Accepting

In the weeks since I started turning my "love" focus inward, I've floundered a little.  What would loving myself look like in practice, without being arrogant or prideful?  I'm not one for fluffy, waste of time, notions that make cute cross-stitched pillows, but vaporize in the heat of real life.  I need examples, STAT.

I'm good at punishing me.  I'm bad at loving me.  (And yes, that makes me want to beat myself up.)  I figure that the last guy and the one before that- oh, and then there was that whole passel of women too- had good enough reason to reject me.  Since I can't figure it all out to "fix" it, and the world's best chiropractor would struggle to figure out how to unfold me from this pretzel of people-pleasing, I have found it easier to walk away from me too.

This week I've had a few extra hours in my week.  This fact has actually been a little uncomfortable because, although I've been completely depleted in every way, I've gotten used to the high-speed, barely-breathe pace of life.  Today I wanted to do NOTHING.  But, I wanted to do EVERYTHING.  

There are floors and windows needing serious attention here.  I cannot express the ridiculousness of the nook-n-cranny hoarding that goes on in every room, closet, cupboard, drawer and shelf of this place.  The couch covers need washing, the table needs a goooooooood soaping (the cat has made it her new home-alone perch, and that's plain disgusting), the stove- well there's not enough elbow grease in all of North America and, actually, that's the least of its worries... Please don't ask about laundry, bathrooms, garbage cans, dusting, polishing, cobwebs, door handles, door jams, chrome or kids rooms.  And that's just inside.

Last week, in the wake of my current physical down-spiral, I did a massive make-over in my kitchen.  Well, in the food cupboards at least.  I threw away or donated boxes of stuff I can't/shouldn't be putting in my body right now.  The kids were here that weekend and we made it a family project.  It was easy- fun, even.  After the purge, we took out recipes and made lists of groceries.  Then we explored a health food store together and bought strange vegetables, flours, seeds... We had the BEST weekend. The following days were spent together, in the kitchen, chopping, dicing, boiling, baking, measuring, tasting, laughing, dancing.  These are the days when I love me.  I am a great cook and there's nothing more satisfying than looking around at the faces of the people I love as they verbally and non-verbally approve of my cuisine.  Loving my family through the home-making skills that come naturally to me is effortless and completely rewarding.

Then, at four o'clock on Sunday, I am alone.  If I'm lucky I'll spend my "off week" keeping a ridiculous 11 hours-a-day schedule at work and come home just in time to take a shower and crawl into bed to start over again.  Then, I can avoid "alone".  This house is big.  Too big.  The 71 degrees of my main floor is a colder 71 degrees on the days that the kids are gone.  Most of those days I have a hard time cracking the refrigerator open at all, much less assembling something of nutritional value. What's the point?  There's no joyful giggling, playful banter, grateful grunts, heart-to-heart conversations.  There's not tearful- or chipper- games of "best and worst" as we discuss our day.  I don't love me on those days.  The apples rot, the oranges get soft, the squash gets slimy, the spinach stinks, the milk sours, the cheese molds and the bread hardens.  I'm not hungry anyway.  The start-stop nature of my life constantly has me juggling hats, while riding a unicycle.  There's nothing that I can count on, except stress.

Today, while I avoided the mounting stress of lists undone in my house, I grabbed a coffee and called a friend.  She is one of the dietary resources that is helping me formulate immune boosting, anti-inflammatory meals.  If she was so inclined, she could boast a baker's dozen years holding one of the top slots on the chart of people I'd walk through fire for.  She isn't fluffy.  After I whined the lyrics of the well-worn "I'm stuck" soundtrack that has been played FAR too often for those closest to me, she got direct:  "Collene, you were an amazing wife, mother, meal planner, grocery shopper, keeper of your home...  You are not that girl anymore.  You do not have her life, her time, her resources. Stop trying to live like you are still her.  Doing the same thing, gets you the same results.  Please stop!  Lets work out a new plan that fits who you are now..."

Although she's not the first person to use them, today her words were a glass of icy lemonade in the face.  (Sweetened with coconut palm sugar, not refined sugar, obviously.)  They were cold in their tone, yet refreshing.  They gave me hope.  Her practical suggestions gave me the burst of energy I needed.  I went to work, immediately.  I got out my calendar and started setting boundaries for work.  This is scary, mind you, boundaries means more people will walk away.  I work HARD to connect with everyone and to meet their every need, creatively and emotionally.  Losing a client feels personal, every time.

Next I went to the kitchen.  I put together several mini-meals for myself- to get me through the rest of my week.  I mentally planned how to use the rest of the ingredients next week. The creative energy was flowing, I pulled everything out of a storage closet, purged, reorganized, moved on to a cupboard...  I didn't finish, by all means, but I did lighten the load mentally.

Next, I planned a weekend birthday get-away for my middle and took my youngest out for hot chocolate.  As I dropped her at her dad's, I was still mulling this "loving me" thing. Tonight, it looks like "accepting" is the word I can't escape.  Accepting the me that is now, moving beyond the me that was then... 

The me that is now is a HARD worker, even if her house doesn't reflect that, yet.  She pours her energy and heart into every person she touches.  Sometimes she needs a day of reading at a coffee shop while her more-than-a-week's-worth-of-laundry sits another few days until the next opportunity to sort it marries the mood to do it.

The me that is now appreciates frivolous things like Blueberry Cardomom Raw Cheesecake Tarts.  The girl I was would have never made them without a good enough reason- someone to share them with.  Welllllll, not today.  Today my freezer holds six, all for me.  They're new-eating-habit approved and guess what?  I turned the music up, I sang (I might have danced), I licked the spoon- twice, I smiled, and no one was there to enjoy it but me and, for today, that was enough.

Fear Begone Part Two

Today I wanted to be around people, but I had no real energy for interacting with anyone most of the day.  I found myself this evening in a semi-melancholy, bordering on depressed, state of mind and couldn't quite put my finger on why.  Since I live only a few blocks from a lively coffee shop, I chose to take my thoughts and some reading there. People interest me, motivate me, and make me think.  I absolutely love watching/studying people.  Because I was so long winded in yesterday's Part One and Background blogs, I needed to gather my sputtering thoughts and develop what it is I'm really trying to say, without letting it take a negative turn.  We are, after all, discussing fears- the deepest darkest ones at that.

By now, if you've read many of my most recent stuff, you know that I've been reading the daily devotionals of Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost for His Highest".  Most days I love him and hate him simultaneously.  The guy doesn't let me get away with anything, which is fine, I suppose.  I do want to be "called out" on my nonsense and to be sharpened, deepened, made wiser, healed.  I guess it's less personal or risky when the one doing the challenging of my deepest thinking has been dead for 95 years.

Anyway, the "love", "be still" and "fear" words were echoed in two of this week's writings. In fact the "perfect love casts out fear" and the "be still and know that I am God" verses were BOTH actually used in them.  At this point, I'll just add that it's a teensy bit creepy that, that keeps happening.  The words were already a woven theme in every other aspect of my life, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that Oswald would join in the fun, or that God make His point a hundred ways in a week- a million in a year- for someone as slow, resistant, prideful, injured and untrusting as I've been.  Two points from this week's readings stand out:

1.  "If what we call love doesn't take us beyond ourselves, it isn't really love.  If we have the idea that love is characterized as cautious, wise sensible, shrewd and never taken to extremes, we have missed the true meaning.  This may describe affection... but it is not a true and accurate description of love." (February 21)

2.  "Perseverance...is endurance combined with absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen....it means more than just hanging on, which may be only exposing our fear of letting go and falling... Perseverance is our supreme effort of refusing to believe that our hero is going to be conquered.  Our greatest fear is not that we will be damned, but that somehow Jesus Christ will be defeated. Also, our fear is that the very things our Lord stood for- love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness among men- will not win out in the end..."  (February 22)

Well, thank you Oswald, I couldn't have said it better myself.  Not only do I fear that Jesus may not win out in the end, but I'll take it a step further:  I fear that Jesus will say He loves me, show me a few dozen examples of something that feels like love, get my guard down and then ultimately reject me.  Silly?  Maybe, but if you bear with me, it's not completely unfounded.

There's no way, even if hell did freeze over or pigs did one day sprout wings and fly, I'd tell you the ACTUAL scenario.  Instead, I'll give you the ridiculous example I gave my fake sister-in-law, who joined me late at the coffee shop tonight:

Imagine a timid little girl who's daddy asked her if she wanted dessert.  She said "yes". So her daddy pressed her further, "well what kind of dessert would you like?"  She shyly asks for ice cream.  "Sweetie, be specific, tell me what kind of ice cream you want.  Do you want toppings?"  So the little girl musters up her most heartfelt hopes for her dessert, she's specific with flavor and toppings and includes a request for it to be served in her favorite bowl.  Then, as though the conversation never occurred, the father sends the little girl to her room to sit, quietly, alone, all night.  There's no ice cream, with or without toppings.  There's not even a cookie or a piece of fruit.  In fact, the father doesn't even talk to her for the rest of the night. So sits a timid, confused, little girl alone in the dark- feeling rejection, hopeless, foolish...

If that daddy is like God and God's character is good and kind and loving, then he has gone out to buy the highest quality ice cream and most lavish toppings available.  He has not forgotten her request, and remembers every detail, right down to her favorite bowl. But, if that little girl is like me and she is familiar with lifetime of feelings of rejection, she can't help but be crushed and fearful.

My fake sister-in-law and I agree: In order to put these fears to death, I am going to have to persevere in every sense of the word.  I will have to actively believe in the Jesus of scripture.  It will me require me to replace fearful instinctual thinking with intentional reminders that He is BIG, victorious, true, kind.  I am going to have to shrug off timidity, self protection and selfishness in order to love Him back, to the place of reckless abandonment, like only He deserves.

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I Am Loved, Fear Begone

It's been an eventful month.  Like I told you last February, this time of year is packed with memories- not the good kind.  Although I have avoided writing for a variety of reasons, the relentless words, sentences and paragraphs have not ceased to scribble themselves out on the pages of my mind.  This will be Part One again, because, well, I'm long winded and I have a sputtering mind.  I'll do my best to make it make sense...

As usual, I have roaming words.  "Love" is not new, in fact it was the I-think-I-just-threw-up-a-little-in-my-mouth concept that has plagued me, taunted me really, since well before the beginning of this blog.  Unfortunately for you, I'm slow at learning things I resist. Fortunately for me, the good Lord is patiently persistent in His pursuit of me and is not willing to flunk me out of the class. I guess, like it or not, I've been signed up for Summer School.  (Shhhh, I think I'm starting to like it. Don't tell Abba.)

"Fear" is the newest word being added to the theme being woven through these writings. "Be Still" is still the inescapable concept being stirred into conversations, texts, songs and books I'm reading.  It's starting to feel like a conspiracy!  Let me explain:

Three weeks ago the pastor at my church, (yup, I'm claiming it as my own these days), started a six week series on Love.  Seriously??? SIX WEEKS is a long time to discuss something I feel soooooo.... well, on the outside-looking-in.  It's not that I don't understand what it takes to really love someone, I do.  It's just that the kind of love I have poured out on people is at such a slow drip rate returning, my well is bone dry.  Obviously there's an engineer/operator error and I'm just plain too tired to figure it out.  I'd sorta like to throw a tarp over it all and wait for a downpour to fill that bad-boy up...

The theme the first week was about loving the "unlovable".  Great.  I can do that.  I DO, do that.  If there is one thing I know that God gave me when He made me, it's an insight and understanding of people.  Even the ugliest of personalities are lovable and, usually, I am able to figure out what it is the root cause of their "ugliness".

Week two confirmed what I already know and believe at the core of me:  Love Matters Most. "There are three things that will last- faith, hope and love.  The greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13  Yup, you are my witnesses, I've been in that chapter a time or two this year.  I get it- love and relationship are all that matter in the end of this life and for all time hereafter   With every cell in my body I believe that.  Let's face it:  No dying person ever asked to see their financial statements or property deeds from their death bed. Trophies, wardrobes and stamp collections mean very little as we lie there anticipating our final breath.  People want people in the end.

"Loving like Jesus loves me"- the theme for last week- really defined for me, my discomfort with the series.  We went on to discuss the Accepting, Valuing, Forgiving, Believing-In nature of Christ.  Oh, I "get it" in a million ways as it pertains to YOU.  I see you. I get you. I accept you. I value you. I forgive you. I believe in you- until I'm made a fool a bazillion times and then, once more.  That's not the problem.  The question getting louder everyday is, "What would it look like if I loved ME the way Jesus does?"

From there it's time to make an abrupt segue to the "fear" thread of this woven theme. Sometime in January the whisper of the words "Perfect love casts out fear Collene" would randomly cross my mind.  I shoved them aside because they made no contextual sense.

In general, I'm not a fearful person.  I am an adventurer.  I am a professional at boot-strap pulling and carrying myself with confidence, whether I emotionally feel like it or not.  I don't fear the night, or being alone, or heights, or death.  Still the word of 1 John 4:18 filtered through my days. "What am I fearing?" I wondered... soooo, He showed me.

A few weeks ago I was encouraging a friend. "God is soooo gentle when He heals us," I told him.  "We fear that he's going to rip and tear the whole deep, gaping wound and expose our mess in its entirety, causing unimaginable pain and embarrassment.  He's not like that.  I'm finding Him to be a gentleman, always.  He quietly points out where He'd like to start His work and asks if He can 'have that yet'.  If I say 'no', He waits.  If I say 'yes', but continue to grip it tightly, He waits.  He persists, asking often, displaying His trustworthy character, bathing me in grace and mercy, until I release the thing I'm hiding away.  God is gentle."

I'm realizing that what I fear, He's been gently asking for, for a long time.  Once upon a time, I was sick.  I was married and therefore not solely responsible for providing for my family.  Although he didn't always like it or understand it, my husband was, for the most part. helpful and patient with me during the search for a diagnosis.  (You can read the background on that here, if you care to.)

Last month, on the morning I was flying home from my Alaska trip, I passed out, dramatically, for the second time.  I came to in a pool of blood, with a potentially broken nose and a mild concussion.  As I type the bumps are still painful on my forehead and nose.  Let's just say I got more than a few double glances on the flights that morning...

In the weeks since I've been home, my body has returned to the all-too-familiar aches and exhaustion.  I fear doing THIS again, this time alone.  I fear the progression to what I know is possible.  I fear a life of having to rely on someone.  I fear having no one reliable. Ultimately, just like I did last fall, I continue to fear "being still".

Perfect love casts out fear.

God, who loves me perfectly, has surrounded me with tangible, practical, wisdom, expertise and support in a variety of ways.  Additionally, I have hope and peace and a downright good attitude about this.  

I realize now that I have not been taking care of me physically (or emotionally) in a loving way, the way Jesus would.  The flight attendant instructions to put your own oxygen mask on before assisting others has come to mind so often this week.  It's the phrase I told myself as I crawled into bed for the second nap of the day last Saturday, and what I reminded myself when I said 'no' to just one more client, on an already fully booked day.  If I am not able or willing to take care of me, I will continue to be a bone dry well and utterly useless to everyone...

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A Little Background

I've eluded to the physical "challenges" I deal with from time to time.  It's awkward for me to sum up in a nutshell what goes on inside my body.  I'm barely able to grasp a concise understanding of how each thing relates to the others, myself.  Also, I feel like a huge baby to use "challenge" as a way to describe my illness, when so many people I know and love could use the word with bold print and all caps. Regardless of all that, the physical stuff I fight from time to time taps into one of my biggest fears.

Six years ago it started.  It was subtle and easily ignored at first.  Nearly a year passed with me feeling like I was running on fumes.   Insomnia was my best friend.  I was a mother of a preschooler and two primary grade students, a day care provider for twin infants and a toddler, a women's bible study host/leader, singer at church... the list goes on. Being tired made sense.

Then stuff started getting weird.  My fingers and hands started tingling and going numb.  I felt what I thought was my long hair tickling up and down my arms, but there were never any hairs to remove.  Simple tasks like taking my son to school would require me to pull over some days because my arms were too weak to hold the steering wheel. My muscles and joints ached relentlessly.

One Sunday, in front of a few hundred people, I passed out while I was singing at church. I knew I was going to fall. so I laid myself down for less drama. However, it's hard to escape notice while on a stage holding a microphone.  There was a doctor there that day, that wouldn't let me blow it off.  Something was really wrong.  I was diagnosed with low blood pressure, but it was only low sometimes, not often enough to medicate.  That only explained the passing out.  I was told to eat salt whenever I felt like that again.  A handful of salt got me out of a more than one situation after that...

As for the other symptoms, I was referred to a family doctor. Although a blood test showed a slightly hyper thyroid, she didn't feel it was all that concerning.  Ultimately, after a few months, I was told I must be hypochondriac.  I went home frustrated and foolish feeling.  I must be the biggest wimp.

Then, my face went numb for a day or two and other, somewhat embarrassing, stuff started happening.  In addition, I had a racing heart, migraines.... the list grew. I switched doctors.  By now I had been feeling like dirt, off and on, for nearly a year and a half.  The new doctor was afraid of MS (multiple sclerosis).  MRIs were ordered of my brain.  Brain scans didn't show scarring.  She told me that scarring can take years to show up on the brain from the onset of symptoms.  She suggested that we do MRIs every six months to a year to keep an eye on it.  She would not diagnose me with MS, but she would not rule it out.

Still, she was not satisfied with having no real answers, so she kept looking.  I think I left half my body weight in blood vials in Alaska.  She ran test after test.  Yes, my thyroid was a mess:  Hyper, then Hypo... I was sent to an endocrinologist.  He was reluctant to do anything about it.  "I'd have to kill it to solve it, Collene."  Sometimes it read normal and the swings either direction of normal were not drastic enough to permanently kill my thyroid.  I'd have to balance medication and test constantly to feel normal.  With my hormones all screwy, I was exhausted, afraid of the unknowns, and embarrassed about it all... now I had other worries... Ultimately those worries were alleviated with a hysterectomy.  Now there was a weird grief to deal with.  I wasn't ready for that.  I grieved and admittedly, I still do at times.

At the very end, there was a diagnosis that made sense:  Chronic Epstein-Barr Virus. The virus itself is common and for the vast majority of people it isn't a big deal.  In some cases, like mine, it causes mononucleosis.  EBV is linked to thyroid disorders, MS (as well as other auto-immune disorders) and certain cancers.  It taxes the liver/immune system and can have a neurological impact.

Thankfully, my doctor had provided information, medications, mineral support formulas and a dietary plan to boost energy and immunity, in the weeks prior to the diagnosis.  The virus was already losing the battle.  Although the surgery took me out longer than expected, within eight or nine months of my hysterectomy I was feeling almost like me again!

It's hard to know what came first back then.  One illness can trigger another. Stress and diet play an obvious role.  These days, it seems, I'm gearing up for round two.  This time, I'm no rookie...

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Be Still, Be Still

"Do you not know?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.  He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those whose who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar with wings like eagles; they will walk and not be faint."

Well, lookie there!  Would you look at that?  Just look at it!  Isaiah 40:28-31 is putting the last month in a nutshell!

I was given homework at the Benjamin Meeting three or four weeks ago that I completely failed to even start.  Tonight as I look back and assess the month, week and day I can't help but be drawn back to the assignment...

"Collene, BE STILL", he told me...

Sure, I'll do that... right after I cram three weeks of company, bronchitis, a new baby niece, a 6,000 mile trip with three kids, a family wedding, a few friendship mending conversations, a relationship-altering (ending?) conversation, a concussion-causing health concern, a hit-and-run involving one of my children, a cat surgery- technically two, but I don't have a punch-card so who's counting, a teenager's first crush, first girlfriend, first break-up, first school dance, a close friend's emergency situation, a cancer-marker-increase-scare, a trip back to "Egypt" in my head-n-heart...  all the while working 13 of the last 15 days- on my feet, in deep conversations with amazing people I deeply care about and as well as some I barely know, hour after hour...  You get it:  life is happening.  How does one simply "be still".

December's bustle built into January's cry for help and has already crescendoed  into February's earth-shattering scream for relief:

"BE STILL and KNOW that I am GOD."

In fact, if you're like my sweet friend, who's going through her own tailor-made desert wandering, you'd hear it twice: "be still, be still..."  

You would cry aloud, like us- in the shower, or alone in your car, or from your sea of pillows at night, into the dark: "Jesus, show me mercy in this..."

The quiet voice that whispers "be still", washing your heart with the promise of peace, would pierce your darkness with "please, little girl, know that I am God.  I've got even this. My mercies are new EVERY morning... do you trust me?"

And then, tonight, you would understand: He has collected those tears and kept a record of each one in His ledger and they are not wasted, according to Psalm 56.

He has not missed a thing.  He has not even slept, according to Psalm 121.  Additionally, He quiets you with His love and rejoices over you with His singing according to Zephaniah 3:17.   Don't forget that He loves you perfectly, defined in 2 Corinthians 13, and because of that- His perfect love casts out all fear as found in 1 John 4...

Also, He who began a good work in us is FAITHFUL to complete it, according to Philippians 1. For tonight, that is enough.  Tomorrow, because of the mercies that are new every morning, I have been given a homework Mulligan.   I will be still, be still. I will begin to grasp that He really is the BIG God I crave.

Today, He met me with unfathomable proof that He sees, hears and feels me- and not only that, but has surrounded me with protection, support and love. Furthermore, He has used me- called me into the ring, actually.  The last three years of desert wandering have not been wasted.  All that He has taught me has not been in vain.  I was, finally, the comforter, the truth speaker, the promise bearer.  My experience was used as salve for the sweet, injured, discouraged soul on the other end of the phone.  The Truth that has taken root in me, has been a source of Life for a friend... in short- I see that there has been purpose in my suffering that reaches beyond myself (2 Corinthians 1:4).

Tonight I will rest...