Interruptions

I can feel myself pulling back, wanting to retreat into that protective shell of isolation where I can guard my feelings and keep my struggle private.  I can come up with many reasons why I shouldn't share openly; some of the reasons are practical, I suppose, having to do with time and other necessities in life calling but I suspect these are a cover up for the truth that I fear being vulnerable. For goodness sake, I don't even like to tell the doctor how I'm doing.

But definitely, I'm in a strange season right now and trying to process through it.  Sometimes, coming here helps me do that.  I've been thinking a lot about a sermon I heard a couple of weeks ago on interruptions.  How God sometimes interrupts your life to get your attention. These last couple of months have been disrupted by my illness, the holidays and for the four, longer visits with their dad. Nothing has been normal.  Though what is normal?  I've heard that it's simply a setting on a washing machine.  I'll go with that.  I'm trying to listen to what God may be telling me, pay attention to whatever lesson He's teaching through this.  I'm a plan oriented person; a scheduling junkie.  I like routines.  We've had nothing like routine around here lately.  Children have been coming and going, school has been catch as catch can and for someone who abhors sitting around, I've been doing an awful lot of sitting around.

I've been forced to be a different type of parent without the structure of a full school day.  So, even sick, I think I've been more relaxed, maybe nicer, more apt to play than instruct.  We've watched movies and played games and baked.  I played basketball.  Maybe what I'm being taught is about quality time.  And trust.  To trust that this is all okay, that they'll be okay.  I worry about them, about what life with a sick mom must be like.  How could this be what God has chosen for them?  When my illness interrupts what I think is positive consistency or our days are dependent on how I feel, I worry that they're not going to get everything they need.  But then, isn't that me relying on my own strength?  And isn't God's grace sufficient, and His power made perfect in weakness?

Grounding

"For every man, the world is as fresh as it was the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them." -Huxley

For a while, several years ago, I woke up alone in bed every morning with gratitude on my lips.  I would look out the window at the backyard and my first thought would be, "Thank you, God, for Your loving-kindness." It began because I just fell in love with the word, loving-kindness and the concept.  I don't remember in which version of the Bible I read it but it's from Psalm 17 and David is asking God to show him His loving-kindness.  So, I started asking for that every morning and He started showing me in small and large ways throughout the day, then slowly the prayer turned into thankfulness regarding His kindness.  I practiced saying it first thing when I woke until it became a habit.

These days, it's not so  natural--if I remember, I say it before I get out of bed. Lately, (let's blame it on winter) I've been waking achy and rather ungrateful.  Still, thanking God for another day but maybe not with as much sincerity.

Sometimes, I wake up full of fear for no good reason, not even recognizing it as such until I've had time to sort my thoughts--and a cup of coffee. And if I fail to sort my thoughts and pray, I wind up losing moments, mornings and entire days to routines, as I like to call it, but really my 'routine' consists of rituals designed to occupy my mind and veer it off any course that might prove insightful, thus possibly painful.  It's cyclical and complicated.  A simpler way of wording it might be to call it 'avoidance.'

To avoid this pattern, I've been practicing grounding myself.  I ask myself, 'who, what,where, when, why, and how' and I run through the five senses.  Then I can hear the soft rustle of leaves in the trees instead of my inner voice asking if I should attend to my fingernails or my hair first.  I can quiet, for a moment, what I call my 'mean voice' that rattles off my to-do list, scolding me for slacking and points out that the coffee table is a mess.  The voice that whispers stupid things like, "The kids won't like their Christmas presents" and "Maybe David's cheating."  Yes, crazy-town.  And these are still just surface thoughts.  Beneath these are fears of the future; of my disease.

So, I practice being right here, right now, noticing.  Myself and my surroundings.  The birds this morning are quiet even, with just a chirp here and there.  Let my mind be like that more and more. Maybe, I'll never entirely be rid of the 'mean voice' but if I can learn to engage more and more the right now, maybe she'll speak less and less.  I may never have a nothing box like the men in my life say they do.  I can't even fathom such a thing, but I can direct my mind toward the scent of the rain, the breeze, and God's loving-kindness.

On Birth and Dreams

I dream of babies often.  Newborn baby girls.  I've read this represents a life dream but I think it might also just represent me being made new.

Last night, I dreamt I had a newborn girl, held her in my arms, close.  I had no stroller or sling to place her in so even when she fell asleep she was near me. Whether the baby represented a dream or a new self or both, I guess I am holding them near.

I need to be made new.  Daily.  Desperately. I need reminders that this is even possible. I need to hear God speak because I am so blind.  It is so hard to see what's right in front of me; the goodness, the miracles.

Life is hard for all of us and I think it's supposed to be.  So we stumble around in the dark, groping, afraid and then we give up, worn, weary, when we're certain we can't do it a minute longer.

I wake up in the dark, so often, grouchy from the start for no good reason.  Today, my right arm aching like weights are attached and all I want to do is go back to bed and I want someone to blame for the fact that I'm awake--the dog; the kid who's always up too early. Both strong-willed and difficult and loud when I don't have the energy or desire to deal with any of it.

These are the days I don't see myself as a new creation but I do see myself as a child--too young and ill-equipped to handle the gravity of this crazy adult life.  This life of mothering and teaching; bills, costs, patience, nurturing. This life that is not easy, the way you imagine it will be when you are a child.

On these days, I just need to know I've heard Him in simple ways like the noticing.  Be reminded that I wasn't blind this morning.  I watched the sky ripen from dark to plum to light and I  noticed.  I noticed that today the sky was purple, royal, in the in-between, not the pink of a fresh-born baby but violet like a king.  And that I felt Him in a breeze that was refreshing and not chilling.

These days, He is preparing the way and I am clearing a path and becoming new.  These days, Christmas is right around the corner but Christ is already always present. And He speaks.

Overcome

It's been a while since I've blogged.  A while since I've thought about blogging.  Several years ago, I blogged daily.  And then I tried to continue but I just couldn't. Sporadically, I added a few entries over the course of a few years but so much had changed--I couldn't get back in that space.

I was a different person then.  Married to a different man.  I had two less children. That blog, then, brought me so much healing.  It became a meditative place for me; a place of searching; a place where I felt close to God. I read those entries now and I almost envy aspects of my old self.  I can appreciate and even admire my own intense pursuit of God there, if that makes any sense.

In some ways, I feel as though I had a purer heart, more innocence. A divorce will straight wreck you.  I couldn't write much about it and I still feel like I can't.  Because I don't quite have the words. It's been four years and still, I can't entirely wrap my head around it. That blog was so much about married life and children and trying and searching and God.

Today, I'm married again.  I have two new children.  I'm still trying; I'm still searching and God is constant.  But I couldn't just pick up where I left off.  I've been so altered. Too much is still unprocessed; there are too many blanks--even for me--in my own story.

But I've missed that dedicated time with God; that longing, the comfort I found in writing in that capacity.  And the why of why now I'm starting a new blog is simply, that I guess it's just been on my heart.  It's terrible timing, actually, with the busyness of the holidays.  Too, I'm working on a novel I started writing in November that I feel rather committed to, there are the six children I homeschool which occupies most of every day and most all of my thoughts and there's the chronic illness which makes for bad timing with nearly everything in life.

So, I have multiple sclerosis.  I want to add something upbeat and cliche like 'but multiple sclerosis doesn't have me! Smiley face' but that would be bull sh*%.  Historically, I haven't shared much about my disease because it's kind of a downer and I don't want to seem like I'm looking for pity. But lately, well, it's been harder to ignore, I suppose.  Too, I've been thinking about how I need to read the words of others who suffer in a similar manner.  Somehow, it helps. So, I guess if I can do anything with this, I can share it as my story and what it looks like so others with chronic illnesses might not feel alone.  I can give a face to it.

My best defense for years was a good offense--there, I squeezed my cliche (I know how to spell cliche but I don't know how to add the accent :) )in--meaning, I did a lot of pretending.  I ignored it whenever I could.  I piled more and more on my plate in defiance to prove to myself that it was no big deal. But that's not as easy anymore.  Besides, I don't know that I was fooling anyone.

Last May, I was diagnosed with Valley Fever which is a b*%t#@  Blah, blah, blah.  Still have it.  Isn't helping a damn thing.  So, here I am, six months later, confessing my illnesses, I guess.  I want to tell you that it's still all good and it is in many ways.  I can walk and talk and swallow.  Just not as well or as easily. MS is a progressive disease.  It takes things slowly--at least it does from me.  It plays the long game.  I don't want to be cynical.  I pray I never have another symptom crop up in my life.  I try and practice positivity.  But I also need to work on authenticity.  With  myself.  Honoring my own truth.  And my own truth right now is that I feel like where other people have periods or days of sicknesses, I have periods or days or even only hours of wellness.  I feel like mostly I've learned to live sick.  And that's a bum deal.  And it pisses me off.  But...

And here's the crux of the new writing; the return to a place such as this: but...I have God.  I love God.  He chose this weakness or weaknesses for me for a reason and always, always it could be worse.  This disease brings me to prayer and that alone fills me with gratitude.  I am overcome.   This disease has at times overcome me, rendering me helpless, knocking me out, winning. But I turn to God and somehow, someway He speaks to me and I am overcome by His goodness and His compassionate love.

So overcome that I want to share it.