- The relief of finishing an exam I'd dreaded
- the sound of running water from a fountain in the park next to the train station
- opening a dove chocolate before my exam and finding that the message in this one read "Life is sweeter with chocolate"
- slurpee - I haven't had a slurpee in years, but only a couple of us showed up for house church tonight, so we went for a walk to get slurpees
- Vietnamese for supper - since I'm not eating out regularly because of unemployment, I'm not eating my favorite food very often, so it was especially sweet to have Vietnamese for supper tonight with a friend.
- this post that Kirsten wrote... she said what I would have said so many times...
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Daily 5 - Day 356
Today's Daily 5:
Walking Honestly
A good friend of mine sent me an email the other day with links to posts from Alece's blog archives and commented that the two posts she included links to had made her think of me. I've only been reading Alece's blog for a short time (I think I came across it via some other blogs I read, but I'm not even sure to be honest.) However, in the short time I've been reading, I've come to appreciate the honesty in her words.
The first post that my friend sent me was this one, that talks about wallowing versus walking. Boy do I know those feelings. Some heavy stuff has surfaced in my life over the last few months. Big, overwhelming, makes me ache and tear up at a moment's notice stuff. And honestly, wallowing does seem easier. Healing isn't exactly an easy journey, I've learned. Most of the time, as a process, it's pretty much miserable. That said, I appreciated and needed the reminder in Alece's post to cling to hope. To hold onto the one who I know is true. To put my hand in the hand of the one who I know from experience will lead me to healing, and who has promised to walk through the deep waters with me.
The second post my friend linked to was this one. This one touches on my own personal soapbox of depression in the church, and how we never want to acknowledge it. That said, it touches some raw nerves, too. While I'm not currently struggling with depression (I remain so thankful for that moment of healing that God offered to me nearly five years ago now), I'm struggling. Life is messy and ugly, and I'm not sure how to handle that. I trumpet honesty, but honestly, I'm embarrassed to be struggling. I'm tired of being the one on the soapbox, and a lot of days right now I just want to melt into the crowd of seemingly "perfect" people. And yet, I've found that I've needed to be honest with some people in my life about what's going on inside of me right now. To lean into their support and their prayers and their love as I again seek healing and restoration of the broken bits of me - knowingly and deliberately this time, not expecting a sudden miraculous and instantaneous deliverance like the moment the depression left.
I'm thankful for Alece's words, and for the friend who brought these posts I'd missed to my attention. They moved me in important ways today.
The first post that my friend sent me was this one, that talks about wallowing versus walking. Boy do I know those feelings. Some heavy stuff has surfaced in my life over the last few months. Big, overwhelming, makes me ache and tear up at a moment's notice stuff. And honestly, wallowing does seem easier. Healing isn't exactly an easy journey, I've learned. Most of the time, as a process, it's pretty much miserable. That said, I appreciated and needed the reminder in Alece's post to cling to hope. To hold onto the one who I know is true. To put my hand in the hand of the one who I know from experience will lead me to healing, and who has promised to walk through the deep waters with me.
The second post my friend linked to was this one. This one touches on my own personal soapbox of depression in the church, and how we never want to acknowledge it. That said, it touches some raw nerves, too. While I'm not currently struggling with depression (I remain so thankful for that moment of healing that God offered to me nearly five years ago now), I'm struggling. Life is messy and ugly, and I'm not sure how to handle that. I trumpet honesty, but honestly, I'm embarrassed to be struggling. I'm tired of being the one on the soapbox, and a lot of days right now I just want to melt into the crowd of seemingly "perfect" people. And yet, I've found that I've needed to be honest with some people in my life about what's going on inside of me right now. To lean into their support and their prayers and their love as I again seek healing and restoration of the broken bits of me - knowingly and deliberately this time, not expecting a sudden miraculous and instantaneous deliverance like the moment the depression left.
I'm thankful for Alece's words, and for the friend who brought these posts I'd missed to my attention. They moved me in important ways today.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Daily 5 - Day 355
Today's Daily 5:
- 355 days of making these lists. (Getting so close to the one year mark!)
- I had to replace the mouse that I use with my laptop today. While spending money on that wasn't ideal, I do have a funky purple and black much more portable mouse now, and I love the color and size which actually fits my small hands quite nicely.
- leftover pad thai for supper again
- making peace with the fact that I didn't get the return phone call I was hoping for and settling in to study and review and prepare
- choosing to be thankful that though I'm not as prepared as I would be if I'd been able to postpone tomorrow's exam, I will instead meet my original goal of having what I know will be a very busy weekend free from the need to study.
- a treatment from mom
- grapes
An ugly reality
I am recognizing, lately, an ugly reality in my life.
Panic springs up easily, and it is so often tied to either fear, or to a need to perform, or both.
I'm thinking about this right now, because I'm nervously waiting for my phone to ring. I'm trying to reschedule an exam that I had booked for tomorrow morning.
The reality of the tight scheduling of my courses this summer means that I booked some exams well in advance of when I began to study the material they covered.
In this case, that means that I've come up to the exam, written the practice midterm this afternoon, and discovered that I have less of a grasp of the material than I thought. I need to give myself more time to review and learn the material than I have in the next 15 hours (especially given that I very much need to be asleep for at least 5 or six of those hours!)
But, because the school is online driven, it's hard to get a human on the phone to speak with. I've left a few voicemail messages, and now I wait.
And panic.
What if they don't call me back in time? What if I fail the exam tomorrow? What if I pass but the grade is still really bad? What if? What if? What if?
I have this insane drive to perform. And when it looks like I can't meet that invisible standard in my head, I panic.
Lately this is especially driven by schoolwork.
I think it's partly because school was always "my thing." It was the thing that came naturally, and at which I excelled.
In a family of athletes, I was bookish.
But, in a family where school was also a place of high achievement, I excelled, generally without trying very hard.
I grew up hearing about how mom worked ridiculously long hours to pay for university and still managed to pull off a 3.8 GPA. The only C she ever got was in swimming, and that was because she'd never swam in her life until it was a required course for a physical education major. And hearing how dad was the valedictorian of his Bible school class.
The thing I remember most about the day I picked up my university diploma is a comment (intended very jokingly, but still striking a deep nerve) my dad made when I proudly displayed it, "How come it doesn't say magna or summa cum laude?"
Anatomy is revealing these insecurities in surprising ways as I cope with grades that are less than what I'd hoped, and the realization that I will need to accept that I've done my best in the limited time available to me. And, as I work to contain the many spiralling "what ifs" that the final grade in anatomy can stir in regards to my future acceptance to a nursing program.
And so I'm sitting here, in tears, worrying about failure.
Because somehow, in my head, failure, or even a "poor grade" is tied up with my value in the world.
If I fail, it must be because I am a failure. It must mean that I'm worthless.
It's cliche, these issues of mine with performance, and the very cliche nature of them ticks me off. (I hate to be a cliche!)
And rationally, I know that my value isn't tied in my grades, or how well I perform, or whether or not I manage to measure up to some invisible, ever-changing, and impossibly high standard. I know I won't be loved more or less (at least not by people who really matter) if the grade is poor.
But panic, well, it clouds the issue. And it's an ugly and very present reality in my life right now, as I work through these issues and others.
So I'm sitting here, waiting for my phone to ring, and writing a blog post to talk myself back to sanity.
And I'm reminding myself of a line that Rob Bell repeated over and over and over at the end of his DVD "The God's Aren't Angry". "You don't have to live like this. You don't have to live like this."
And I'm determining, all over again, that there will be a day when I don't live like this. That I don't have to live like this. That panic doesn't have to rule. That fear cannot control my life this way. That it will go, a little at a time, and that by reminding myself that this is not a healthy response, and that I don't have to live like this, I'm taking tiny, infinitesimal, baby steps in the direction of healing.
And I'll take any progress in the direction of healing that I can find.
Panic springs up easily, and it is so often tied to either fear, or to a need to perform, or both.
I'm thinking about this right now, because I'm nervously waiting for my phone to ring. I'm trying to reschedule an exam that I had booked for tomorrow morning.
The reality of the tight scheduling of my courses this summer means that I booked some exams well in advance of when I began to study the material they covered.
In this case, that means that I've come up to the exam, written the practice midterm this afternoon, and discovered that I have less of a grasp of the material than I thought. I need to give myself more time to review and learn the material than I have in the next 15 hours (especially given that I very much need to be asleep for at least 5 or six of those hours!)
But, because the school is online driven, it's hard to get a human on the phone to speak with. I've left a few voicemail messages, and now I wait.
And panic.
What if they don't call me back in time? What if I fail the exam tomorrow? What if I pass but the grade is still really bad? What if? What if? What if?
I have this insane drive to perform. And when it looks like I can't meet that invisible standard in my head, I panic.
Lately this is especially driven by schoolwork.
I think it's partly because school was always "my thing." It was the thing that came naturally, and at which I excelled.
In a family of athletes, I was bookish.
But, in a family where school was also a place of high achievement, I excelled, generally without trying very hard.
I grew up hearing about how mom worked ridiculously long hours to pay for university and still managed to pull off a 3.8 GPA. The only C she ever got was in swimming, and that was because she'd never swam in her life until it was a required course for a physical education major. And hearing how dad was the valedictorian of his Bible school class.
The thing I remember most about the day I picked up my university diploma is a comment (intended very jokingly, but still striking a deep nerve) my dad made when I proudly displayed it, "How come it doesn't say magna or summa cum laude?"
Anatomy is revealing these insecurities in surprising ways as I cope with grades that are less than what I'd hoped, and the realization that I will need to accept that I've done my best in the limited time available to me. And, as I work to contain the many spiralling "what ifs" that the final grade in anatomy can stir in regards to my future acceptance to a nursing program.
And so I'm sitting here, in tears, worrying about failure.
Because somehow, in my head, failure, or even a "poor grade" is tied up with my value in the world.
If I fail, it must be because I am a failure. It must mean that I'm worthless.
It's cliche, these issues of mine with performance, and the very cliche nature of them ticks me off. (I hate to be a cliche!)
And rationally, I know that my value isn't tied in my grades, or how well I perform, or whether or not I manage to measure up to some invisible, ever-changing, and impossibly high standard. I know I won't be loved more or less (at least not by people who really matter) if the grade is poor.
But panic, well, it clouds the issue. And it's an ugly and very present reality in my life right now, as I work through these issues and others.
So I'm sitting here, waiting for my phone to ring, and writing a blog post to talk myself back to sanity.
And I'm reminding myself of a line that Rob Bell repeated over and over and over at the end of his DVD "The God's Aren't Angry". "You don't have to live like this. You don't have to live like this."
And I'm determining, all over again, that there will be a day when I don't live like this. That I don't have to live like this. That panic doesn't have to rule. That fear cannot control my life this way. That it will go, a little at a time, and that by reminding myself that this is not a healthy response, and that I don't have to live like this, I'm taking tiny, infinitesimal, baby steps in the direction of healing.
And I'll take any progress in the direction of healing that I can find.
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