Slow typing

This is going to be short for two reasons. The first is that I'm going to spend some time reading, curled up with a new history of Christianity that I bought at a used bookstore the other day (a steal for only $22, and a huge volume written by a preminent Catholic theologian and historian) and a novel. The second is exactly what the title of this post says. I'm typing a little slow at the moment as I somehow have managed to sprain my right index finger, and it's in a splint that impedes my typing abilities.

I made a major decision regarding my church future this week, and sent an email notifying the appropriate person of the decision. I did it in the heat of a moment filled with frustration, and hurt, but it was a long time coming, and, to be honest, I'm just relieved that it's over. We'll have to wait and see how things play out the next while. It was necessary.

I think I'm coming into myself a little bit more all the time. At least I hope so. I feel a renewed sense of boldness. A confidence in the things I believe God has been speaking to me, and a willingness to more clearly and broadly express my concerns. I will probably never be the one speaking controversy in the midst of a crowd - it's more my style to address issues in small groups or one on one. But I feel emboldened to fight the silence I have lived under for much of these last months. I was reminded, as I wrote the email this week of something a friend wrote in an email to encourage me months ago as I was first beginning to express some concerns and to share the things I felt God showing me. He wrote that I had come out from under the blanket of heaviness, and I wouldn't allow anyone to put me back under it. That I had emerged, broken through, and now it was time to live that way. I hope that I'm living that now. I'm excited and scared for what's ahead, but I feel God's presence.

And so, my finger is aching, and I'm looking forward to reading, so I'm off. See you all soon!

Leaking

It was one of those days. I was looking at the post I put up last night. The postcard from PostSecret, and feeling again how strong my internal reaction to that picture is. To the tears, and the words "I miss ignorance."

I had breakfast with Kari this morning. Somewhere along the way, Kari has become a very dear friend, and one with whom it is very easy to be honest and uncensored about the things going on in my life. I knew it was going to be one of those days when all she had to do was ask me how things were going, and I teared up. My emotions leaked right on down my face - it still surprises me when this happens. So I filled her in, swiping sureptisiously at the tears rolling down my face. The waitress came, of course, at the most inopportune of moments, just as the tears were beginning to take my order.

So we ate and talked, and somehow I went away encouraged. I still felt leaky as I sat in the mall for a bit before my shift and read. In fact, I even told some of my coworkers that if anyone yelled at me today I WOULD cry. (I've had a spate of nasty clients this last week - at least one a shift, badly dissatisfied with something or other, usually with nothing that had anything to do with me, and with a need to take out their pent up hostilities on the closest gift registry employee, which has just happened to be me this week.) Thankfully, today was a relatively calm day in the world of gift registry. By that I mean that we didn't have any yelling clients, not that we had any shortage of work.

I was discouraged, and I remain tired. But little things helped today.

As I walked to the train I couldn't help but think that the way I've been feeling lately is a lot like the way I felt during the majority of my five years of depression. But, some careful quick analysis revealed that I am not in fact depressed. I'm excited about life, I believe God is doing some really cool things in my life again, and the things I've been feeling have more to do with some spiritual attack, and the very real pain of walking through difficulty in the belief that God has great reward on the other side.

I read a really fun novel. It was called "Reconstructing Natalie." Nothing too profound. Very girly, quite predictable. A "Christian" novel about a young woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer. But quirky and offbeat and funny in its own way. It made me smile.

Talking with Kari, and snagging a couple of hugs from her helped. A chance to get some of the struggles off my chest. To catch up on what she and her husband are up to. Can I just say that I'm really going to miss them when they move in October?

Chocolate helped. A lot. (it's a natural anti-depressant you know! just in case you actually needed an excuse to consume it!)

And later, at work, some old hymns came to mind, and a few worship songs. So I hummed and whistled (in what I'm sure was a decidedly off key sort of tune) through the first verses (because I can never seem to remember the words to more than the first verse and the chorus) of "How Great Thou Art," "It is Well With My Soul," "Be Thou my Vision," "Amazing Grace," and a few others. Something about musing on the classic songs of the faith, with their deeply meaningful lyrics while boxing up china really served to lift my spirit and change my focus.

So, it was one of those days. In both the good and bad and altogether not completely sure what that was kind of ways.

Missing Ignorance

I saw this post card tonight on this week's Post Secret blog. It struck me because it accurately reflects a sentiment that I have often felt.

I was in ninth grade when I began to learn some things about my family. Things that, while not necessarily carefully concealed are definitely not talked about. I can still describe for you the exact moment my mom told me some of those things - the location, the reason we were having a conversation that led to this in the first place.

Since then, the things I know about my family have gotten harder. I know more, and I suppose I should. I'm not 14 anymore.

But here's the thing. Some days I miss ignorance. I wish I couldn't usually pick out the abused woman in the room before she ever shares that part of her life, because I'm intimately aquainted with the signs. I wish I didn't know quite a few other things too.

These last weeks have been pretty rough at home. Part of the reason that I have again been quiet here and intensely introspective. One of my immediate family members suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and our family lived through a bit of a relaspe last week. I have wrestled with hatred for the abuser who began this thing so many many years ago. I have wrestled with guilt for resenting the added load of housework and responsibility the relapse created with me. I have struggled with the intense spiritual climate in our home as my family member battled back. I have struggled with anger against the other family members who don't bear more of the burden of these relapses. It has been difficult.

I've been exhausted, and I can't explain why to most people. I go to work with a semi-functional brain and an exhausted body and I can't come right out and say that I'm exhausted because my family member has PTSD. It's not my story to tell. It's part of the code of silence. And I hate that their silence infringes on my communication. And I hate that I resent something like PTSD when it can't be controlled and the decisions that caused it were made by a warped and twisted man many years ago. And so I miss ignorance. And I wonder about that fourteen year old that I was... And I wonder if I would protect her longer, or if knowledge really has been a healthier thing, and it wouldn't really have been protection.

Pray for my family if you think of it. We're fighting on. And it's long and hard. I'm tired and stressed. We could use some peace, some rest, some restoration.

Waiting for a call...

So I'm sitting here at my desk, with music playing again. Johnny Cash this time. There's something haunting in his song "Help Me." Something beautiful and soul grabbing that makes you pause for just a moment to realize all the times you've prayed this very same prayer.

I'm waiting for a phone call. It should come in about an hour or so. That's right around midnight for those of you keeping track. It will tell me whether I'm going to the mountains tomorrow for the day, or whether I'm going to hang out in the city and veg in my basement watching some more of "The West Wing." If I'm going to the mountains, then the phone call will also tell me that Megs is coming to crash on my floor for the night.

In the meantime, I have a quote from Rob Bell's "Velvet Elvis" to share with you. I read this book in several chunks, with long pauses in between, so my grasp of Bell's entire message is somewhat lacking, but I did like the book. And I was flipping through a bit of it tonight, reading the parts I marked on my way through, and this bit caught my eye:

Our words aren't absolutes. Only God is absolute, and God has no intention of sharing this absoluteness with anything, especially words people have come up with to talk about him. This is something people have struggled with since the beginning: how to talk about God when God is bigger than our words, our brains, our worldviews, and our imaginations. (Velvet Elvis, p. 23)

I like this. Such a succint way of reminding us what is really the thing with substance. We lose that understanding in the middle of this debate on modernism vs. postmodernism, and the existence of absolute truth. We need, on both sides of the debate to be reminded that the thing we are debating, the thing at the center, God, is the only absolute, and our words to describe his absoluteness can tend to simply add confusion to the mix.

slowly emerging

I think I am slowly emerging from this "funk" (for lack of a better word) that has engulfed me for the last couple of weeks. I was laying in the bathtub a little while ago, reading a novel and it occurred to me that that in itself was a good sign.

I don't know if I'm emerging with a sense of deep revelation yet. Corey said that she thought that deep revelation was coming. I think sometimes that deep revelation isn't always something you recognize in the moment. You just kind of know that something has changed, and you keep waking up and realizing that something has changed, and one morning, six months later, you wake up and realize that whatever the change was had to do with some deep revelation that you can just now put words to, because you have lived with it and grown to love it, and the beauty of it is that it is not alien and hard to adapt to when you finally name it because you have spent six months learning it's in and outs, it's curves and lines, and it is familiar in that shockingly new kind of way that happens in relationships with the oldest and best of friends.

This is what happened when I was healed of depression. I sat in a car one night, praying with a friend, and new something had shifted in me when I left, but didn't really expect or even ask for healing. It wasn't even what we were praying for exactly. But I woke up the next morning and could get out of bed pretty easily, and that was something new. And that thing just kept happening. I kept getting up. I kept having reasons to smile in the middle of some of the most mentally, emotionally and spiritually challenging months of my life. And one morning, two or three months later, I work up and realized, "I've been healed." And I really liked life. And I didn't want to die anymore. And I wasn't as afraid. And I'd met God and fallen in love with Him. And He was talking to me, and I really wanted to hear it. And I was ready to hear - ready to move into a healed, healing life because I'd lived with it for a while before it was named. I'd learned to live in wonder a little bit. To really be grateful for the ability to easily get out of bed in the morning.

And so, I'm sitting here and listening to the new Jack Johnson CD i bought because it was on sale when Megs and I were shopping yesterday on one of her random "I must find a disc by this one specific and slightly obscure person," and Megs insisted that this was an excellent CD, and I really should buy it. So I did, and I bought the last recording Johnny Cash made before he died too. And I'm enjoying them both. But not playing them both at once.

So I'm sitting here and listening to Jack Johnson, and I have that same sense of wonder. That feeling of things shifting in new ways. Not ways that are always pain free, but ways that are promising new things. And I noticed some little signs in myself that mean I'm emerging from whatever phase of revelation, or construction or healing (or whatever term you want to use) that I've inhabited these rather painfully silent last couple of weeks. Signs like these:

• I once again have an attention span, and wish to engage my brain. Basically, I can do more than just sit on the couch and watch "The West Wing" on DVD like a vegetable. I've done a lot of this in the last week.
• I finished a novel last night. And started another one tonight and can't wait to get back to it when I'm done writing this post.
• I feel like writing again.
• I told customers today to "have a great day" and really meant it. I didn't just say it by rote while wishing they would just leave and I could again be alone with my thoughts like I have for much of the last week.

I consider these things to be positive signs.

So here's to emergence, slow, sometimes painful... but always with the promise of something wonder-full and beautiful on the other side.