in sight. It ain't pretty. You'd hide, too. I've never gotten as good as Chon, though. He was a master at getting out of things without anyone noticing that he was doing nothing.
The evening was at First Methodist Church, a lovely carol service. Our wee group was comprised of my parents and me, my aunt Joycer, uncle ed, Krissy, her husband Jeff, and my cousins Crista and Noah.
I'm not going to lie. I almost didn't make it. Christmas Eve, I didn't pull it together. I tried. The heaviness took me. I felt like the grinch, and I could see how my darkness was hurting my parents and grandma. I just wanted to be alone and cry. Throw it in my face: "But you so wanted to come home!" Yeah, I know. But not yet. You've got to understand. I so wanted to come home because nobody else wanted me, and the idea of sitting 4,000 miles away from familiar, soaking in minute by minute that knowledge on top of the horrors of the past four months? Acid to my soul. I could not do it.
Yes, I want to be home. I am so terribly thankful to be home, but being home and having to reconcile my brokenness with the expectations of behaving like a normal creature and contributing to a positive atmosphere is hard. And it's hard on my family. I'm hard for my family.
That's who I went into that Christmas Eve service as. Amazing how a guy snoring behind you, really great black singing, and family that can make you laugh and forget can change your inner atmosphere. (nerd moment: laughter really does chemically alter your mood.) I came out better. So much better.
I'd like to give a shout-out of thanks to serotonin for carrying over until today. Despite bad, exhausting dreams (usually a signal for an awful day ahead), it was a truly wonderful Christmas.
A skype with my brother joey, his wife Cristin, and their two kiddos: harrison and gianna.
Later, we were joined by my other two siblings, the kids opened a few presents (the siblings decided to skip Christmas with one another) [side note: thank you to whoever invented gift bags. Honestly, if you ever receive a present from me which is wrapped in something other than a gift bag or a sweat shirt, I probably love you more than any other person in my acquaintance arsenal], and we snacked while watching home movies. It's kind of a tradition of ours. One of my absolute favorites. In a way, it makes it feel as though we're all a part. With them, my Jesus-resting Papa can be with us (now who was in the manger? mary and joseph and the baby.) and my uncle johnnie, aunt lynne, cousins, ruthie and charlie, jojo, all of us.
It's funny how our personalities really haven't changed either. Chon trying to steal the camera, incessantly talking, and being goofy always, Jacob the ultimate caretaker (I dare you to find a single scene in any picture or video from my childhood which features me without him), and Joey...well...Joey actually has changed. He didn't really know he was alive back then. He was sweet boy. He became a great man.
And my niecer Ella actually looks a ton like what I did at her age. Hadn't noticed before.
The rest of the day, we ate, drank, made merry, and were rejoined by joycie, ed, kris and jeff, and daisy marie. We were all relaxed, played some games, doted on the darling kiddos, and were just your basic, garden variety happy. It was very nice.
Merry Christmas from the Odoms.
We probably love you.
Or we will learn to.
Or we will relearn to.
Or we've never met you, but we're sure you're very nice.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Anyone that knows me knows that one fact. That, and my deep love for the three best friends, but that's a given. :)
My family, no matter how uncommunicative or overcommunicative or awkward or spazzy, is where I intrinsically sense to go when I feel unsure or so sure. They're the ones I want to share my most happy moments with and the ones my heart immediately needs when it gets broken.
They're the base line. Even when I lose sight of my identity and everything else in my life, I know who I am with them. I am a little sister to three big brothers, a sister-in-law to three as well, a niece, a cousin, an aunt of five, a daughter. I am my family. And what a wonderful one to be known by.
I needed them. And by the grace of God I got them.
Christmas Eve went as expected. Jansie and Daisy Ree whirlwind cleaned, and I putsed about, wandering, disappearing, holding the dog so it looked like I was actually doing something. Useless creature, me. I think it's my learned defensive behavior. My ma gets frenzied near holidays (or any event of any kind at our home. Though, admittedly, she has gotten so much better) and cleans/throws away everything in sight. It ain't pretty. You'd hide, too. I've never gotten as good as Chon, though. He was a master at getting out of things without anyone noticing that he was doing nothing.
The evening was at First Methodist Church, a lovely carol service. Our wee group was comprised of my parents and me, my aunt Joycer, uncle ed, Krissy, her husband Jeff, and my cousins Crista and Noah.
I'm not going to lie. I almost didn't make it. Christmas Eve, I didn't pull it together. I tried. The heaviness took me. I felt like the grinch, and I could see how my darkness was hurting my parents and grandma. I just wanted to be alone and cry. Throw it in my face: "But you so wanted to come home!" Yeah, I know. But not yet. You've got to understand. I so wanted to come home because nobody else wanted me, and the idea of sitting 4,000 miles away from familiar, soaking in minute by minute that knowledge on top of the horrors of the past four months? Acid to my soul. I could not do it.
Yes, I want to be home. I am so terribly thankful to be home, but being home and having to reconcile my brokenness with the expectations of behaving like a normal creature and contributing to a positive atmosphere is hard. And it's hard on my family. I'm hard for my family.
That's who I went into that Christmas Eve service as. Amazing how a guy snoring behind you, really great black singing, and family that can make you laugh and forget can change your inner atmosphere. (nerd moment: laughter really does chemically alter your mood.) I came out better. So much better.
I'd like to give a shout-out of thanks to serotonin for carrying over until today. Despite bad, exhausting dreams (usually a signal for an awful day ahead), it was a truly wonderful Christmas.
A skype with my brother joey, his wife Cristin, and their two kiddos: harrison and gianna.
Later, we were joined by my other two siblings, the kids opened a few presents (the siblings decided to skip Christmas with one another) [side note: thank you to whoever invented gift bags. Honestly, if you ever receive a present from me which is wrapped in something other than a gift bag or a sweat shirt, I probably love you more than any other person in my acquaintance arsenal], and we snacked while watching home movies. It's kind of a tradition of ours. One of my absolute favorites. In a way, it makes it feel as though we're all a part. With them, my Jesus-resting Papa can be with us (now who was in the manger? mary and joseph and the baby.) and my uncle johnnie, aunt lynne, cousins, ruthie and charlie, jojo, all of us.
It's funny how our personalities really haven't changed either. Chon trying to steal the camera, incessantly talking, and being goofy always, Jacob the ultimate caretaker (I dare you to find a single scene in any picture or video from my childhood which features me without him), and Joey...well...Joey actually has changed. He didn't really know he was alive back then. He was sweet boy. He became a great man.
And my niecer Ella actually looks a ton like what I did at her age. Hadn't noticed before.
The rest of the day, we ate, drank, made merry, and were rejoined by joycie, ed, kris and jeff, and daisy marie. We were all relaxed, played some games, doted on the darling kiddos, and were just your basic, garden variety happy. It was very nice.
Merry Christmas from the Odoms.
We probably love you.
Or we will learn to.
Or we will relearn to.
Or we've never met you, but we're sure you're very nice.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Following Jesus is Putting on Pants or “Structured Depression”
This past
summer, I waited on tables for a bit. And, except for the excessive weight and
sleep loss, it was a really good experience.
One thing I
learned from it is that one crappy table does not make for a crappy day. It
makes for a crappy table. Your next table might be the best table ever. Check
in with me every 45 minutes or so, and my day assessment would be completely
different each time.
That
principle is the same with my current struggle against my depression. A morning
of exhausted defeatedness doesn’t resign my whole day to the same. It’s hard to
maintain that perspective and not sit down in my grief and stay put.
I thought,
being home, I would be better, that I would leave this dampered state in
Ireland or in Arkansas, but I didn’t.
And I see
my siblings and their kids and my parents and I want to be engaging or ecstatic
to be with them, but I can’t get there. I feel trapped. I so want to be fun and
chirpy or even pretend to be, but I can’t even manufacture that like I used to
be able to.
I’m
frustrated with myself.
I’m
frustrated with who I’ve become, and I don’t want to talk to my friends or “my
people” because I don’t want to be such an unending killjoy. Or I don’t want to
talk to them because they hear my semester’s story and miss the point. They hear
only the superficial struggles, easy to fix and apologize for or only the parts
which are congruent with their own delusions of reality, but they don’t hear my heart.
And then,
out of nowhere, the plexiglass that stands between me and everybody else melts,
and I can hear them and feel happiness and have fun and let go! So wonderful!
Then one
comment or well-meant question trips me off again. “Oh you live in Ireland? So
jealous. You’re so legit.” You couldn’t be more wrong, but you so don’t want to
hear about it.
This was
not the plan! This was never the plan! The plan was I go to Ireland and have
adventures and the experience of my lifetime, then spend a few days alone, then
reunite with people I love for a while, and then come back to my rose-colored
life on the emerald isle.
Extended
and strangling anxiety was not in the plan, nor being forgotten, nor hatred for
almost every moment of my life there, complete aloneness, rejection,
replacement, depression, constant misunderstandings, a worry to my family and
friends, a worrier for friends who are broken and breaking themselves and,
finally, being sent home in disgrace and failure because I just couldn’t take
it anymore.
I’m not
supposed to be here yet! This was not the plan. I failed. I failed and I’m not
getting better. What is the big picture? What is my “why”? And when will I see
it?
Being
alone, you can be in bad shape and know it to a certain extent, but it’s when
you’re surrounded by people that the mirror of reality is shoved in your face.
For
instance, I knew I had lost some weight, but I didn’t realize just how much.
I’m currently two pounds under my thinnest weight of my thinnest summer, and
this the result of “I gained it all back I swear”. No telling how low I got
this past semester. Food and I aren’t getting along.
Neither are
sleep and I. My sleep schedule has been all kinds of everywhere, but not until
I’m around people with normal sleep schedules did I see how odd I’ve been
allowing mine to be. 4.5 hours here, 12 hours there, never a pattern, never the
same.
Following
Jesus is putting on pants; it’s building a steel structure of normality for my
fog, and forcing my will and body to cooperate. Like sleep and food. Like making
some progress on my looming papers (oops…) or leaving the house. Following
Jesus means giving up the last piece of my dignity and self-dependence and
getting some help.
I pray so
dearly that I never again become so self-important and callous that the Lord has
to bring me back to this place.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
One More Time With Feeling
I had a dream once. Not like Martin Luther King Junior. The real kind. The kind your sleeping self creates.
In this dream, there was a path. A silent man to my left, but to my right were two people standing with their backs to me talking a ways down the sloped road. But I walked past them, walking straight and toward a hill.
I walked with big strides up the pathway, hooking my feet into the creases in the cracked dirt and making good time.
The hill got steeper, though, and as I looked forward, I saw it wasn't a hill at all but a mountain. The nearly ninety degree up kind, and the air was thinning. I got slower. Still long strides, but with so much more effort and not enough oxygen to keep up even that pace.
The man wrapped his fingers into my rib cage. He was having no problem keeping a consistent pace and now steel-grip, half-dragged me up along with him. I could feel his fingers bruising into me.
Feet no longer catching hold but slipping. Air coming less. Rim of sight fuzzing, darkening. Dizzy. Still those fingers in my ribs pulling me up.
We came up and I saw the burning edges of the sunset over the crest of the mountain. And passed out.
_________________________________________________________________________________
There was one more chapter to my pain. I left Siloam perfect. My memories there, perfect. And they needed to be rewritten into reality.
I prayed extensively beforehand, knowing that I was to be watched and knowing I would face questions.
Lord, What do I say? How am I to be gracious? How am I to speak the truth? With what words do I fill my mouth?
Then came the moment when I fully grasped it: No matter what I say, no matter what I do, others will believe what they will believe. I cannot make for myself my reputation. It is the Lord who writes my name.
Therefore, whether it makes me look weak or undone, I will speak the truth. I will speak the truth with deep humility and without shame. "The Lord has dealt with me."
In Siloam, I learned of more betrayal, of secrecy, of broken, broken journeys, and of pain.
I was left with nothing but compassion and a deep ache, knowing of self-destructive bonds forged out of ignorance. You know not what you are doing, but it is your journey. Not mine.
To my supervisors, professors, and friends, I told the truth of my current state and of my own journey. Never have I been not more open but more raw or present in my answers. Never have I been less lovely.
And yet, and yet, the Lord was seen. In the wreck that is my body and my life, the ones who know me spoke over me favor. I, who have sought my whole life for that favor and respect; I, who have twisted myself mangled to achieve honor; I, who have always fallen short of what I wanted, am only to receive it now, when I am the least deserving of the words I once fought so hard to win.
Then, I walked away and didn't look back. I did not get my closure. I did not seek my closure. I chose my closure. I chose to walk alone and allow The Lord to do his own work without me putsing about in somebody else's path.
Muted by pain and so present in my pain, but I am so thankful.
My future husband and children and friends will bless, bless, bless these past four months. I myself will bless these past four months.
I am changed, told I even look it.
My story is not my own. The Lord has closed my journal and opened a new book, writing my pathway with blood and tears and truth.
I am home, but I am not better yet, and that is difficult for me to accept. However, a whooped boxer doesn't spritz away dainty after his rounds. He is taken out of the ring, cradled away, and nursed back into battle mode.
I have been taken out of my ring. I have been cradled. And now, I just need time to heal.
At the end of the day: Jesus.
At the end of the day: soundness of mind, right alignment of body and spirit, grace, humility, forgiveness, love, compassion, shameless truth, and the deep recognition and value of friendship and of being human.
At the end of the day: hope.
In this dream, there was a path. A silent man to my left, but to my right were two people standing with their backs to me talking a ways down the sloped road. But I walked past them, walking straight and toward a hill.
I walked with big strides up the pathway, hooking my feet into the creases in the cracked dirt and making good time.
The hill got steeper, though, and as I looked forward, I saw it wasn't a hill at all but a mountain. The nearly ninety degree up kind, and the air was thinning. I got slower. Still long strides, but with so much more effort and not enough oxygen to keep up even that pace.
The man wrapped his fingers into my rib cage. He was having no problem keeping a consistent pace and now steel-grip, half-dragged me up along with him. I could feel his fingers bruising into me.
Feet no longer catching hold but slipping. Air coming less. Rim of sight fuzzing, darkening. Dizzy. Still those fingers in my ribs pulling me up.
We came up and I saw the burning edges of the sunset over the crest of the mountain. And passed out.
_________________________________________________________________________________
There was one more chapter to my pain. I left Siloam perfect. My memories there, perfect. And they needed to be rewritten into reality.
I prayed extensively beforehand, knowing that I was to be watched and knowing I would face questions.
Lord, What do I say? How am I to be gracious? How am I to speak the truth? With what words do I fill my mouth?
Then came the moment when I fully grasped it: No matter what I say, no matter what I do, others will believe what they will believe. I cannot make for myself my reputation. It is the Lord who writes my name.
Therefore, whether it makes me look weak or undone, I will speak the truth. I will speak the truth with deep humility and without shame. "The Lord has dealt with me."
In Siloam, I learned of more betrayal, of secrecy, of broken, broken journeys, and of pain.
I was left with nothing but compassion and a deep ache, knowing of self-destructive bonds forged out of ignorance. You know not what you are doing, but it is your journey. Not mine.
To my supervisors, professors, and friends, I told the truth of my current state and of my own journey. Never have I been not more open but more raw or present in my answers. Never have I been less lovely.
And yet, and yet, the Lord was seen. In the wreck that is my body and my life, the ones who know me spoke over me favor. I, who have sought my whole life for that favor and respect; I, who have twisted myself mangled to achieve honor; I, who have always fallen short of what I wanted, am only to receive it now, when I am the least deserving of the words I once fought so hard to win.
Then, I walked away and didn't look back. I did not get my closure. I did not seek my closure. I chose my closure. I chose to walk alone and allow The Lord to do his own work without me putsing about in somebody else's path.
Muted by pain and so present in my pain, but I am so thankful.
My future husband and children and friends will bless, bless, bless these past four months. I myself will bless these past four months.
I am changed, told I even look it.
My story is not my own. The Lord has closed my journal and opened a new book, writing my pathway with blood and tears and truth.
I am home, but I am not better yet, and that is difficult for me to accept. However, a whooped boxer doesn't spritz away dainty after his rounds. He is taken out of the ring, cradled away, and nursed back into battle mode.
I have been taken out of my ring. I have been cradled. And now, I just need time to heal.
At the end of the day: Jesus.
At the end of the day: soundness of mind, right alignment of body and spirit, grace, humility, forgiveness, love, compassion, shameless truth, and the deep recognition and value of friendship and of being human.
At the end of the day: hope.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Pre-Release Reflections
While I've been here, every single thing has gone wrong.
An aspect of each and every one of my most deeply seated fears has come to pass from my nightmare dreamscape and into my reality.
Every single one of my figurative bones was fisted and crumbled in the hands of my God through people and circumstances I had put faith in.
And I did not come out a phoenix.
I came out as blubbering, desperate, shaky, pale, unrecognizable pulp, asking "Who have I become here?"
I have experienced great darkness in my life before. It is terrible and has brought me to moments of unbelievable agony I once felt I could never escape.
This was different.
It was not suffocating darkness but a sword of light.
Lies didn't stick to me. Anxiety didn't overcome me. There was nothing for me to "overcome" necessarily.
Rather, I was being loved so fiercely that He couldn't allow "me" to survive. Good doesn't always feel good.
And then I hit the end. I spoke hope to myself and wrote hope on my blog (or tried to), but I absolutely could go no further.
And it was then, only then, when I was pulverized and defeat had been announced on every front, that God exploded into my life and provided for me a way out.
The fight that's been so always present in me was beaten out. My hope, my faith in myself, beaten out. Even when I thought everything that could be beaten out was beaten out, God found more.
And yet, I would choose this all again.
No question. No hesitation.
I am not afraid of next semester. After my time of restoration and recuperation, I will come back to the tepee of a life that God and I have built. It will be so good, and I'm even a little excited about what could be in store.
One day, one step at a time.
An aspect of each and every one of my most deeply seated fears has come to pass from my nightmare dreamscape and into my reality.
Every single one of my figurative bones was fisted and crumbled in the hands of my God through people and circumstances I had put faith in.
And I did not come out a phoenix.
I came out as blubbering, desperate, shaky, pale, unrecognizable pulp, asking "Who have I become here?"
I have experienced great darkness in my life before. It is terrible and has brought me to moments of unbelievable agony I once felt I could never escape.
This was different.
It was not suffocating darkness but a sword of light.
Lies didn't stick to me. Anxiety didn't overcome me. There was nothing for me to "overcome" necessarily.
Rather, I was being loved so fiercely that He couldn't allow "me" to survive. Good doesn't always feel good.
And then I hit the end. I spoke hope to myself and wrote hope on my blog (or tried to), but I absolutely could go no further.
And it was then, only then, when I was pulverized and defeat had been announced on every front, that God exploded into my life and provided for me a way out.
The fight that's been so always present in me was beaten out. My hope, my faith in myself, beaten out. Even when I thought everything that could be beaten out was beaten out, God found more.
And yet, I would choose this all again.
No question. No hesitation.
I am not afraid of next semester. After my time of restoration and recuperation, I will come back to the tepee of a life that God and I have built. It will be so good, and I'm even a little excited about what could be in store.
One day, one step at a time.
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