Christmas list?

My husband asked me what I wanted for Christmas. The first things I thought of were a Bible with the Apocrypha in it and/or one of my favorite party games. Of course, we’d actually have to have *parties* in order to play said game, but that’s something else entirely. Well, sort of. I can think of a few things I’d like, but I don’t think they would be something he could give me. For instance:

-he can’t give me my brain back. One thing I hate to no end is that I feel like I am ‘slipping’…everyone else ‘gets’ things that I don’t, and I keep missing and forgetting things. I don’t want to immediately say it’s because of my bipolar and/or ADHD, but that’s probably the most likely scenario. My doctors have told me that it affects the way I think; I test lower on IQ tests than I did before because my brain works differently (well, assuming it works at all ). Seriously.  I’ve been told over and over again that I ‘don’t think’ or whatnot, but that’s not true at all. I *do* think, I just tend to think so fast that nothing really ‘sticks’. My last few employers-you know, the two jobs I was fired from in two weeks-can attest to that. It’s just so frustrating, because I feel like everyone else is smarter than me and understands everything much better…maybe this is true, but maybe I’m just *different*, not any less or any more. I don’t know.

-he can’t help me lose weight. Well, maybe he can in terms of eating more vegetables and less fatty stuff, but he can’t exercise for me or stop me from liking things like soda and cookies.  I feel like I’ve nagged him enough about that in terms of getting him to buy veggies and fruit for produce, although truth be told I really don’t push anywhere near as much as I could.  Still, I know that money has been really tight for us and that he feels like the stuff we can afford is often the stuff that’s really the worst for us.  He doesn’t say it like that, but that tends to be what it comes out to. That’s not completely true, and at least we’ve been getting more canned veggies. It’s just up to me to actually *eat* them, or to choose them over other stuff when I have a choice.

-he can’t help me get motivated to do, well, anything. I have so many projects I’ve started that I haven’t finished and don’t really know if I will. A children’s book, a novel of sorts, a few other writing projects…at least I’ve had some stories published, although they haven’t sold yet and *ahem* aren’t the type of stories you let your dad read.  I have a couple of tabs open in my browser right now for things I keep meaning to read, but somehow never really get around to it because I’m so easily distracted.  Maybe at some point I’ll stop playing Facebook games long enough to read the stuff I’m supposed to read on Beliefnet for my job, and then read and write on the forum I actually get paid for, and then….oops, got distracted again.

-he can’t get me to stand up for myself the way I need to.

-he can’t ward off my depression or make other people do stuff with us. They have their own lives and I totally appreciate that, but sometimes I just get bored with the same old thing. Boredom often leads to depression with me, and money is a huge part of why we don’t get out as much as before. At least we’ve been able to do more since we got our mortgage refinanced and I’ve been doing more stuff at church. Which leads me to my next point:

-we already do what we can for money and saving, although it’s really, really hard to save anything because of how much debt we’ve had because of my accident and illnesses. He can’t make me feel less uncomfortable when the subject of money is brought up among others, even if it’s not mentioned by name.  At least it’s not mentioned often, since most people we know are in similar financial positions.  It’s when I hear people who are (in my opinion) better off than we are complain about not being able to afford the next tech toy that I want to throw something.  He can’t change the past, which is ultimately what it would take for our money issues to be solved.

That’s just it. He can’t change the past. I know he would if he could, though.  The only thing that can be done is to get to be more comfortable and content with the way things are and to try and improve things from there, but that’s something I have to do for myself. I have to ask God to help me with that every day, if I remember. That’s really sad, ‘if I remember’, but the point is that he can’t do it for me because it’s not *for* him to do. It’s for me, with God’s help.

*sigh*

Maybe I should just stick with new jeans and some bras to replace the ones I can’t wear anymore. That would require a lot less explanation.

The Ghost Sitting In My Chair

I’m just going to come out and say this because I’ve wanted to blog about this for a while but have no idea how to put it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about death. No, not that I want to die. I’ve had that before to an extent, but I’m doing pretty well now. No, I’ve been thinking about the more ‘philosophical’ questions concerning death.

For instance, I keep unintentionally reminding myself of the sign for the ‘palliative care’ unit of the hospital my mother-in-law was in when she had her stroke this past winter. You know what that is, right? Palliative care is when they can’t do anything else for you and know you are going to die, so they make you comfortable. It sounds so simple when written out like that, doesn’t it? In reality, it’s anything but. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around a dying person…I have, and it’s not exactly something you can see being summed up by a few letters or words. My church also had a seminar about ‘end of life decisions’. No, I didn’t go. I already had a pretty good idea of what they were going to say. It just seemed so…cut and dried when written out like that.

DNR-Do Not Resuscitate. That was the advance directive my mom signed that was put on the refrigerator when the people from the hospice came to get her. In North Carolina, any form like that has to be put up in plain sight in the house any time you have an ambulance or similar come to get a dying person. They would probably keep something like that in her charts as well, but there you have it. It basically meant she didn’t want to be hooked up to any machines or be kept alive by any extraordinary measures. She said that that wouldn’t really be living, and I completely agree. That’s not a life. She didn’t seem to have lost any of who she was up until she died, but how could someone really have their personality and basically everything else that makes them them if a machine is doing what their brain should be doing for them?

Here’s another thing I keep thinking of. When I walked by that sign in the hospital so many times, I kept thinking about how it would feel if you knew you were going to die. Specifically, what would be going through my mind in my last moments, or when the doctors ‘broke the bad news’. Things like, ‘what, this is it? I have so much else I want to do! It can’t just be over, can it?’ How could a person’s life be written up in a medical chart as though it were nothing? Would the world even remember I was here? I wonder if these are some of the thoughts that went through my mother’s mind before she died. There’s no doubt at all that she made a difference, at least to me.

I’m scared to death that I will die, that I will leave this world and it will be as though I was never here. I don’t have any kids, and very well may never have any. My husband is older than I am, and so are all of my siblings. Who would be left to remember me when I died, if all of them were gone and I still didn’t have any kids?

Maybe my nephew Austin would…he’s 21 and really more like my little brother than my nephew. I’m only 12 years older, and he lived with us up until he was about six or so. We used to talk a lot and be somewhat close, but not so much now. Like I’ve said in other posts, I don’t get to see my family that often and he lives up in Virginia Beach. My sister has two stepkids, but they didn’t grow up around me. She also has 4-year-old twins, but they probably don’t recognize me much. They’re still pretty little, but the sweetest little boys you’ve ever met. Sev’s sister has a child, Russell, who will be seven next month…maybe he’ll remember me. He likes to do art projects and stuff with me. I have friends and their families…several of my friends from high school and college’s families ‘claim’ me as one of their own. LOL Panda’s dad actually jokes with me, wanting me to call him ‘Daddy’! So maybe their kids will remember me. But even if they did, would I have made a difference in the world in general? I’m sure there are some people I’m forgetting to mention, and maybe it’s not something I should be thinking about. But here I am. Maybe these questions are kind of conceited of me to ask, but there you have it.

I also wonder, how would someone know when it was time? Or would they? The show Scrubs is hardly a deep and profound series, but one episode sticks in my mind. It’s the one where JD and Turk were planning to go on one of their ‘steak nights’. Some time before their shift was over, they found out that one of their patients wouldn’t make it through the night. He either didn’t have any family or his family happened not to have made it there in time, but whichever way, JD and Turk decided to stay with him rather than go out. They were talking with the patient-who was still perfectly lucid and knew he didn’t have much time left. He might of coughed or something, but I don’t think he had any physical breakdowns or anything. All he said was, “I’m ready to go to sleep now”. Except he wasn’t going to wake up. He knew this. He knew that closing his eyes then meant closing his eyes forever. I just can’t help but wonder, how did he know it was time to go? Or did he? When he got to the other side, would he remember that JD and Turk had stayed with him, or what they talked about? Would he have known when-I think it was a nephew or a son, not sure which-got there, even though he’d already died?

I like to think he would. It would seem to me that you can still talk to dead people and they will hear you on the other side, but they might not actually respond. I remember my friend Binky’s uncle died and she said that she hated that she didn’t get there in time because she didn’t get to tell him she loved him. I told her what I said above, that I believe that he knows how she felt, that now he’s able to know and see more than he ever did on this earth.

I’m not just pulling this out of my ass, by the way; I’m taking it from Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 12-
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as also I am known.” (King James Version)

I know Paul might have been talking about something else, and there are other parts of the Bible that imply that the soul of a person who dies is effectively asleep until The Rapture comes, but this sort of spoke to me. Binky said that it made her feel so much better when I said that, even though I thought I didn’t know what to say. I know my viewpoint about people who have died still being able to hear or whatever isn’t the most conventional in the world but I just can’t bring myself to believe that there’s nothing else, or at least not for a long time.

I’m also not at all afraid of ghosts. Yes, I believe they are real, but not necessarily the horror-movie types we’ve grown up hearing about. If you think about it, you’d kind of have to believe in ghosts if you are a Christian-or at least, in one Ghost. I’ve seen my mom physically and in dreams many time since she died about twelve years ago, and I believe I’ve heard and spoken to my friend Michael after he killed himself three years ago. One night I heard his voice asking me to tell his wife that ‘this isn’t her fault’. I just ignored it or thought I was losing my mind…it was in that place where you’re not quite asleep but not quite awake either. I put it out of my mind…until two weeks later, when I heard him again, asking me why I hadn’t delivered his message. I told my husband about this, and some of my friends, and the explanation I heard most often had to do with me being a spiritual person and ‘open to this sort of thing’…once I figured out it was Michael’s voice, for some reason I wasn’t scared anymore. Seeing my mom the first time sent me into a panic attack, but seeing her in dreams now is strangely comforting. My sister says she’s seen Mama too.

After my accident, my cousin David told me that I told everyone that I had actually died and seen my mom…I told them that she said, ‘its not your time yet, get back down there’, and so I did. I don’t remember this, but then I don’t remember hardly anything from that time. Even if my sister and husband don’t remember that, it still makes me feel connected to my mom in a way I can’t seem to adequately describe.

I’ll stop rambling and boring you now, but these are some of the thoughts that have been going through my head lately. Sometimes my mind goes crazy just when I’m trying to sleep, and wanders in weird directions. Judging from a conversation I had with a friend at church a couple of weeks ago, however, it seems I’m not the only one who has these thoughts in the middle of the night. It was just so odd but comforting at the same time that she and I had been having pretty much the same questions and thoughts running through our minds…it was good to be able to talk to someone about this without them thinking that I might be suicidal again like I was about three years ago.

Sweet dreams, everyone! Sorry this is so long, but considering the subject matter, I hope you’ll forgive me.

Protected: What would you call this? Possibly triggering and annoying babble…

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

I’m confused now

As you probably know, I moderate religion forums.  I’ve been working with a large spirituality site called Beliefnet for going on seven years now.  Most of the forums I work with are Christian, although I have moderated a forum debating Judaism.  To me, it’s a very interesting way to learn about people…not only to learn about their faiths, although that is a very large interest. One of the most fascinating things is watching how people interact with each other and behave when talking about things that are as highly-charged as religion is.  I’ve seen and participated in some rather interesting meltdowns and support sessions. In fact, I came about this job because I was seriously struggling with my faith and I found a lot of help and friendship from many people there.  If anyone tells you you can’t find real friends on the internet, they don’t know what they’re talking about.  I’ve also met a lot of people who aren’t so friendly and learned some things that caused me a great deal of pain, but I guess that’s all part of life.

I joined in part to try to answer some of the doubts I was having after coming out of a relationship with a man who had some beliefs I simply couldn’t accept. Some of those beliefs were completely foreign to me, but some of them are beliefs I used to share to some extent but later found not to be true.  I’ve shed some light on those beliefs and explored new ones, hopefully growing somewhat along the way. Unfortunately, doubts are still my constant companions. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I learn or who I meet, there are always the lingering questions. What does God think about ‘topic X’? What should I believe about ‘topic Y’? Do I even have to have a belief about Y at all? How should I see or read the Bible? What if I don’t understand what I’m reading? What do I make of all of the conflicting things I hear, from outside the faith as well as within? What’s really important? How much of the Bible is true?

Apparently I’m not the only one dealing with these doubts. Here is a post from a friend of mine from the Christian-to-Christian Debate forum on Beliefnet:

I am not sure that Jesus said everything he has been credited with. I have been reading Genesis, Exodus and Numbers again and most of it still makes no sense to me. And please don’t tell me that if I had the Spirit in me, I would understand it! Whoever wrote this, I believe, put God’s name in places it should not be. Or else it is all made up. I have tried over the years to believe in the OT because I thought it necessary to be Christian. I just cannot believe this is the God I feel in my heart. If anyone can make it all fit together, I am happy for them, but I don’t believe God expects anyone to believe all this. There are some very good stories but all the killing ordered by God is nothing but rubbish.

Here’s my reply on the forum thread:

I’m so glad to read that I am not the only one who feels this way. My church has an OT passage as part of the order of service, and lately I have had a hard time understanding what is being said. I thought it was just me, since a lot of the time I can’t focus long enough to understand even the simplest things.  There are not words enough to express how distressing and frustrating this is for me! However, I just don’t know what to make of so many things in the OT…ceremonial laws, why God hardened Pharoah’s heart, the destruction and death, etc. I just *don’t get it*.  I keep hearing in my head the ‘if you had the spirit, you’d get it’ that you mention above, a throwback from before…but then I wonder why it is important for me to know this stuff?

Sorry to babble, but I’m glad to know I am not the only one who just says, ‘WTH???’ with some parts of the Bible.

I don’t really know a good ‘tie-in’ for this. Sometimes it’s just so frustrating to talk to other people about what you believe when you don’t know what it is! I’ve heard so many statements and cracks from atheists and agnostics about how all religion is evil because the God we believe in did some really awful things.  I would normally have a good comeback for them, but I don’t really know what to say when even I can’t make sense of some of the ‘darker parts’.  Most of the time I can tell myself that the stories could just be a statement of fact rather than a recommendation for the future-for instance, I don’t hear very many pastors singing the praises of slavery (anymore) or Levirate marriage.  That would be quite an interesting sermon, wouldn’t it? I could also say that some things are instructions to the Jews about things that Jesus later spoke against-kosher laws, for example. He said that “What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean’, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean’” (Matthew 15:10-12).   That is all well and good for parts of the Old Testament, but that still does not explain why a God who claims to love us would do things like strike someone dead just for trying to keep the Ark of the Covenant from falling?

Also confusing is how there are so many conflicting teachings and doctrines…Calvinism,  Pelagianism, etc. Some parts just feel wrong to me, like predestination-the idea that God chooses certain people to go to Heaven, as I understand it. But wouldn’t that also mean that God chooses certain people to go to Hell?  That would be the other destination from Heaven, right? I don’t know. Then there’s the teaching that someone has to be a Christian in order to go to Heaven and avoid Hell, but then the fact that not everyone has even heard of Jesus; at least, not by that name.  There’s the way that most of the world’s religions have similar teachings about how to treat people.  There’s the fact that there are so many Christians who are nasty and judgmental and so many non-Christians or non-theists who live out everything Jesus taught, even if they don’t know or acknowledge it. The friends I mentioned above from Beliefnet who helped me through really rough times with my faith were mostly non-Christian and sometimes anti-Christian, with even a Luciferian thrown in there.  Some Christians were great too, but others were kind of snotty.  You’re not supposed to make the simplest and respectful joke about Jesus around some people, although I’m sure He has a sense of humor. Wouldn’t He have to, to deal with us?  Look at the platypus. There’s the way that so many Christians make such a huge deal about the gender of who a person sleeps with but doesn’t think twice about kicking someone when they’re already down. Most confusing of all, however, is the idea that the Bible is completely inerrant as written but also the idea that mostly the parts about faith and life are inerrant but the science stuff isn’t.

There are just so many things that don’t sit well, but how do I know that I’m not ‘making God in my own image’? I’ve been accused of that, along with ‘picking and choosing’, quite a bit. I’ve been so tempted to just toss it all out the window. I think the only thing that has kept me from doing that was Jesus Himself…I’ve seen Him working through people and things no one would think of, and it was unmistakable who was behind it.  I can’t help but wonder if the same being or spirit that I call Jesus is present in other faiths or ideas, but called something else.  Not much else about Him makes sense, but this seems to.  However, I’ve heard numerous times that this is the wrong doctrine.  Maybe the doctrines, which were written by people, are what’s wrong.   Maybe it’s more about being in imitation of Christ than about what you know.  Not that knowledge is bad; in fact, it is a very good thing. But I wonder if it’s really the only thing, or even a very important one.

I’ve been told that if a teaching or doctrine portrays God as anything other than a loving Father-type is false. This doesn’t mean that you’re going to get whatever you want, whenever you want it.  This is another teaching I’ve heard that bothers me.  My earthly father didn’t give me everything I wanted, and there was a good reason for it.  Not everything I wanted was something I needed or was good for me.  That has been my experience of Jesus too. I’ve had rough times and trials but they weren’t anything I didn’t eventually get through.  That gives me hope, a lot more hope than knowing all the ‘right’ doctrines ever did.

If anyone has any ideas as to how to get through some of this confusion, they are more than welcome.  However, I’ve found a tremendous amount of comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one who sometimes feels like my head is a bowl of alphabet soup.

Speaking of soup…time for lunch!

Late night ruminations

I was wondering something the other night when trying to get to sleep.

Every time I’ve gone to the doctor for things related to my accident-or any time I’ve discussed it, period-one thing I always mention is that I don’t remember anything about it. I don’t remember what happened or the first two weeks in the hospital; the only information I have about that is what others have told me.  Almost without fail, the idea that perhaps the lack of memories is God’s way of protecting me is mentioned.  It’s usually related to post-traumatic stress…a very good friend of mine was also once in a really bad car wreck but she does remember a few things, and those things have given her nightmares or extreme anxiety about things like starting to drive again. Truth be told, I don’t want to remember any of it, or any more than I do.

I wonder if perhaps the fact that I don’t have as loud of a ‘biological clock’ as some I know or the fact that my husband and I both take medicine that lessens the sex drive was God’s way of helping me deal with not being physically able to be intimate in that way, or with not having kids?  There are other ways of being intimate, but some things cause me a great deal of pain, if they are even possible now. I don’t often feel like even trying. I can’t bear the thought of that part of my life being ‘over’, since in some ways it had just barely gotten started.  Even if we decide we don’t want kids, I want not having them to be my decision, not one forced upon me.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program…

Somewhat random whine…

Don’t you hate it when you think you’ve gotten over something, put it behind you, only to realize you hadn’t? To wonder if you never truly can?

Don’t you hate it when you can’t decide whether or not you have a right to feel something, or if you are making too big of a deal out of it? If you are ‘playing the victim’, ‘trying to make everyone feel sorry for you’, or otherwise blowing it out of proportion, to quote the person who did it? To quote your father, even if he wasn’t talking about you?  If you are just being a baby/bitch/whiner/princess/etc? If you are making yourself feel bad on purpose to get attention?

Doesn’t it suck to think all of these bad things or ask all of these questions about yourself when you would never do that if you were talking to a friend with the same feelings?

Doesn’t it bother you when you find yourself making excuses for the person or behavior, or trying to talk yourself out of feeling the way you do? Especially it was this very tendency, this very lack of self-esteem and tendency to look at the positive, that made the abuse possible to begin with?

Should I be afraid I will become bitter? Even if you don’t really see why you would, or don’t think you have, but still wonder about that anyway?

Is it weird for a person who doesn’t believe in taking revenge to inwardly laugh or feel good when her male friends offer to ‘handle’ her ex? Especially the more, um, creative ideas?

Isn’t it frustrating not to be able to put a name for what happened to you, or to not like the sound of the words? Or to feel that you shouldn’t use the words because they normally apply to something you see as much worse than what happened to you? To feel bad about telling anyone because they’ll be mad at you and think you are ‘belittling’ what happened to them if you use the same terms? Or to wonder if anything out of the ordinary happened at all?

Doesn’t it suck that remembering something or someone that hurt you and being triggered by it makes you question your faith and whether or not you’ve really forgiven? Whether or not you’ve been taking the Eucharist unworthily?* To wonder whether or not you’re going to be forgiven for your sins because you haven’t forgiven someone else’s sins against you?  To question whether or not ‘sins against you’ is even the right phrase for it? To question what forgiveness even means, and to remember every Scripture verse that ‘convicts’ you, but none that comfort you? Especially if this very line of reasoning contributed to the situation you are ‘supposed’ to have forgiven?

Isn’t it awful when you feel like you can’t even trust your own thoughts, feelings, actions or beliefs? When you have to keep repeating the same stuff over and over again to yourself, but it doesn’t seem to sink in? When you ask your friends about things like this that confuse you but are so obvious to everyone else?

Don’t you hate it when everyone else sees something for what it is, but you don’t, no matter how many times you have to beat it into your head?

Don’t you hate feeling that you should be ‘beyond’ something by now? That you should ‘be over it’, Even though you would never say that to someone else?

Isn’t it annoying when you ignore or turn down someone’s Facebook friend request because you want to forget about them, but they keep on asking, so you have to keep on seeing their name until you finally block them?  When seeing that name or picture throws you off and you have to remind yourself that he can’t hurt you again, or that hopefully he’s grown up and just wants to be friendly? When you have to block someone because they don’t get the hint that you don’t want to be their friend the first couple of times you turn them down?

Don’t you hate it when you can’t even look at some of your college photos because you are triggered by the sight of one person in them? And you could go through the photos and put a sticker or something over his face, but that would mean that you actually have to look at him?

Doesn’t it suck that seeing one picture, hearing one name, can make you feel like years of therapy, spiritual counseling, help from others and self help efforts haven’t done anything? As though all of the progress you’ve made disappears into the mist so easily and you have to start all over again, just because you saw a stupid picture?

Doesn’t it annoy you when you don’t know how you will feel about something or someone from one day to the next? When you keep going back and forth between positive and negative, thought and feeling, healing and injury?

Doesn’t it suck not to be able to look at a friend’s profile picture because he reminds you of someone who the very sight of unnerves you?

Don’t you hate it when you have dreams about someone but are doing to them what you should have done back when you knew them? When you wake up feeling rattled, or you think you hear yourself yelling at them in your sleep? But isn’t it oddly satisfying when you beat the crap out of them in your dream?

And isn’t it awful when you write all these questions out and feel better, but hate that you even felt all this stuff in the first place?

*Yes, as a matter of fact, I am a master of worrying, made so by years of experience.  I give lessons on Fridays. 

Related articles by Zemanta

• Time to Forgive Myself (attorneyatmom.blogspot.com)