On there being a lot

Two and a half years ago, I sat in the office of my therapist for my last appointment. "Just be sure you find somebody when you get there, okay?...you've done REALLY well....you're just not finished yet, you know?" Honestly that's a bit of a paraphrase but the sentiment was that. I'd done a LOT of hard work shoving my way through the heat of the hell that burned in my own soul, and passing through the heat had served to burn away a whole host of things my life didn't need anymore. I also got a lot stronger. Strongest I had been in like...a decade. I felt so emboldened with this new strength that I grabbed right up the false sense of security that is so perfectly human, and nodded my head yes - that I would find someone once I got there (here - where I live now) but I felt so confident that the urgency that flavored every word she spoke was just something I might have the luxury of ignoring...for just a little while. 

So I did. 

Two and a half years ago, with the guidance of this woman and the support of my then boyfriend (who is now my husband), I unlocked and re-entered rooms in my soul that I have described in past posts as dusty museums of shrouded, broken relics. I faced demons nose to nose. I get literal chills thinking about THOSE exercises. The gates of hell are not a casual hangout. I revisited past versions of myself and provided rescue to some of them. 

I did the work. I cataloged it here. I thought it could maybe just be enough to get me through for a while. I DID know that I would need to do some more "sorting out" because here's the thing. As I walked carefully and slowly through the house that is my soul, I DID enter and completely renovate some of those rooms. They are still beautiful. They are delivered from the darkness of a locked door and diverted attention. 

But this is what I did. I made those rooms so truly lovely so that maybe they could, in some way, compensate for the rooms for which I refused to pull the key from the pocket of my memory. I just couldn't do it. I just wanted to revel in the beauty of these parts that have been restored, but lately I've felt the floor even outside the locked rooms get too soft under my feet. The thing with damage is, if you don't stop the decay that it's causing, it just spreads. 

On a day last week is when I noticed it as I passed by one of the locked rooms - I noticed the soft floor. It wasn't just creaky. It was rotting away and spreading closer....to all the work I had done. My attention shot up to look at the door of the rooms that held all the healing, and it hit me. This cannot touch those rooms. This cannot and should not happen. It's time to get to work.

I started the work, you guys. Right now I'm sort of at the point of standing there with my new contractor walking around surveying all the damage from all the storms and all the vandals. After an explanation including as much detail as I could manage (and lets be real - you know I can remember almost every. single. detail - they don't leave you), we each take a breath and then I hear a voice say the same thing I've heard other experienced voices say - "That's....a lot". I sheepishly smile with just my mouth and still sad eyes and try to find a way to explain away how my story is NOT THAT unique. There are a lot of people that have encountered their OWN storms and been attacked and ravaged by their OWN vandals, but then I feel silly because this is not the first job my contractor has assessed. I'm sure there have been many, many, many, and yet the reaction to MY re-do is that there is genuinely....a lot. So I have to acknowledge the opinion of the one who is far more expert than I am and take direction for which part to tackle first. 

I'm scared. Because the truth of the matter is that we aren't talking about a house. I merely use that as an analogy that seems most easily relatable because even if you've never renovated a house, you've probably watched someone else do it. Also...houses become homes, and this life I live on this big round ball is the home for the story I leave for others to read so...we're calling it a house but...the truth is, this is a soul and this reno is actually more like surgery, and I have to be awake for every slice of the knife and every scrape as we find and pull out all the things that could threaten my growth. I don't like pain. I feel like I've had my fair share. There's been a lotta tough, and I'm tired, but this has to be done. 

I'm also excited because when you do this work, you grow. You become that much more unstoppable in the race towards your dreams, and you become that much more usable to a God who needs runners without weights on their legs. 

(oh the analogies) Forgive me. There's a lot swirling around through the rooms in my soul tonight, and finding a way to describe them gives me a way to at least begin to sort things out. Pray for me if you think of me. There is a portion of my life that requires address that is actually a period of years larger than the portion of my life that did not include these injuries. It's a big job. I've got a lot of small tasks and big ventures to sort out and complete because...you know...it's a lot. 

On making my home

When I lived with Dan in Norman, there was this house we always passed that was a complete flip. To be honest, I really still feel significant confusion over why they didnt just tear it down or torch it - that's how completely stripped away it was. Here's the thing, though - it had really strong framework. There were beams for support and sections of good "guts". Over the months of my time living there, the contractors made some really amazing progress but there were days and some weeks that the construction came to a halt. If there were storms that were intense enough, they had to pause the rebuild because continuing during these period could risk damage to all the work they put in.They had to wait for the storms to end. I'm positive these storms left them feeling frustated - wanting just to continue so they could have the house in a condition that made it what it was always meant to be. But it had to just sit there up on stilts and cinder blocks until they could be sure that the elements didn't just destroy everything or even cause them harm.

I'm like that house. Ugh. Trust me. I was totally stripped out. I had nothing to offer anyone for a time. Those were my "dark days". I was definitely just very bare bones framework for a while. I was definitely in a state where those with experience and a heart to help me to become what I was meant to be came alongside me and acted as the cinder blocks and stilts. They stood with their feet squished down into the muck of my hurts and stood in the place where my new, better foundation was going to be poured.

As time went on, progress WAS made in the way I was constructed. Rot was aggressively removed and the good framework was reinforced. Gradually more elements were restored to the complete version I was becoming, but then storms came.

I don't know why I never connected this until tonight.

I have worked really hard on this Sarah rebuild. I have gone to an Architect with plans that couldn't be rivaled. These plans are the best - they are literally perfect, but the storms. As strong and pleasing as this plan is, there is just the inevitibility of storms. I haven't always been as smart as those builders. I'm the oblivious hammer swinger that didn't put up my tools and cover my vulnerable parts to protect them while the storms raged around me. I am the one who insisted that "Eh, this isn't something I should even care about. It's not THAT bad" until I watched some of my progress get marred or ruined or at least compromised - so guess what happened? I lost some of the progress I had made. Instead of realizing my priority during the storm was to protect my work and my safety, I left it out in the rain and snow and blistering heat. And I haven't even begun to address the issue of delinquent vandals.

Have you ever passed by one of these reconstructions and seen a spray painted image or ugly word artlessly scrawled across what is being made into something wonderful just so some idiot could leave their mark? Isn't there always the same list of questions that plays through your brain? "What idiot would do that?!" "How is someone so insecure that they take cheapest, most classless medium possible just to try to get attention or cause ruin to something so hopeful that someone was working on?" Also this one "Oh man....why couldn't the owners of this rebuild do something to protect all the work they're doing?"

Your brain also answers the questions too. The truth of life is that there are always people that are selfish or purposeless in their own lives that all they have is to try to ruin what someone else is doing. It is also true that, no matter how hard you try, sometimes its just a thing that these vandals will go to whatever lengths they see available to leave a mark of ugliness. There are also storms that, no matter what, will compromise even the best efforts at preservation.

So does the owner stand out front and yell reciprocations of trash? Does the owner continue to swing their hammer or sweep across the flooring if rain is coming down in buckets? Would the builder be productive focusing on how long or how torrential the rain is? No. Those would be stupid, fruitless behaviors.

Storms amd vandals happen. The truth is that sometimes these things do impede your progress. You can't protect against absolutely everything, and you look nothing but pathetic or crazy if you pretend they're not happening. I feel a sad kind of disappointed that I've spent this many years in a row feeling confused that my progress didn't continue or that vandals were able to leave their marks in my life.

Why did I not realize that storms are not a thing you can fight off? Why did I ever have the expectation for myself that I should see no break in progress during these storms? Why did I ever spend all that time out in the middle of this letting my soul get soaked to the bone? Why did my eye only ever see the progress I didn't make after all of this had passed its way over the "home" I'm making?

Oh self, what did you expect to have? Perfect? Did you expect to be perfect now? Why would you take blame for a storm you didn't want and couldn't have caused?

Its like, so simple. These things happen. Why did I expect to operate as if they never had? It seems so silly now to think of how I missed all of this simple idea that rebuilds just dont happen the same if a storm is happening or that there WILL be a mark left if someone is really insistent on leaving one.

So while I will not wallow in the grief of losing the progress I had made, I will realize that storms change your schedule.  I will not take blame for things outside my control, but I will tell you this, as soon as the storm is done, I'm going to get right back up there and keep replacing and reinforcing and building new and finishing. I will keep away from the vandals, and once they're far enough away, I will scrub off all their graffiti. Because one day I will be able to say I am finished with my rebuild. My life is, in fact, now a safe place to stay after the sun goes down, and I've placed measures of safety around my perimeter so that the face of each brick or plank of wood is allowed to be nothing but strong and lovely.

I will work as efficiently as I am able to make all of this life into a place where I can shelter my heart but also others'. I will push every time the sun shines to finish off every floor and stair step and door frame so my life is a place where people make memories they cherish.  I will do all of this so those that come after me can furrow their brows in a focused gaze or widen their eyes at what the carving experiences did to the woodwork of each baseboard. I want to build something so people feel at home by what I've left behind.

Funny thing about architects: they give you detailed plans for how things should be built, but never a single time did an honest one ever claim that it was never going to rain.

On the Dark Days Being Over

When I was a kid, I remember my dad using a turn of phrase that he had learned from his mom. It was to describe adolescence in a girl. What a weird time in the life of a human - to be an adolescent girl. "Too old for toys, too young for boys". That was it. It was meant to be a funny way to describe that strange pergatorial state of being so 100% of 2 totally different things. To be honest, I originally found the phrase to be insultingly hopeless.

It wasn't though. I get it now. I get it now, because I'm here again, but it isn't the becoming more obviously adult-like or the moving forward from the days of play. It's the becoming of myself a version that has grown more instead of just grown up, and it's the moving away from the thing that had stunted me - the dark.

I had a lot of dark days and even darker nights.  I will never forget the countless nights I stayed up after everyone else in my house had gone to sleep and laying flat in the carpet to show humility to the God I hoped was listening as I wept long enough and hard enough to leave puddles in the carpet of my living room. It was like a wrestling match I couldn't win to just convince the One I felt confident could change everything to just go ahead and change everything. Each morning was such a sickening realization that, though the sun had come up, the day had remained as dark as the night that had ushered it in.  Years of this. For years I felt almost tangibly this oppression - this darkness. It sucked the oxygen out of every possible happiness. It completely consumed me, and no matter how hard I tried to keep my hands clutched around the things that I wanted so badly, all that was ever left were crumbs.

Things have changed though.

Last month I went on a trip with some friends of mine. About a year ago, one of my sweetest and dearest friends of my whole life convinced me to join a direct sales company with her.  She hesitated knowing how much I detest this type of business, but we sat and talked and messaged and video chatted for hours thereafter about how to do it all in a way that would work for what we actually wanted to have. The result has been that we have gathered into our fold a larger group of friends of ours from present day all the way back to the childhood she and I began together.  This company held a conference, and a few of us were able to go.

The first night we were there, I stood in the bathroom at the sink getting ready for the evening, and as I heard in the same room with me friends that I had known really, seriously almost my whole life but hadn't seen in years, I thought "Gosh, this really didn't even cost that much to get here. I mean, it was tight for me, but we could do this every year. By next year it won't be a problem at all.......Geez. I mean why are we all just now doing this? We should have been doing this every year already! Why weren't we?" And then I felt the blush of embarrassment creep up the cheeks of my soul because I had insensitively blurted out in my own mind this thing that was so obvious - the dark.  It hadn't ever happened because every good and right and growing thing had been forced to blend into the shadow or shrivel up and die under the eclipse that the dark had created.

But I was there standing in that bathroom listening to the music of these voices of precious friends, so...that meant...

If I could actually see all these people face to face and actually hear their voices and actually be in that hotel room at that moment, one could only conclude that the darkness had lost its ability to rip out of my hands and my heart the things that I wanted to keep. It was gone. It was powerless. All those dark days and the darker nights...were over.

I finished what I was doing at the mirror and went back to my collection of smiling, chattering friends and took my first opportunity to tell them what my heart had just realized.  I choked back tears while my friends shouted through their own sympathetic smiles for me to not cry right now! I smiled through the fog in my eyes and exulted in my new reality.

The dark days are over.

There's this thing happening now though. In passing from the thing of the darkness, naturally I am also crossing TO something. The light. The breathable air. The freedom. But it's a transition. It is not something abrupt like the last measure of one song and the beginning of a new one. It's more like I'm in the chorus between two versus or those strange few notes at the key change. I'm supremely grateful for the fact that this new melody is quite obviously already here, but there is part of me that just doesn't....

I just feel like those strange few notes. I know I'm not the measures of song from before and my life is no longer the narrative of the preceding verses, but I feel so "in between" because I can't yet see or hear what it is that I'm about to me or maybe even most of what I have already grown to be as these "notes" of transition play themselves out.

I don't like it.

I am a very concrete thinker. Just as linear as they come, I think. This is why most of my prose is really a compilation of analogies. I have to have a way to anchor something so abstract as a feeling in a soul to something I know I've seen or have at least learned about. There is no anchor for the unknown. There is not map where surprise is the only choice you have.

I have a tendency. I like to go back to what I know.  Through the course of this year, as I have grown out of the "too old for toys" parallel to my experiences, I have felt a lot like I have just floated.  I mean, really I have just kept very busy. I have 4 children. My husband works 2 jobs. I am essentially and really starting a small business this year with a team of people that is constantly and beautifully growing in number to whom I owe everything I can possibly offer in the way of support and instruction. I work full time hours while I also perform all the wonder and privilege of full time care to my youngest child who does not go to daycare. I handle most of the household tasks mainly because my husband isn't realistically home enough hours to manage much (although he is the first to help at his first opportunity). So I have enjoyed the busyness, but there are moments of silence. Those are what leave me confused. Those are the times that leave me feeling a bit lost because...

I am a doer. I am tenacious. I do not understand giving up on the things that are important to me. This has gotten me in trouble in the past because there are pursuits I should have abandoned long before I did. There is this thing in me that makes me say to the whole world that obstacles are something that just require strategy and persistence. This is the part of me that has survived some things that have robbed others of all their hope. This is something that is fueled by a Hope that comes from beyond my own person, but it is there and it has served me well.  It's just that I don't actually need that intensity anymore.

Have you ever been to someone's house or have you ever been the person that gets up during your after dinner conversation and starts fiddling with a shelf of fallen over books or scrubbing an already clean countertop and then says "I just am not a person that likes to sit down. I have to be doing something"? It's like there's no off switch. It can create an atmosphere of anxiousness because of this inability to lower their intensity level. It's usually not good, because that comment of "I am not a person that likes to sit down" is usually a response to someone that says "Why don't you just leave that and come sit it in here while we talk?" The counter scrubber or book straightener doesn't realize something so tragic - their audience is asking for their undivided attention. They actually need that from the counter scrubber, and the counter scrubber's response is...insulting.  It is at best illogical but at worst, it sends the message that the question asker is less important that the counter scrubber's compulsion to feel productive by completing tasks instead of investing in the heart of the question asker.

My spirit is the counter scrubber.  I have had to stay so hyper vigilent for so many consecutive years and be ready to push through such strange and intense struggles that I have fidgeted in the living room of my life until I find myself standing and fiddling with things while I listened to all the beauty and newly lit wonder that my present life affords me. In my mind, I'm still offering attention to all of this beauty, but I have, indeed, felt a little rude to it because I keep finding myself feeling driven to do things like figuratively scrub the surfaces of my circumstances when...they're already in order. It has felt very off.

So I know WHY my heart has done all this - I had no choice but to live in a state of being ready to conquer things that have been my wildest nightmares at an hour of my life when I should have been at rest.  This happened for so long that it has been ingrained in me.

It's is, though, a problem.  I have now noticed the inappropriateness of my timing of the expending of this nervous energy.  It can't stay like this because why? Because even if I feel like I'm looking up enough times to meet the gaze of the beauty in my life, invariably, there is also time that I'm spending looking down away from it at something that no longer needs my attention. Even if I feel like I'm listening to every word the beauty is saying to me, the scratch of the sponge or the flow of water over it to rinse away problems that aren't even there is going to drown out some of the precious noise. And then there's what I'm doing with the hands of my spirit. What if the beauty in my life should be held in my hands so I can really feel it and have it near to me, but my hands are busy with work that fills a need of fake productivity that will yield absolutely nothing except the enablement of a version of me that no longer exists?

It's time to sit now and enjoy the beauty. This is going to be hard for me, but it's time, and it's really just a choice to be made. The threats that breathed down my neck before have completely died. The miles of journey away from the land of withered dreams and toxic air have been traveled. They are behind me now. I'm at the new place. There is no more fire burning away the beauty in my life. I don't have to protect myself from that any more. The sad notes of the old song or the previous verse have played, and the evidence of their noise is fading to a decibel no one can hear anymore. Yes I am still in a transition, but honestly, I'm at the top end of it now.

This is seriously terrifying to me. Do you know this part of life where, if you go through a higher incidence of repeated or constant loss, you just feel sure that every lovely thing is dangled in front of your eyes just so it can be cruelly snatched away? I guess that feeling is the transition. The thing, though, is that there have now been several years where lovely things aren't dangled in front of my eyes. They are wrapped up and then set in my hands - these times, these experiences, these changes in who I am, are gifts that I have now been allowed to keep. And now I am starting to see more and more and bigger and bigger gifts being sent in my direction, and the nature of these gifts is that they are impossible to steal.

So I need to have a seat, don't I? It is really finally time for my soul to rest and enjoy all of this, because we have pushed really hard to get here. We have walked all those miles and made it through all those wars, and now it's quiet. Now it's time to dwell in the peace that I was commanded to find. Now it's time to be healed.

On letting her be sad

Life is a colorful journey to say the least, isn't it? The thing that has struck me as the most strange, though, is how some things, despite the record of chronology, seem to not just be timeless but transcend time. It is an idea so complex that men have devoted years of their lives to finding a way to quantify and understand exactly what "time" is. One of those people happens to be my husband.

The thing that I find most striking in its transcendence of time is the versions of ourselves. We are each one person - yes. But I have spoken in times past about performing a therapeutic exercise during which you intentionally mentally go back and revisit the "you" of a different time and lend something to that person. For me in the past, I went back to the "me of 11", and I comforted a very confused kid who felt alone while my poor grieving mom cradled her own mother's body while the soul left the body and my grandmother breathed her last. My grandmother held my mother when she breathed her first breath. My mother held her own mother when she breathed her last breath. What is more intensely beautiful and sorrowful all at the same time? That year was so difficult for me and parts of my soul got, understandably, lost in the shuffle. Well the shuffle didn't last forever. Life marched on and continued to change. I grieved hard for the loss of my grandmother, but it took me more than 20 years to realize that I had never grieved the loss of myself and that I needed to do that.  So I wrote a letter. I still have it. That experience was insane, but it taught me how to do that for the "Sarahs" of the past.

I was able to go back and rescue and comfort the "Sarah" that got raped who felt she needed forgiveness for something that was never her fault. I learned a good skill that I have used to go back and wrap loving, now momma, arms around the versions of myself that happened in this weird thing of time that we use to measure our experiences. Let me just tell you, if you ever do this, you will understand what I mean when I describe it as transcendent. If you perform the exercise correctly....you guys...it's like you actually go back.  I am not talking about some weird delusion of time travel or alter universe. I'm not implying something like Back to the Future. It's....it's its own thing, but know this. You can go back within your soul...and you can address things. So, under the watchful eye of a clinical therapist and my loving (then) fiance and with an attitude of prayer and protection, I have performed this exercise multiple times for several different versions of myself.

There are several versions representing several years to which I could not bring myself to go back. My (now) husband and a close friend trained in this field have encouraged me to do so.

I just couldn't....

until tonight.

There is something to say for relationships that are genuinely safe.  You really don't ever get a whole bunch of those in life.  Most relationships aren't bad - they just remain on the surface, and so they can't be described as a safe place or an emotional bunker. They're just repeated salutations and some shared experiences, but the other parties aren't ones that would offer sacrifice or safety. It's not that they're bad - they're just shallow. But then you find a few that are exactly what every heart needs. They are a harbor of protection and a bed of renewal. Those relationships are important. Those are the ones you hold onto. Those are the ones wherein is revealed the most truth. One of those relationships for me is with my husband. He has been a rock of truth and love for my heart since I was 20 years old, and that part of who he is has only grown more beautiful with time.

I spent some much needed time with him tonight. It was one of those evenings where you talk things out because you find yourselves being more and more in sync with each other rather than talking things out to clear air from a fight. It was a time of feeling like the thread that knit our hearts together got pulled a little tighter.

The safety.

Dan left the room, and I stayed just staring up at the ceiling...and then it happened. A "Sarah" from another year sprang to the front of my soul. A lot of "Sarahs" in my past have needed help because they have been very, very afraid. I spent more of my life than I care to admit feeling so horrified every day, and while this particular "Sarah" had also spent a lot of time feeling so scared, the thing she needed help with from "Sarah now" was because she was just heartbrokenly sad. Just so sad.

There were a few key points of loss for my story. I value my loves so fiercely that losing anyone is earth shattering to me. I have buried people in my immediate family. That loss is just awful...but then there are people who have not ceased to live. They walked away...sometimes with their feet and everytime with their hearts, and the "Sarah" that needed some loving arms tonight was sad over someone that walked away. After this person took their exit, life spun in circles so fast that I was just trying to survive, and their exit felt like such a slap-in-the-face betrayel that allowing myself to feel loss almost felt like I was extending a value to them that they didn't deserve. I never deserved to be emotionally abandoned by this person. I had tried to be their friend through thick and thin. They were important and absolutely precious to me, so their choice to betray what my heart offered was just excrutiating for me. And the interesting dynamic is when someone's heart leaves your heart, it doesn't always happen that they logistically leave your life. You may continue spending as much time around them as you always had. That was the case here. The regular life that had included both of us continued for a while, and, as there is in life, there was some frenzy at times that never allowed the "me" of then to ever just sit down and weep for what had just ripped out my heart.

Honestly, time marched on.

Part of me remained stuck there with that poor "Sarah" of that time crumpled in a heap on my bed trying to make myself cry but not being able to. I had children at that point so laying in bed for days to actually grieve wasn't realistic. So that "Sarah about to cry" stayed right there....until tonight.

I have no idea what the catalyst was that pulled this "Sarah" to the front of my soul, but as I lay in this house on this night, she came to "me" and the tears just started to well up in my eyes. I guess I feel like maybe it was the growing feeling of safety in the arms and heart of my husband that made both of us "Sarahs" feel like we would be safe enough to be vulnerable in our heartbreak. "You know....I never even just let myself feel sad about that..." and as soon as my brain silently spoke the words, my heart gave both of us "Sarahs" permission to go ahead and "drown".

I use drowning as an analogy because if someone is in distress in a body of water, the rescue personnel will not offer them aid while they are still flailing their arms or forcing their body up into the air with every bit of strength they have remaining. The reason the rescuer waits is because the victim can actually continue to damage themselves and the rescue effort can be fruitless and catastrophic. It is only when the victim - the hurting, scared person - loses all strength of their own and has no way to fight that the rescuer can reach down and scoop them up to safety. It is, in fact, the letting go and abandoning the effort to someone else that results in the actual rescue. You sacrifice all control. You relinquish it.

That is what the "Sarah" of now did as I went back with the "Sarah" of then, and "we" (you guys, I know it was not two people but two VERSIONS of the same) just sat and wept together as our collective heart ached for the loss of the one who walked away. The one we loved and valued and rooted for and placed as precious. We let go of all the hurt from the one who walked away and then abandoned the vigilance over my soul that kept me forcing myself to just take the next step during what has now become years of sort of robotic persistence to survive. We two "Sarahs" cried all the tears my heart needed to cry, and "we" embraced the sorrow into every corner of my soul that needed to light of the truth that it really existed.

And then it was done.

Here's the weird thing I have had happen. My brain thinks of everything as metaphorical or analogous so as I think about these previous versions of me that are still in distress for their various reason, I mentally picture them as crying or wringing their hands or with a frightened look on their faces upon every remembrance I have of them. But when I go back to them and sit and embrace them and offer them hope and comfort, all that distress ceases to exist.

It. Is. Finished.

They are permanently rescued. That happened for this "Sarah" from that time - that one particular time. That happened for her tonight. So she's never again the crying, broken hearted one. I have laid her down with her puffy eyes and wet cheeks, and I have smoothed her hair back off of her face so that she can now rest. Forever.

That "Sarah" is now laid to rest.

And this "Sarah" - the "Sarah" of now - gets to live.

There are a few more "Sarahs". I nearly see them with my mind's eye waiting their turn in a spiritual line.

I'm coming girls. Just let me catch my breath.

On What To Do With All The Hurt

There are hateful things that happen in life.  There just are.  I felt another blow against the jaw of my spirit tonight.  There are people in the world that don't like me.  There are people in the world that actually delight in my pain, and you know what? Every single time they shoot an arrow of hate into my world, it causes me pain. People like that tend to learn to get really good at inflicting pain.  They hone their skills until they know their darts are going to hit just the right spot.  I have some people in my world like that just like I'm sure you do too. It's just....

"What do I do with the hurt though?" I asked my husband.  I continued "Do I get mad and yell? Do I counter attack? Do I just fall in a heap and cry?"

What do you do....with all the hurt?

I am a Christ follower.  When I was a little girl, I watched my mom's prayers be answered and my dad's life change.  I watched my brother get baptized in a church because, as I'd been told, he had chosen to give the debt that he could not meet himself to the God Who promised to do it.  It piqued my interest, and I started really listening.  It did not take long at all for me to decide as a little girl that I wanted Jesus.  I remember little else except that I knew I needed Jesus and I wanted Him.  So I went to Him.  I gave my whole everything to a One I had never seen because I knew to my very depths that He was the author of things and the One that loved me the most.  I knew it then.  I knew even in my funny little honest heart that there was already just enough imperfection in my life that would be enough to taint the beauty of who He was, and I knew that He was the only One that COULD erase the stains and He promised that He WOULD do it, and I believed Him.  I know thinking about a sinful 6 year old seems a bit weird, but the sin that can stain a heart can be one maliciuos or dishonest thought.  We don't go around accusing little kids of trying to harness the power of Satan.  One little tiny stain can mar the appearance of the whitest, most beautiful, precious fabric. One thing can cause it to lose the "qualification" of "mint condition".  Now, the point at which a human actually chooses wrong and creates that stain is something that God does not even offer us with a specific number.  There are little sweet children who get diseases through no fault of their own and their life is snuffed out.  Do I think that, just because my heart realized at 6 that I wanted and needed God that every 6 year old (or even children older) also have that ability and would be sent to a damned hell?  No.  I don't.  I know a God that loves children and would not be so cruel to cast away a one whose heart never knew they betrayed Him in the first place.  If you want to know what age a person needs to be when God decides it's okay to damn a soul to hell, I think you and I need to talk further about the Daddy I know.  Either way, for whatever reason, at 6, I knew I wanted this Abba, and I accepted Him.

Over the course of my life, just like all of you, I have encountered pain that is bringing tears stinging into my eyes right at this moment.  I have a catch in my throat right now as my brain rattles off a portion of the list my brain can't help but remember of the times my heart broke as part of it was ripped away or buried in the ground. Hurt changes us.  Sometimes we make poor decisions, and we hurt as a result, but I'm really talking here of the hurts we don't deserve:

"We did everything we could"
"He....he passed away"
"It's cancer"
"There's someone else"
"It's gone...it's all gone"

That list.  The stuff you never asked for and you know you didn't deserve.  I can't even find a way to articulate the level of absolute anguish...the hurt.

It's so nearly impossible to figure out what to do with the hurt because I just feel so annoyed every single time I see someone go through something and decide to slap some stale smile on their face saying it's all going to work out while they walk around like they're in some barbituate induced haze.

No.  I want to know what I'm supposed to DO...with this.  After that initial trust fall into the world of being a little Christ - a kid of God's, the whole blind faith thing was never my dig.  I'm going to be straight up with you.  I do not take much of anything at face value.  I'm going to need to see some goods.

That's...just not always a favor life lends, I'm afraid.  Instead of being given a plan of attack leaked from the camp of my enemy, my life has reflected more that I would need to learn how to heal quickly and be better ready and less vulnerable for the next time some force in life charged towards me.   This is what we all TRY to do, but, as I listed above, there are things that rain down over your life that can in no way be anticipated.  The crash down like an avalanche of boulders and leave what looks like nothing but a pile of crumbs.  And you had absolutely no way to know it was coming, and you in no way deserved it.  It just came and took away so, so much...and it hurts.

So then what?  I believe - my personal belief - is that my Abba, my heavenly Daddy, is watching.  He is watching, and not passively.  He is involved.  There are things He sends my way for my benefit, and there are times He decides that there is something beautiful that can grow if He allows something to cause me pain.  No.  That is not cruel, and no that is not twisted.  I let my 15 month old baby fall...all..the...time.  She actually does it less and less now, but there are still times when I choose to stay seated as I watch her take a step that is unsure me knowing the whole time that her effort is going to result in pain.  Her little legs are going to plop right down onto the edge of the step she was trying to conquer.  Why do I do that?  Because if I didn't, she never would learn how much it actually takes to conquer that little step in her journey.  Because I let her experience temporary pain that makes my heart hurt and I audibly cringe, I know that the next time she faces that step, she's going to know better what to do. I don't shield her from growing stronger.  It's so hard.  I wish I could scoop her up and swaddle her in her ring sling and nurse her away from all of the hard things...and she would become weak and intolerable.

I am God's girl.

Now let's get one thing straight here.  If Audrey loses her footing and falls as I illustrated above, I will let her learn.  It will make me sad, but I will let her do that.  I will not sabotage her growth.  But you best believe that if I watch something or someone come slithering her way to do her harm, their freedom to move in her life is going to be extremely limited.  I may watch as someone gives her an ill-deserved shove or steals a treasure from her chubby little hands...but not for long.  They don't get endless chances...I'm watching.  You can ask my older kids - I am that momma who is NOT afraid to march right up to a playground bully that I've watched terrorize the swings and monkey bars for a time and say to them "You need to keep your hands to yourself and leave my child alone.  It's time for you to find you mommy or daddy or whomever brought you to this facility".   This action, however, is reserved for use for times when I can see that someone has intent to cause my child harm or damage.  God is the same.  I am His kid.  God does not have patience for evil.  It may seem like the right people never actually have to answer for the way they damage others, but my God Daddy is a just God.  He is watching His babies.

So there is a way to process how going through horrible things brings me to a place of growth, but that wasn't my question to my husband.  My question was "What do I do with the hurt?" What do I do with the welted, red skin of where someone just slapped their way around my life?  What do I do with what feels like a broken bone or a bloody bruise in my spirit from where life circumstances or someone's evil heart decided they'd just smack me around or snap things in two? What do I do while it still hurts?

You know the only answer I have?  Cry.

There is a vast gulf fixed between wallowing in self pity or bitterness and just crying because things still hurt where the damage occurred.

If it hurts, cry. Literally or figuratively.

Audrey does.  And if she falls or someone is awful to her or anything in this cruel, broken world causes her pain and she DOES cry, I don't look at her and say "Welp, guess THAT one's done in.  Well THAT one probably won't be good for much" and then walk away.  Sometimes, I scoop her up and hold her close.  For this hard-headed kid though, a lot of times, I watch.  I let her cry out and make her voice loud if she needs to.  I let her squeeze out a few tears.  I don't ever tell any of my children not to cry if something hurts.  I make effort to never dismiss a hurt of their hearts, minds or bodies.  I engage it.  I let them utter their pain in the way that their life needs while the pain is still happening from what hurt them.  And then we begin again the whole process of taking more steps in this journey.

I'm sorry.  I'm sorry I don't have a more magic answer.  I'm sorry that beyong the knowledge that most adult people have that hard things help you grow, I don't have much for while the hurt still...hurts.  But I feel comfortable in telling you that the choice I have made for this time while my own hurts are hurting, I cried.  I'm going to do some more crying probably, and I may cry about this particular thing at different points all throughout my life.  Like it may actually make me hurt in the future.

So while we know that we will be given something good in exchange for the wrending apart of our hearts, when it comes to while you're still hurting, I say....just go ahead and cry.

On Dirty Little Secrets

Three nights ago I made peanut butter sandwich crackers (with marshmellow mixed in) dipped in chocolate. I made 26 "cookies".  I ate all of them except 1 because Dan ate that.  I ate 25 cookies.  They. were. delicious. Also, I was hungry.  After doing this, I have not gained any weight. I strangely never do when I eat garbage. My body just uses it, and my weight stays the same. Here's the thing though. That is not good for me! What would compel me to do that?!

It's a real question. What is painfully obvious is that my body needed something - or my brain, but there was some actual need there.

Coincidentally, on the same night, my good friend posted about a cleanse that she will be doing in the near future. It is a fast of sorts and is very extreme. My first thought was to join her in this detox for solidarity, but being an almost 35 year old that has to be on the same BP medicine as old people and not having a doctor to consult right now, I decided I'd just be her cheerleader.

"What about me, though?" my brain asked. "I also deserve to clean up this mess that is my health. I want to do SOMEthing! I don't want to die yet."

Listen folks, I've already had a mini-stroke (that everyone is probably tired of hearing about but is so weird that I'm still so shocked by it that I always bring it up), I have high blood pressure (as mentioned above), anxiety issues, and I'm 30 pounds over weight which was a souvenier of my most recent (and last) pregnancy.  My dad died of a heart attack when he was 47. My grandfather died of a heart attack. My great-grandfather died of a heart attack. Think it's weird that I'm bringing it up because I'm a woman and those are all men? Well, both my brothers have clean bills of health, and I'm the one with chest pains if I have too much caffeine and a scrip for BP meds.

Her social media status about the cleanse was a wake up call for me.

Here's how my life has gone. I have even mentioned in previous posts on this blog that I grew up a very publicly teased, very, very skinny little girl. The structure of my face and my gaunt frame actually made me look like I wasn't even in the same family as my fleshier, Swedish built siblings. They're all half a foot taller than me. I'm not even kidding. Also, teasing someone about being skinny is almost worse in some ways than teasing someone for being fat because people are not only ridiculing you for being different, there is this added layer of hatred because they actually exhibit jealousy over something you can't even control.

I was always real small. Short and skinny and different. Hated it.

Then I had babies and gained weight during my pregnancies. Every single time I would gain 40 pounds and then lose 20.  The other 20 would stay. So by the first birthday of the third baby, I had packed on about 45 pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight.

Whatever. Was not a health issue at that point, and it got people off my back about  being too skinny.

About a year and a half after the third baby, my life changed in a major way. One of the things that changed was that I was driven into true  cpoverty and had no food. I also rode my bike to work (another post) for a 12 mile ride. I actually only had to do that (or walk) a handful of times, but I lost about 10 pounds, my metabolism regulated, and I kept that 10 pounds off.

Over the year that followed that, I lost about 40 more pounds. I was actually below the weight that I was when I got pregnant with my first child. When I got pregnant with my fourth child, I was not overweight at all and looked "small" my whole pregnancy. I thought for sure my pregnancy weight would just fall off after she was born. Maybe retaining all that weight before was because my life was just so awful.

I was right. That thought was just incomplete.

So I read my friend's status and had the thought about wanting to make my body work better. I actually have zero problem with my shape. Zero. I have had just as many head turns from men or jealous looks from women being this size as when I was smaller. I do pragmatically realize, however, that the amount of fat on this frame is making my heart and my joints work too hard and that a sedentary pregnancy has made my muscles weak. So when I read her status and then asked myself the question about myself, a familiar thing happened.

I got real frustrated.

The good thing is, instead of internalizing it, I opened up to Dan. We have had many discussions about my weight (mostly because I lost too much too fast and felt like the "ugly skinny girl") and my health (because I'm his baby mama and the love of his life). We have talked about patterns that existed during different chapters of my physical journey, so we picked this discussion back up.

Before I had kids, I was a typical, micro-managing type A. Once they put my first child into my arms, my ability to regulate and control every area of my life went totally out the window. No longer could I alone take on the tasks that were included in my life, and, I have certainly earned the right to say this, I did not have help. I did everything alone, and that was part of what killed my first marriage.  It's also a big part of what damaged my health.

I nursed my newborns and did not ask my then partner to bottle feed past my first night at home. I was also expected to do all housework alone, all cooking alone, all grocery shopping alone and all care for the children alone beyond whatever sort of recreational time my then partner wanted to have with his off spring. If I got help at all, I was given a very firm reminder about how I was deficient and that he was having to compensate for my failure. I was even given very archaic instructions from his mother about how to get myself together so I could please my husband in the right way by keeping my home to a specific standard. You guys, this is even all amidst a year during which I finished a debilitating pregnancy, had a newborn, said newborn almost died and was hospitalized 3 times over the course of a month, stayed at the hospital while said partner left me and our very sick baby there with $20 and one change of clothes for 2 days (parent food is not covered by your child's admittance to the hospital), 2 kidney surgeries 3 months after that, ripping my knee in half 3 months later and being wheel chair bound for an entire month followed by my third surgery of the year which required 6 waking hours a day of being strapped into a machine that mechanically moved my leg so I would not develop a life ending blood clot or a crippling tension in a muscle. I was still expected amidst all of that to do all of the above tasks with little to zero help beyond his mother babysitting the kids extremely occasionally.

Guess what I was never allowed to take care of...any part of me. I was allowed to join a gym so I could re-attain a very specific version of desirable. That, my friends, is where I actually ripped my knee in half.

The tone of our home was very akin to Cinderella, except, instead of a ball to attend, it was my own self care that became unspokenly forbidden. Taking time to shower daily and put on clothes was frowned upon if my daily chores were left incomplete. Planning meals for only myself or researching what nutrients my body needed or taking financial resources to seek instruction from someone with the knowledge to teach me was viewed as...selfish.

Even though my heart knew this was so wrong, I had no choice, so I did what was expected. I took my poor depleted body and flew around the house all day the best that I could scooting around messes created by other people. It all just became so impossible because, if one of my children wanted me to stop and read a book, I stopped and read a book. If they wanted to me stop and watch their trick, I stopped and watched a trick. If someone needed me to stop and rock them to sleep, I stopped and rocked them to sleep. We ate out very rarely, so I made most of our meals. If their prep used a lot of dishes, I alone cleaned up everything.  I would wake up every day and pump my body full of caffeine on an empty stomach. I thought that if the caffeine would raise my heart rate and there was no fuel in my stomach to burn, the fat would be the first thing to go. I ignored the thought that it was damaging my heart. I was drinking upwards to at least 3 cups of coffee a day. Some days there would be more than that. I had a weird sense of pride if I managed to go without lunch. I didn't become anorexic, surprisingly, but that's because my weight didn't budge. I think things would have gone differently had I been successful in changing my weight that way. Even after joining the gym and hiring a personal trainer it didn't change. And that's a strange double standard, isn't it? Spending the money to hire a personal trainer to make my body "pretty" was an acceptable expense, but paying for the prescription for the antidepressant my brain needed then was not.

Well, my day came when I was forced out of my home. I will be considerate and not share those details here, but it was absolutely tragic and absolutely not my choice. It was, however, absolutely rescue - for me and for my kids.

Here's the thing about rescue that I need for you to know. Rescue does not equal repair. If a poor, malnourished, ill cared for dog is removed from his abusive owner, does animal control just release it back into a nice looking neighborhood? Nope. A change in surroundings does not put back what was stolen.

That was my hard lesson to learn. I'm just going to be honest with you like I have been in the past. I got really lucky. I happened to be blessed enough to be surrounded by really amazing people that gave me a bunch of correct information. Sometimes that correct information was the 4 words that I have previously described as "magic" - this wasn't your fault. Sometimes that correct information was someone saying to me "Um, so if you keep doing this, you're doing wrong." I had to do some minor and some very major surgeries on my soul. A lot of those are documented here.

There was one that I would only flirt with, however. That, my friends, was my relationship with self care. I still had this very distorted self talk that taking care of myself was selfish. And when I talk about self care, please remember, I am not talking about long soaks in a tub with candles. I'm talking about bathing, eating, brushing your teeth. The other thing is called pampering, and the reason it's so special is because it's supposed to be occasional. Basic hygiene, though, that should be every day.

I spent 9 1/2 years being pressured into behaving like my basic needs were more pampering, and that I only DESERVED for my needs to be addressed after everyone else (one person in particular) was happy....happy - not healthy, not nourished - happy. You guys, spending your life with the FOCUS of your time being to make someone "happy" is a waste even and especially if its yourself. Happiness is important to engage, but as a focus, it's toxic, my friends, and if someone requires that you make them happy before you are ALLOWED to be healthy, that is called abuse. Let me just camp here for a second. No one, under any circumstance has to stay being abused.

My soul was able to heal past a great many things, but I tell you this, after 13 years, I have addressed this in a healthy way....for 2 days...so far. It was so damaging, it took nearly 4 years of crazy, committed, unconditional love from Dan who is a rock star, hundreds and hundreds of dollars in talk therapy with a professional and 2 years of this blog after I was removed from a toxic environment for me to feel the entitlement to engage self care.

I'm doing it though, you guys. I sat down with my loving husband after reading my friend's post about her cleanse, and I grilled him about every bit of knowledge he gleaned from a weight lifting elective he took in college from a professor or instructor who also happened to be a nutritionist. Dan and I then talked about when I lost that other 40 pounds. Want to know what my life looked like then?

As I have written in past posts, very soon after I left my first marriage, I found Dan. It was like this weird thing in the back of my brain that told me he would be a safe place. We had had almost no contact in the 11 years between when we dated the first time and the time when I felt compelled to find some comfort in his person, but I just felt this weird drive. My first husband and I actually had gone through the divorce process at an earlier point, and I sought Dan during that period. My heart knew then that he still loved my heart, but my motivation was to recover in his arms from the shambles that my life had become. Like...a rebound. He made it pretty clear that life was taking him in a different direction (grad school hundreds of miles away) and he didn't feel like he could be JUST my friend. We parted ways, but when I searched for him this last time - this one last time, my dissatisfaction in the relationship being platonic was replaced by being comforted by that very same thing.

He was very careful with my heart. We started as friends. I felt comforted again by the fact that he didn't have a problem telling me if something I was doing was off, but would also handle me with kid gloves if I was hurting. We didn't stay only friends for long. Our relationship was long distance for months, and then he scraped together what he needed to hop a plane to visit me for his fall break. I had already lost the first 10 pounds at by then. During Dan's visit, he woke me up with breakfast in bed. One morning it was eggs benedict, but for a few mornings after that, it was a giant made-from-scratch brownie and a steaming cup of coffee made exactly how I liked it. He sent me with a packed lunch every day, and it was never just a sandwich. I went from having people offer me the the second half of their leftovers to my coworkers being jealous of my lunch! Then I would come home to not an empty house. Before my key hit the door, I could hear him moving around my tiny kitchen and smell delicious things. Then we would eat a meal rivaling most restaurants and then he would make me dessert. The rest of the evening would be spent watching television together or doing things that I can't mention...because that's private. Frown or smile upon that as you choose, it happened. To be honest, that whole picture made me feel more safe and more loved and more beautiful than I had since the last time I'd been in his arms.

After he left, some coworkers mentioned that I looked thinner. I stepped on a scale and realized that I'd lost another 5 or 6 pounds. For 2 months, my weight stayed the same. He came to visit me again over Christmas break. After he left, another 7 pounds. I eventually had to move in with him (yes "had to" - that's another blog post). Once that happened, I lost another few pounds until one day, after having capped out post pregnancy at 185, I was 136. That is literally my weight the year that I was 22 years old an entire year before I had my first pregnancy. I actually freaked out a little bit, but my body was going to do what it was going to do.

A few months passed. I moved with Dan back to the same town as my ex husband and our shared children (yep - also had to leave my kids for 7 months. That's also a separaate blog post). I also found out I was pregnant. As I said much earlier in this riduculously long post, I stayed small for my whole pregnancy. After I delivered, though, I found myself at the final weight being exactly the same as it was after the birth of my third child the pregnancy for whom left me 35 pounds overweight.

So here Dan and I sat for upwards to an hour talking about how my life was different when I was losing weight. Do you know what we figured out? It was really simple. It was 3 things.

1. I was freely accepting love that was being offered to me and limiting contact with toxicity.

2. I was eating.

3. I was eating often.

As far as number 1 goes, I'm just going to tell you that I've done so much research on how to deal with toxic people and have implemented so much of that research into my life that I feel like I could test out of a grad school course. The gripe about that is, I am forced to have exposure to toxicity for the rest of my life because there are children involved. God and I have had many, many conversations about this, and I have cried enough tears, that I have been able to reach a level of acceptance that my own mother doesn't even understand. Hey dude, I don't hate you. There's part of my heart that will have a version of love for you forever. Please take every part of every investment I made in you, and do better. Just know this, my friend. Your ability to hurt me is very, very limited. - Thats what you say to toxicity. You address it. You acknowledge it for what it is. You acknowledge that it exists and you respect it like you respect fire, and you make peace. You also keep enough distance between you and the fire to not be burned....ever...again.

As far as number 2 and 3, because of number 1's deep, deep effect on my life, after I had this baby, I reverted to what I had lived when I had babies before. I acted as if the same expectations existed. The same stress filled my soul and the same defensiveness that, honestly, kept me from going insane before, reappeared much to the confusion of  husband. Unfortunately, I cannot count the times my husband has passionately yelled at me in his own defense "I am NOT ****!!!" I felt inadequacies every time a task wasn't completed and was paralyzed by absolute grief over my failures...only to have someone with whom my heart is safe communicate to me that my worth as His passion and His love for me was not based on my ability to complete a task. And then Dan would offer me the same sentiment.

I'm sorry, but when your spouse offers you love that reflects that of the God of the universe, you know you struck gold.

So 2 nights ago, after almost 4 years of reinforcement, I felt permission to get a pen and paper and sit and ask my husband about how we can get me healthy. He spent so much time answering the weirdest questions. Then, despite the fact that we were under a flood warning because it was raining so hard, he got in the car with me and rode to the store and helped me choose each thing to be on my menu. Then he came home and COOKED everything I would need for the next few days and portioned it out for me after I explained to him that I literally don't have time (actually at this point, I'm still trying to establish in my brain the permission) to portion everything out. Last night he came home after working for 10 hours outside of our home and made my dinner for me.

Here's my instructions. I eat food of much superior quality to Doritos, and I eat less of it 8 times a day. The whole idea is that I'm supplying my body with actual good quality fuel as often as I need it. Also, I leave the towels in the washer or the dishes on the "dirty" side of the counter. I take care of myself before tasks.  I go for a walk to pump blood through the heart that's not doing so great so I can make it strong again and use it for longer.

Do you know what has happened as a result of this? First and foremost, I'm developing a cap for how many snap peas I can eat. Also, I feel more awake. My body does, but so does my soul. I feel so much comfort in knowing that I MUST put food into my body, so I don't have to worry about feeling so sleepy. I feel sore in muscles that I didn't realize had been forced to sleep. Here's the other funny thing - and this is some physical but mostly psychological - I'm enjoying my family. I'm spending more time SEEING Audrey. I no longer feel like I'm failing her by not making her surroundings perfect. I'm just playing with her and enjoying that. I'm gaining the presence of mind to tell her how pretty she is and that she is my treasure and that God loves her.  I'm excited all over again for my husband to walk back through the door because his actions now have me sold that I matter because he loves me. I am not an appliance. I never have been to him.

I'm going to be honest, the original title of this was "On Mothering" because I wanted to write about how some women seem to feel like they're not allowed to compliment or enjoy their children and how having kids can distract you big time from self care (again - hygiene not pampering). The rest of this I have been suppressing. Every time I wrote about it in the past, my anger would take over. Well, I'm not angry anymore, and if you have traveled this journey with me as you carried some of my burden, know that we reached our destination, okay? Because remember, a change in circumstances or surroundings good or bad means way less than health and how you care for yourself. A great measure of care is forgiveness, and I can now offer that to every person who has robbed my heart. I'm not afraid anymore to tell you about my dirty little secret because you know what? Everyone has one. And if I tell you about mine and how I healed after it tore my soul to shreds, maybe you'll look at yours and realize that God can do a whole lot with just really...no more than a mustard seed of material.

I love you. If you're reading this, I do not care who you are. You are precious because God made you for a beautiful reason, so I will extend to you no less. Because dirty little secrets are not bigger than the gleaming, shiny light of Love and Hope, and those two are a person one and the same.