I'm off to work in about an hour and a half. To be honest, I'm dreading it a little bit. I only work two shifts this week - today and tomorrow, but both are with my least favorite coworker.
But that's only part of why I'm dreading it. I'm dreading it because of the spiritual attack I faced in that place last week, and I'm wondering if I will continue to face it. When I spoke in earlier posts about the "heaviness" that settled over me as I entered the store, I was understating. I haven't felt that low, that worthless, that frustrated, exhausted and confused since the deepest parts of the depression from which God healed me. And when I would come out of the store and head home to regroup, it took quite a while for the residual effects to fall off.
And so, I'm going into these next two days with much prayer for my own protection, my ability to fight through the darkness. I'm planning to spend part of each of these shifts praying - whatever moments I can get alone, without things that need my entire concentration. And I'm asking God to make it smoother and easier, to guide my steps, to speak into my heart, to show me where He's working.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Front Step Reflections
Note: I wrote the following entry in my paper journal late last night, sitting on the front steps of my home, and scribbling away. I had felt drawn to be outside. Lately, the best times of communion with God at my home have nearly always been outside its walls in my front or back yard, with a book or a Bible or a journal or a pen. The weather here has been rainy, and I was uncertain that it would be warm enough for me to sit on our front steps and just think and write, but I was drawn to that place, to simply write, with no particular agenda or topic to discuss. And, you'll feel the shift partway through the entry as God begins to draw me into a place of memory and woundedness, confirming some things I had rediscovered the previous evening in conversation with a friend. This is perhaps the most blatantly honest and soul revealing thing I have penned in a long time, and I cannot take credit for it. I was simply drawn into it by a loving abba who realized it was long past time for these things to surface.
June 12, 2006 – At home, late evening
It’s a cool evening, after a rainy weekend, and I am sitting here on our front step in the gathering dusk, trying to jot down a few thoughts with no great purpose or depth. Just random observations about an evening that seemed to invite me outside to write.
I can hear the voices of some neighbourhood boys two houses up. They’re engaging in that oh-so-Canadian pastime of street hockey. Occasionally words are spoken, but all in all what I mostly hear is the dull clanking of their sticks against each other’s sticks, and against the asphalt street. Their running footsteps intensify occasionally, and the intensity of their game ebbs and flows. The concrete school across the street picks up and magnifies every sound of their game a hundred fold.
The yards are clothed in dusk, and aside from the hockey game, the streets are relatively quiet. An occasional car drives along the adjoining street, and every so often a bird sings to celebrate the end of the rainstorm.
A cyclist rides by, ringing her bell to alert the hockey players that she’s coming through, and I see the glow out of the corner of my eye as a light flips on in our house behind me.
The air smells fresh – that newly washed, after a rainstorm smell, slightly tinged with the aroma of the last lilacs of the season and the smoky scent of a distant fire.
The air echoes with the cry of “car” as two successive vehicles turn the corner onto our street, slowing as the hockey players make way.
The light in the house behind me has gone off again, and I am studying the shadows cast by the orange glow of the streetlight on the corner.
The air is cool and still. The smoky scent reminds me of childhood camping trips, of late evenings spent curled in lawn chairs in the gathering dark around a campfire as my dad played a guitar and softly sang old folk tunes. “Mr. Bojangles,” “The 59th Street Bridge Song,” “The Boxer,” “Annie’s Song,” and others. These are the soundtrack of my childhood, sung softly to a gently played guitar in my dad’s deep voice.
And suddenly I realize what this melancholy is that has driven me to sit here on our stone front steps and write. Last night I had a conversation with a friend. And he spoke truths that are breaking my heart. I made a decision that I will spend the next months working towards. I need to leave my parents’ home to be able to move deeper in my spiritual walk. I need to create distance to figure out how to move into new relationship with my family – relationship that will hopefully be healthier.
And I am sad at the thought of leaving the only home I’ve ever lived in. I’ve lived on this street I’m looking at tonight since my parents brought me home from the hospital nearly twenty-three years ago. And I’m afraid, a little.
There’s the other thing too. Sitting here, absorbing the evening and being transported back to all those evenings in the mountains as a child, I wonder how such love and such rejection can coexist in one relationship. For I have no doubt of the depth of my dad’s love for me. Although he rarely says it, it has been demonstrated in a thousand different ways over the years. And yet, we have no relationship.
I want so much for my daddy to be proud of me. To support the choices I’m making in life. To tell me that my choices have been wise, and that I have succeeded in following God’s call and my own dreams.
There are tears running down my cheeks now, and my eyes are burning as they pool. My body is trembling in the way it does when intense, unshed emotion is beginning to surface.
And tonight, I miss the little blond girl who wrapped herself in a blanket and curled so joyfully into a lawn chair, unencumbered by adult relationships and the tangled emotions that go with them, and simply looked with adoration as this daddy who she knew was perfect – a true dragon-slaying knight – and asked one more time for her favourite song, listening enraptured as he sang of the man who brought his wife “a daisy a day.”
And I wonder when he stopped slaying dragons and became instead the demanding taskmaster driving me to think about everything deeply. Challenging every thought and position I held. Questioning decisions and asking me to defend my choices. A strong moral force, but one I feared rather than desired.
And so my dragon-slayer was gone, and my mom became my rock, my confidant, at times the only friend that a socially awkward, deep-thinking, old-for-her-years adolescent had.
And that, too, had its own set of pitfalls. I clung to her, needed her desperately at a time when her own wounds were all she could manage. And so I began to bear those wounds as well. I am afraid of strange men, of physical contact with men because my mother was assaulted as a child, and my dragon-slaying knight stopped holding me as I grew older.
And today, when I no longer need my mom in the way I did at thirteen, or sixteen, or even eighteen, today she has found much of her own healing, she is stronger and wants to be involved in my life in much the way she was when I was thirteen and brought every thought, need or decision to her ears. She seeks to be involved in aspects of my life that are not hers to be part of.
The hockey game has finally wound down for the evening, and silence is descending on our street. The remaining light is quickly fading, and my emotions are still raw, but exhausted for this evening. The tears have dried on my cheeks and I am left with very little. I will leave this home as soon as it becomes financially possible.
And I wonder this, as I prepare to re-enter my home. When will the healing come that has been spoken over my relationship with my dad in particular? When will it come? And what will it look like? I had hoped to leave home with this area of my life resolved – on a happy note with adult relationship with my parents and siblings. And yet, it seems that I will leave with this bittersweet lack of resolution.
I’m excited for the new things that I believe God is drawing me out of this home to pursue. And yet, as I begin to prepare myself to leave, I know I am leaving wounded, with regrets that will not be satisfied…
And as I prepare to leave, I continue to beg God to raise up spiritual parents and mentors and friends in my life, to place them in my pathway as I journey.
June 12, 2006 – At home, late evening
It’s a cool evening, after a rainy weekend, and I am sitting here on our front step in the gathering dusk, trying to jot down a few thoughts with no great purpose or depth. Just random observations about an evening that seemed to invite me outside to write.
I can hear the voices of some neighbourhood boys two houses up. They’re engaging in that oh-so-Canadian pastime of street hockey. Occasionally words are spoken, but all in all what I mostly hear is the dull clanking of their sticks against each other’s sticks, and against the asphalt street. Their running footsteps intensify occasionally, and the intensity of their game ebbs and flows. The concrete school across the street picks up and magnifies every sound of their game a hundred fold.
The yards are clothed in dusk, and aside from the hockey game, the streets are relatively quiet. An occasional car drives along the adjoining street, and every so often a bird sings to celebrate the end of the rainstorm.
A cyclist rides by, ringing her bell to alert the hockey players that she’s coming through, and I see the glow out of the corner of my eye as a light flips on in our house behind me.
The air smells fresh – that newly washed, after a rainstorm smell, slightly tinged with the aroma of the last lilacs of the season and the smoky scent of a distant fire.
The air echoes with the cry of “car” as two successive vehicles turn the corner onto our street, slowing as the hockey players make way.
The light in the house behind me has gone off again, and I am studying the shadows cast by the orange glow of the streetlight on the corner.
The air is cool and still. The smoky scent reminds me of childhood camping trips, of late evenings spent curled in lawn chairs in the gathering dark around a campfire as my dad played a guitar and softly sang old folk tunes. “Mr. Bojangles,” “The 59th Street Bridge Song,” “The Boxer,” “Annie’s Song,” and others. These are the soundtrack of my childhood, sung softly to a gently played guitar in my dad’s deep voice.
And suddenly I realize what this melancholy is that has driven me to sit here on our stone front steps and write. Last night I had a conversation with a friend. And he spoke truths that are breaking my heart. I made a decision that I will spend the next months working towards. I need to leave my parents’ home to be able to move deeper in my spiritual walk. I need to create distance to figure out how to move into new relationship with my family – relationship that will hopefully be healthier.
And I am sad at the thought of leaving the only home I’ve ever lived in. I’ve lived on this street I’m looking at tonight since my parents brought me home from the hospital nearly twenty-three years ago. And I’m afraid, a little.
There’s the other thing too. Sitting here, absorbing the evening and being transported back to all those evenings in the mountains as a child, I wonder how such love and such rejection can coexist in one relationship. For I have no doubt of the depth of my dad’s love for me. Although he rarely says it, it has been demonstrated in a thousand different ways over the years. And yet, we have no relationship.
I want so much for my daddy to be proud of me. To support the choices I’m making in life. To tell me that my choices have been wise, and that I have succeeded in following God’s call and my own dreams.
There are tears running down my cheeks now, and my eyes are burning as they pool. My body is trembling in the way it does when intense, unshed emotion is beginning to surface.
And tonight, I miss the little blond girl who wrapped herself in a blanket and curled so joyfully into a lawn chair, unencumbered by adult relationships and the tangled emotions that go with them, and simply looked with adoration as this daddy who she knew was perfect – a true dragon-slaying knight – and asked one more time for her favourite song, listening enraptured as he sang of the man who brought his wife “a daisy a day.”
And I wonder when he stopped slaying dragons and became instead the demanding taskmaster driving me to think about everything deeply. Challenging every thought and position I held. Questioning decisions and asking me to defend my choices. A strong moral force, but one I feared rather than desired.
And so my dragon-slayer was gone, and my mom became my rock, my confidant, at times the only friend that a socially awkward, deep-thinking, old-for-her-years adolescent had.
And that, too, had its own set of pitfalls. I clung to her, needed her desperately at a time when her own wounds were all she could manage. And so I began to bear those wounds as well. I am afraid of strange men, of physical contact with men because my mother was assaulted as a child, and my dragon-slaying knight stopped holding me as I grew older.
And today, when I no longer need my mom in the way I did at thirteen, or sixteen, or even eighteen, today she has found much of her own healing, she is stronger and wants to be involved in my life in much the way she was when I was thirteen and brought every thought, need or decision to her ears. She seeks to be involved in aspects of my life that are not hers to be part of.
The hockey game has finally wound down for the evening, and silence is descending on our street. The remaining light is quickly fading, and my emotions are still raw, but exhausted for this evening. The tears have dried on my cheeks and I am left with very little. I will leave this home as soon as it becomes financially possible.
And I wonder this, as I prepare to re-enter my home. When will the healing come that has been spoken over my relationship with my dad in particular? When will it come? And what will it look like? I had hoped to leave home with this area of my life resolved – on a happy note with adult relationship with my parents and siblings. And yet, it seems that I will leave with this bittersweet lack of resolution.
I’m excited for the new things that I believe God is drawing me out of this home to pursue. And yet, as I begin to prepare myself to leave, I know I am leaving wounded, with regrets that will not be satisfied…
And as I prepare to leave, I continue to beg God to raise up spiritual parents and mentors and friends in my life, to place them in my pathway as I journey.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Monday
Not a lot to tell you today. I continue in the vein of waiting. I made a decision last night that I will begin to act on quietly over the next while. Someday soon I'll tell you what it is, and why I made it.
Today I don't work, and I'm grateful. So I'm doing cleaning, and reading, and watching a movie or two in my basement. Oh, and dinner with a friend, to hear a God story from last week that I've been waiting to have time to sit down with her and hear.
This prayer was in my email this morning from the Moravians:
God, we are sinful and broken people, imperfect jars of clay, yet you have filled us to overflowing with your holy presence. Tune us to your will, Lord, so that through even our lives your perfect love might shine forth. Amen.
And this passage caught me last night at church (which incidentally was also full of my river/water/fire themes from the week):
When the poor and needy search for water and there is none, and their tongues are parched from thirst, then I, the Lord, will answer them. I, the God of Israel, will never abandon them. I will open up rivers for them on the high plateaus. I will give them fountains of water in the valleys. I will fill the desert with pools of water. Rivers fed by springs will flow across the parched ground. I will plant trees in the barren desert - cedar, acacia, myrtle, olive, cypress, fir, and pine. I am doing this so all who see this miracle will understand what it means - that it is the Lord who has done this, the Holy One of Israel who created it. (Isaiah 41:17-20)
Today I don't work, and I'm grateful. So I'm doing cleaning, and reading, and watching a movie or two in my basement. Oh, and dinner with a friend, to hear a God story from last week that I've been waiting to have time to sit down with her and hear.
This prayer was in my email this morning from the Moravians:
God, we are sinful and broken people, imperfect jars of clay, yet you have filled us to overflowing with your holy presence. Tune us to your will, Lord, so that through even our lives your perfect love might shine forth. Amen.
And this passage caught me last night at church (which incidentally was also full of my river/water/fire themes from the week):
When the poor and needy search for water and there is none, and their tongues are parched from thirst, then I, the Lord, will answer them. I, the God of Israel, will never abandon them. I will open up rivers for them on the high plateaus. I will give them fountains of water in the valleys. I will fill the desert with pools of water. Rivers fed by springs will flow across the parched ground. I will plant trees in the barren desert - cedar, acacia, myrtle, olive, cypress, fir, and pine. I am doing this so all who see this miracle will understand what it means - that it is the Lord who has done this, the Holy One of Israel who created it. (Isaiah 41:17-20)
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Still Pushing
I'm still tired. Still befuddled, still fighting. And committed to keep pushing through whatever this is. I'm grateful that tomorrow night is Converge, because it is often soul refreshing, and if not, well, at least I get to be with people I love!
I work tomorrow first - work is still hard. I don't want to be at this job anymore, and have struggled with discouragement among other things this week that I will never find a better job. Today at work was long. I didn't want to be there, didn't feel up to summoning the energy to fight the heaviness that has been sinking over my spirit as I enter. At least tomorrow's shift is mercifully short - four hours only.
Last night was restless - around 10:30 pm God started popping thoughts into my head. The whole theme of fire and water, of rivers and streams. I have pages of seemingly disconnected thoughts that I scribbled down as they came. Bits of songs and scripture, thoughts out of nowhere, things I've read. Every time I turned the lights out I needed to turn them back on and grab for the notebook I use for this sort of disconnected rambling and keep writing stuff down. I finally fell asleep with Jason Upton's "Mighty River" playing on the stereo beside my head.
And just before I woke this morning I had another vivid dream. It seems somehow to relate to the whole water/fire theme going on last night. Very odd, somewhat unsettling, so basically normal for me! You know, I used to only have these kinds of dreams once or twice a year. They've been happening once or twice a week for the last while. I've got to find someone to hang out with who is gifted in the interpretation of dreams, although some of them seem quite clear at times...
And with that, I'm off... I've got more to do with this whole fire and water thing... more rambling thoughts and research to do, and then it will be time to start at the beginning of the disconnected thoughts and begin to give them form and substance, to flesh out ideas, to breath life into the words, to pray them into clarity and meaning for my life. (Also, I think I'm going to go finish watching the first of the three Harry Potter movies I rented to watch over the next week!) And maybe some art... it's been on my mind all week to do something with art again. Plus, the mundane stuff of life like washing my hair, cleaning the bathroom, and laundry.
I work tomorrow first - work is still hard. I don't want to be at this job anymore, and have struggled with discouragement among other things this week that I will never find a better job. Today at work was long. I didn't want to be there, didn't feel up to summoning the energy to fight the heaviness that has been sinking over my spirit as I enter. At least tomorrow's shift is mercifully short - four hours only.
Last night was restless - around 10:30 pm God started popping thoughts into my head. The whole theme of fire and water, of rivers and streams. I have pages of seemingly disconnected thoughts that I scribbled down as they came. Bits of songs and scripture, thoughts out of nowhere, things I've read. Every time I turned the lights out I needed to turn them back on and grab for the notebook I use for this sort of disconnected rambling and keep writing stuff down. I finally fell asleep with Jason Upton's "Mighty River" playing on the stereo beside my head.
And just before I woke this morning I had another vivid dream. It seems somehow to relate to the whole water/fire theme going on last night. Very odd, somewhat unsettling, so basically normal for me! You know, I used to only have these kinds of dreams once or twice a year. They've been happening once or twice a week for the last while. I've got to find someone to hang out with who is gifted in the interpretation of dreams, although some of them seem quite clear at times...
And with that, I'm off... I've got more to do with this whole fire and water thing... more rambling thoughts and research to do, and then it will be time to start at the beginning of the disconnected thoughts and begin to give them form and substance, to flesh out ideas, to breath life into the words, to pray them into clarity and meaning for my life. (Also, I think I'm going to go finish watching the first of the three Harry Potter movies I rented to watch over the next week!) And maybe some art... it's been on my mind all week to do something with art again. Plus, the mundane stuff of life like washing my hair, cleaning the bathroom, and laundry.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Fighting
I wrote a whole post with this title yesterday, but blogger ate it.
I feel like this week has been a fight. I can feel it in my body. I'm exhausted for no apparent reason. I've had headaches almost every day, and restless nights. As I'm sitting here to write my stomach is convulsing and the muscles in my lower back have knotted up. And all week I've wanted to cry, but the tears just won't quite come.
Looking back, I think I saw the battle coming on on Tuesday night. Funny, because Tuesday was a very peaceful day - the day I wrote about in my last post. I had some uncommonly honest conversations about spiritual things that day, and I know a few others did too. As I sat in my car and shared life with a friend into the wee hours of Wednesday morning I was praying silently for a conversation that was going on elsewhere, for nothing in particular and everything in general - my spirit nudged into prayer even as I spoke and shared some of my story with my friend.
Work has been central to whatever emotional or spiritual thing I've been fighting with this week. It's been harder than ever to go there. As I would walk into the building I quite literally felt heaviness and dread descending on my spirit. My brain was foggy and I made odd mistakes - nothing serious, just things that wasted time and energy. Sometimes I fought the heaviness, humming worship songs, meditating on their words and passages of scripture, and sometimes I just worked.
Tonight I'm tired. Still two work shifts to go. Six hours tomorrow, four hours Sunday. The week has been odd. Weird snippets of dreams. I've done a lot of thinking on the subject of good and evil. I've been reading through the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling, enjoying them, but thinking deeply about the questions of good and evil they propose. They've even invaded my dreams at times, snippets of thoughts - conversations with characters from the books. Nothing I can remember when I wake, just the impression that I haven't been separated from the characters and thoughts even while I'm asleep. Every once in a while I stop ever so briefly and wonder when I became weird - odd dreams, God speaking to me for others, feeling everything so intensely, unable to escape words and themes...
The lines from Delirious? "Revival Town" that say "You let a broken generation become a dancing generation," have been floating through the mess of thoughts this week too. I think this statement so closely describes what God has done in my life, what I see Him doing in my generation, and in my church. I wonder sometimes if we have cycles of brokenness and cycles of dancing, or if we perhaps simply choose to dance in spite of brokenness. Because I feel more like the broken person than the dancer tonight, but I persist, because God is calling me ever deeper...
Been listening a lot to Delirious? this week, alternating them with the same Jason Upton CD I've been listening to for the last couple months and one or two others. Water imagery, images of nurturing warmth, and fire imagery have all been strong this week. Snippets of lines from different songs have been playing nearly unceasingly through my thoughts this week...
I feel like this week has been a fight. I can feel it in my body. I'm exhausted for no apparent reason. I've had headaches almost every day, and restless nights. As I'm sitting here to write my stomach is convulsing and the muscles in my lower back have knotted up. And all week I've wanted to cry, but the tears just won't quite come.
Looking back, I think I saw the battle coming on on Tuesday night. Funny, because Tuesday was a very peaceful day - the day I wrote about in my last post. I had some uncommonly honest conversations about spiritual things that day, and I know a few others did too. As I sat in my car and shared life with a friend into the wee hours of Wednesday morning I was praying silently for a conversation that was going on elsewhere, for nothing in particular and everything in general - my spirit nudged into prayer even as I spoke and shared some of my story with my friend.
Work has been central to whatever emotional or spiritual thing I've been fighting with this week. It's been harder than ever to go there. As I would walk into the building I quite literally felt heaviness and dread descending on my spirit. My brain was foggy and I made odd mistakes - nothing serious, just things that wasted time and energy. Sometimes I fought the heaviness, humming worship songs, meditating on their words and passages of scripture, and sometimes I just worked.
Tonight I'm tired. Still two work shifts to go. Six hours tomorrow, four hours Sunday. The week has been odd. Weird snippets of dreams. I've done a lot of thinking on the subject of good and evil. I've been reading through the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling, enjoying them, but thinking deeply about the questions of good and evil they propose. They've even invaded my dreams at times, snippets of thoughts - conversations with characters from the books. Nothing I can remember when I wake, just the impression that I haven't been separated from the characters and thoughts even while I'm asleep. Every once in a while I stop ever so briefly and wonder when I became weird - odd dreams, God speaking to me for others, feeling everything so intensely, unable to escape words and themes...
The lines from Delirious? "Revival Town" that say "You let a broken generation become a dancing generation," have been floating through the mess of thoughts this week too. I think this statement so closely describes what God has done in my life, what I see Him doing in my generation, and in my church. I wonder sometimes if we have cycles of brokenness and cycles of dancing, or if we perhaps simply choose to dance in spite of brokenness. Because I feel more like the broken person than the dancer tonight, but I persist, because God is calling me ever deeper...
Been listening a lot to Delirious? this week, alternating them with the same Jason Upton CD I've been listening to for the last couple months and one or two others. Water imagery, images of nurturing warmth, and fire imagery have all been strong this week. Snippets of lines from different songs have been playing nearly unceasingly through my thoughts this week...
...Find me in the river, find me on my knees....
...Now I'm waiting if you please....
...We didn't count on suffering,
we didn't count on pain
but if the blessing's in the valley
then in the river I will wait...
...Jesus' blood never fails me...
...Where every woman, every son
will life high their chains undone...
... Don't be afraid of your blind belief
because the more you fly the more you'll see
you're not alone, you're not alone...
...They're calling me and they're calling you
from the cold hard facts that we're on our own
to the age old truth that we're not alone...
...A cloud by day a fire by night
I'll keep moving on
It may seem strange but I know it's right
I'll keep moving on...
...In the place of suffering there's a God worth worshipping...
...The Lord has a will and I have a need
to follow that will, to humbly be still,
to rest in it, nest in it, wholly be blest in it,
following my Father's will...
...So I have to find the river, somehow my life depends on the river
Holy River, I'm so thirsty...
Holy River, I'm so thirsty...
...I'm so thirsty, I can feel it
Burnin' through the furthest corners of my soul. Deep desire, can't describe this
nameless urge that drives me somewhere
though I don't know where to go...
Burnin' through the furthest corners of my soul. Deep desire, can't describe this
nameless urge that drives me somewhere
though I don't know where to go...
...I'm abandoned to the river and now my life depends on the river...
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