He Stretched His Arms Out Upon the Cross

Today’s service was a visual example of the meaning of the action of Christ upon the cross.

It was Community Speaks Sunday and, as is our custom, we had a guest speaker, Kay Briggs, who is author of the book The Magic Seashells. The Magic Seashells is Kay’s story about her recovery and healing from sexual abuse she received as a child. Hers is a beautiful message about how she tried to live out her life in the perfect appearance so often demanded by our society, keeping her experiences and troubles a secret, until she learned that to heal from the hurt done to her as a child she had to embrace the darkness of her experience and find God’s love within it.

We also blessed and said goodbye to a member who is on a journey away from us. He is headed off to prison for the crime of downloading child pornography and will serve several years in the state facility. He knew better than to do what he did. He feels bad about it and asked over a year ago for forgiveness and we gave it with a lovely service of prayer and laying on of hands in blessing in the hopes that his journey will find him healed at the end. We all knew his day to leave would come. We just didn’t know it was going to be today.

I worry about this man because I know that what he did has made him an outcast to some of our church, society at large, and will also do the same to him in prison. From my ex who is a jailor, “inmates all have children and they hate child abusers so any inmate that they learn has hurt children has to be locked away in administrative detention to save their life from the other inmates who will beat them up and try to kill them.” So he may end up in solitary for the next few years just to live. Even if he doesn’t enter solitary confinement he certainly can’t make friends with anyone and reveal his offense.  It’s a long and lonely road he has ahead of him.

Kay’s message was a blessing to me and I know that it wasn’t easy what she did, learning to accept herself and be open about her experiences. Kay may have had her own prison of sorts trying to live out the lie of perfection. I’ve known other people who experienced child abuse and it’s a lonely misfit life they live until they find healing for that hurt. 

After we prayed for him, our departing member, I sat there and thought about what that meant, the welcoming of a victim of child abuse and prayerfully blessing an enabler of it. It seemed such a dichotomy. So radical. So extreme! From victim to criminal, Christ’s forgiving love was exemplified by the actions of our priest and the community. That is such a huge stretch that it boggles the mind. Is there nothing that God can’t or won’t forgive, fix, or heal? Apparently not. So I think that for the next few days, or perhaps weeks, I’ll be thinking about how wide Christ’s arms stretched when he laid them down upon that cross for us all. It’s a humbling thought.

May the love of God enfold each and everyone of you today and everyday! Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Sandi Update #2

Don't get me wrong, I'll never wish anyone ill! Certainly not a hospital stay! But Sandi ending up in the hospital has me calling her every day and I feel so good about the way our friendship is growing through this that I've labeled it a blessing! And I've missed our internet chatter so I'm doubly glad for the reason to call and talk.

I just got off the phone with her. Her doctor wants to keep her till the end of the week. It seems that when she walked in to the ER under her own power she was in critical condition from that infection and they didn't know how she was able to stand, much less walk. So now that the infection is healing they want to hold onto her till her white blood count, and I presume energy, returns to a more normal state. When she told me what her doctor had said I told her she had a new nickname, "Tankette!" She laughed!

The book I sent her, "The Whole Truth" by Baldacci, will hopefully keep her a bit busy, but if she reads as fast as I do when I'm bored and in bed the whole day probably not. Feel free to leave messages and comments if you know her or even think you might want to. I'll deliver them. Or you can leave one on her blog, Holding Patterns. There's a link to it on my left sidebar. She said to tell you all how much she appreciates the prayers and messages of care she's received so far.

Hope everyone had a good holy week! Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Reasons to Smile

Whenever I meet with my Cursillo Reunion group and we talk about study I always direct my talk away from books and instead say, "I'm studying people." It's true! I do study folk. That's how I learn my best lessons in life. How to face disappointments, be kind to others, see things from new perspectives, and be a better servant are just a few of the skills I'm learning from others. All of that's important in life and I'm blessed that I've got friends who accept being studied and seem to consider me just as valuable as they are to me. Friends have been stepping up to the plate a lot lately.

The new friends I'm making at my Census job are turning out to be fine examples of how to act in an office. Many of them have been managers or people in responsible positions and all are team players. We all work together towards a common goal, teach each other what we learn, and cover each other when closing out our day and getting ready for the next. So what am I learning from them? Besides the afore mentioned, I'm also learning how to take things in stride, how to coordinate things, and how to get good advice when needed. More subtle skills include tact, faith, and belief in a common goal.

One of my work friends, a very nice fellow named Kevin, has taken my poor job search skills and done his best to improve them with some well place instructions. He sat down with me over lunch one day, looked at my USA Jobs resume, and told me how to improve it to get a better shot at being hired by our government when I go looking for a new job. He pointed me towards OPM.gov which has handbooks for all the jobs listed on in the "job families/series" on USAJobs.gov and told me to match my job experience descriptions to the key words used to describe the skills used for the job I was trying for. That kind of advice was amazingly helpful! When I went to the site I had a general idea and instructions to do a "series search". I actually searched for those terms and learned about job families. Then I checked out the areas I had knowledge and experience in. I found 2 different jobs I can have a decent chance at by rewriting my resume, so that's my plan! I hadn't realized how varied resumes could be. That's something else I've picked up on this job. Apparently civilian ones are a page or two in length max, but the government job ones are several more pages with detailed descriptions of tasks you've mastered and experiences you've had. Whew! I always had a problem with writing short descriptions. Writing detailed ones should be a piece of cake. Oh! And they extended me at work so I'm employed by the Census for another 2 months! Yay!

Today I was headed to Target to buy a new watch and also Home Depot to get a new lamp. Instead I took a side trip to my friend Jerry's house, partly because he was on the way and could give me advice on whether I should buy a new lamp or fix the old one and also, because I hadn't seen him in a while and missed his company. Jerry and his family took me to their hearts long ago and have become my best resources for many things. If I need a house sitter or cat feeder I call them. If I'm going to the hospital for a procedure they are the ones to sit in the waiting room and drive me home afterward. They are also my emergency contacts and have permission to speak in my behalf if medical issues arise. It makes lots of sense. Jerry's an experienced OR nurse, knows my other friends with medical expertise, and would be able to ask questions that I wouldn't know to think of. They keep 10 cats and have taken care of mine by staying for several hours just to play with them when I've had occasion to travel.

When I stepped into Jerry's place he was relaxing with a book. I described my lamp problem and asked if I could fix it. He asked Susan if she needed him and got permission to go with me to my place where he proceeded to take the lamp apart. Discovering that the socket had gone bad, we drove to Target, followed by Home Depot to get the needed part to fix the lamp. While out running around we managed to get my watch replaced and a couple of very necessary belts of decent quality purchased. (My wardrobe is taking wear and tear now that I'm working 5 days a week.) Once back home the lamp got fixed, the windshield fluid in the car was topped off, bottles were recycled, and I had new CFL bulbs for most of the lights and a new R type bulb for the lamp. Then he played with the cats, or at least Hyram. Hooboo doesn't really trust anyone but me yet. A little later, I drove Jerry back to his place and borrowed a few books and a new computer game. I've promised to return tomorrow so that I can help them organize their myriad books. They need this badly because they are the best lending library I know and finding what they want to lend me is a whole house search project at present.

Earlier this morning, I popped over to my friend San's blog and then visited her friend Bob T Bear Esq. who was having a 500th post celebration. That was fun and I hope to share some of the jokes from his site with my friends at work. San has meant a lot to me as a friend because she started by making herself at home in my blog. She'd never met me, started reading and stayed and read and kept coming back till I think she has read every post I've ever written. In the process we became friends and I started learning how to love abstract art. I'd always been very much a realist and fantasy art lover till I met San. Now I'm seeing things in her work that I'd never have expected to. It's like visions just pop up for me when I look at something she's painted. Wow!

One of the things I shared with Jerry while he was watching Hyram eat was the start of my writing portfolio. David had a hand in that. In fact, I think it wouldn't have been started without his support. I also ran the articles I pulled from this blog past another new work friend. She said they were good too, but pointed out that if I wanted to be a technical writer I needed to write some technical articles. That makes sense. So I have to figure out a good "How To" article to put in there. Or describe a process that I'm familiar with that uses technology. She suggested blogging. I'm not so sure about that but there has to be something I can talk about and describe step by step. So I guess that somewhere in and around my rewriting my resume I need to write a couple more articles.

Well I don't think this article is turning out as I'd intended. It's become a ramble whose whole point seems to be that you can't survive without friends and that I've got some really great ones. But when Jerry and I were driving around we talked about disappointments in life. People often disappoint each other. Sometimes they hurt you very badly in the process. One can lose faith in other people if you hurt them often or badly enough. I've seen several examples of this during my life. The result seems to be that they lose faith in establishments, authorities, and powers too...including God. When Jerry and I are together we can seem like opposite sides of the coin. He's gloom and doom and I'm joy and light, but it wasn't always this way and I remember fondly the man who could convincingly make believe he was Merlin. So I talked about the need to forgive or just let things go. Granted, I'm not always good at that, but eventually I have to come around to that because I am, at heart, an optimist. I want a rosy tinted outlook and I'll move heaven and earth to get it. I wish I could gift that view to all my friends and anyone in need of a better feel about life because I think that without it I would have been a very unhappy teenager and possibly become a statistic of the worst sort. When I was just a kid my mother and I coined the label "Pollyannas" for ourselves signifying that we wanted to find something to be happy about in any situation, just like Pollyanna did in that Disney movie. So help me, it stuck! And I've never once looked back. In fact I resent any effort to teach me better. Life has a way of doing that despite our best efforts, so I can't claim that I'm totally unscathed, but I know things are getting better when I can share the smile that in my 20's earned me the nickname "Sunshine" and find time to appreciate the goodness of those around me. Thank goodness for friends! So yeah, let's smile! Just like the song!

Rising From the Ashes

In response to David McMahon's weekend wandering question, "What's the most important thing you've ever lost?"

Friday night at church, I watched a grief play by Paula D'Arcy. The play was, "On My Way Home." In it Paula told how in 1975, when she was 27 (and 3 months pregnant), she and her husband, while coming home from a trip, were in a horrible accident. A drunk driver crashed into them at 97 mph destroying their car and killing her husband and their 22 month old daughter. Paula and the baby she was carrying survived, but she was barely able to comprehend how she had managed to live when all that she valued had been taken from her.

The story was played out as a conversation between Paula and God. It told how her faith had carried her through the struggles to reconnect with life. With exquisite sensitivity and humor it showed how God nudged her through connections with others and the life she needed to live for. We weren't spared the grief she felt. Nor were we spared the humor of life as seen through God's eyes. One amazing thing is that Paula played herself. That experience must have been so traumatic that one wonders how she could have faced talking about it to an audience of people many of whom she didn't know. But Paula is a psychotherapist as well as a grief counselor and this story, told 33 years later, is part of her way of helping others come to terms with their own losses.

My ticket to the show was a gift from JS. She was going to be out of town this weekend visiting the best of the local seminaries with her family. It was a loving gift and lovingly received. But I had no idea that when I saw the play it would touch me so deeply. That play took me back to the day and weeks after my husband left me. Nothing I've ever experienced in life hurt me so badly as his leaving. Everybody has had losses of one kind or another. Family and friends have both passed on. But the loss that hurt the deepest, showing up when he left, and has had the longest lasting effect was the loss of myself.

It's not as hard to lose a life as you might think, or as sudden. Over the course of 7 years of marriage, I gave way in almost every choice that mattered to me. It started by giving up little things that didn't seem that important. He picked the deserts. No more cherry pie, which I love and he didn't. No sitting together watching quality shows on TV. Instead we channel surfed, flipping every 5 or 10 minutes, till I didn't know what we were watching. Then moved on to more important things. His method of relaxation required me not having an outlet for that for myself. So I stopped playing my guitar, the noise disturbed his channel surfing. The clean house became a mess because he didn't value cleanliness and didn't want to feel guilty about my need for clean. We didn't make friends with any of his coworkers. I handed him control of the finances when I found out he'd never managed a budget before. Even the way the pets were treated was determined by him. I'd have had them in most of the time and treated them like family. For him they were just owned animals and to be kept outdoors. Eventually, my whole world seemed to revolve around him. "Well," I thought (remembering my mother's example), "wasn't that the way it was supposed to be?" Now days I know better. People don't value you unless you value yourself. But back then I was literally clueless. So, when my husband left me 7 years later, I had no idea who I was anymore.

That was just the beginning of a string of heart aches. My best friends let him rent their spare bedroom. Suddenly they couldn't have me over anymore; it would make him uncomfortable. My job was cut from the company payroll 30 days later. I'd been with the same company for 18.5 years. My parents didn't understand why I was hurting so, I guess they hadn't liked him much. Every major role I had was suddenly going down the drain. I wasn't a loved wife, a valued employee, or a cherished friend. After all of that there wasn't much left. No surprise that my decline into situational depression was sudden and severe. Fortunately, I'm a fighter and I wanted to live. So when it had all sunk in and I took a look around at the shambles that was my life, and my view of myself, I realized I had a lot of rebuilding to do.

You might be able to just pick up the bits and pieces of you that dropped along the path of life and regain all that you lost, but that didn't happen to me. Eight years later, I'm still trying to regain bits I lost during those years. My personal mantra became, "I'm going to rebuild a me that I love so much that I won't give her up for anyone or anything." For all that I'm not the person I imagined I'd be after rebuilding, it has actually started coming true.

The me that's growing out of the ashes of that old life is a better and richer person. I have more and better friends. My relationships with them are deeper because I realize the value of them. I'm developing skills I didn't know I had. And glory be, somewhere along the road, I've developed a spine. It doesn't always show up when I need it; I loath conflict. But get on my wrong side and baby watch the fur fly!

After the play, Paula held a question and answer session. I kept wanting to ask her, "Once you reached the end of this play, what did you do next? How long was it before you felt whole again?" I didn't do that. I think I knew that her walk was as unique as my own is going to be. Life will happen when it happens. I'll be ready for it when the time comes and no one, except for God, can give me a time line for that. I just have to have faith. And that was the entire point of Paula's play. That you have to have faith to make life out of loss. You have to believe that the life you build will be worth living. And so it is.

Last Night

Late yesterday my friends JS and her wife invited me to dinner at their place. This was a real treat because their lives are so busy that get-togethers are usually planned way in advance. It felt really special to be included at the last minute. This says something about the way I was raised because I've always gone out of my way to avoid intruding on friends' lives when they are busy. And here they were saying, "come on over," as if I lived just next door. (g)

The burgers were good. I got to see their back yard for the first time. They have a gazebo that I love. They are picking really fragrant flowering plants so I look forward to seeing how their yard progresses. I met a couple of the neighbor kids who popped in and out to play with theirs. But the best time was after dinner when we sat on the sofa and I got to hear all about their wedding and see the album. They really put a lot of thought and planning into it making every detail special. It was obvious that each detail meant something to both of them and both felt equally vested in the ceremony.

That wasn't the case with my marriage. My ex's aunt and I did most of the planning. My ex had veto power on things he didn't like. His feelings about the whole thing were, "I want to be married, I just don't want to GET married." What a difference!

I remember when my sister got married. She invited me to be her maid of honor. When she walked down the aisle she and her future husband had tears in their eyes. I remember dancing at a good friend's first wedding. We all had high hopes and joy for him and his bride. I didn't get to dance at his second wedding but I like that wife much better. He is happier now than I've ever seen him. My sister's in her second marriage now and happier too. So is JS.

It seems most of my friends have been through more than one marriage. Looking back on the joy I see in my friends' second marriages, I guess we really do learn from experience. I learned a lot from the breakup of mine. Since then, I've figured out some of the things I don't want in my next marriage. I've learned a bit about what really suits me and what's good for me in a relationship. I've learned what kind of constant work such unions take. Most importantly, I think, I've learned the need to remain a separate individual in my own right even in the midst of trying to grow together as a couple. So, when I get a view of a marriage such as I had last night, I want to drink it all in and ken from my friends' joy what it takes to make a strong, happy, and lasting relationship.

Way too long!

A whole month has gone by and I've written absolutely nothing! Well, that's not entirely true. I've done 2 research papers and an interview write up. But I think that the real reason I've not been writing is because I've been dealing with life and its effects.

One of the things I'm worried about with my writing is something my friend, Susan, has mentioned. A month ago I got on antidepressants. I didn't want to but felt that the stresses in my life, mostly self generated, were causing me to lose the ability to handle life well. Antidepressants are known to inhibit creativity. So, I'm wondering if my ability to come up with ideas is being affected by the meds or am I just so busy that I've not found time to write? Whatever the reason, I wish I had a wealth of ideas to present. Right now I just don't.

The Pastoral Counselor I mentioned a few posts ago seems to be working out ok. It feels kind of strange talking to a man about the most important things in my life. Possibly this is due to the fact that the last counselor I had was a woman. Or maybe there's a different reason. Before when God put a person in my life to talk about spiritual things to it has always been a woman. Talking to a man has a different flavor. He's good at asking questions and sometimes he points out the good/happy things I've missed in the middle of all my stress. I still have concerns about subjects I might feel more comfortable talking to a woman about even though I haven't had a reason to discuss them with him yet. One nice thing is, I've finally have someone to talk with about the subject of my 3rd post, the Communion story. That in and of itself gave a great sense of relief. I don't think I'm done with that subject yet, but having finally gotten another set of ears to listen meant a lot to me.

In the counseling sessions I'm dealing with things like anger, the need to express it in order to release it, and being comfortable with solitude. To understand the anger/expression need I'm reading (or trying to) The Dance of Anger (TDoA). When I was a child I never learned how to handle anger well. It was always hidden in my family. When it was expressed it was closely contained. The message was, "Anger is a "bad thing" and expressing it means you're out of control." The healthy reality, according to TDoA, is that we all have anger, we all need to express it, and we all need to be ok with feeling that way from time to time. To handle the solitude, I'm trying to find things I don't mind doing alone. At home that's easy. Doing it away from home is harder. This wasn't always the case with me so I am trying to recover the ability to be comfortable being out on my own. A large part of the discomfort, I believe, came from being married and used to having someone to come home to. Not having that anymore is something I managed to avoid thinking about for 8 years. Now I need to deal with it because I hope to have my first teaching job within a year and it's going to take a lot of self confidence and personal resources to handle that.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not a total wimp and I do have some idea what of my strengths are. I excel at giving explanations and my teaching skills are good. Learning excites me and I hope to pass that on to my students. I used to be afraid of making mistakes and no longer fear that, so I should be able to use that growth to find ways of making my students feel safe and not pressured to be perfectionists. It will be the time management, the multitasking, and the gathering of resources at a new job that I will struggle with. However, that is what student teaching is supposed to help me learn to do and I'm doing that this fall. So, while I'm nervous about doing the student teaching, I know I will manage to get that done and hopefully get a good grade in it.

So that's where I am and where I've been lately. Work for the year is almost done. School for this year ends May 25th. My college classes end in 2 weeks. I'll have a summer of no schooling and maybe no work. Thank goodness my employer spreads my salary over the summer. I gathered a couple of new books to read lately. I want to see the Harry Potter movie when it comes out in July. I would like to see Spiderman 3 when it opens in May. I can hardly wait for the last and final Harry Potter book to arrive. In other places, life goes on. Please keep me in your prayers. I've a lot to accomplish in the next few months.

Peace!