Oasis

At work today someone asked me how I was doing and all I could say was, "So So."

Sometimes that's all I can say to someone. I can't put on a happy face and don't want to really get into the details of why I feel the way I do. Heck, I didn't exactly know how I felt, just that it wasn't good. After this exchange I grabbed my lunch and walked out of work, across the street, and went and sat down under this oak tree in a small park that is a like a little oasis for me.

I started writing in my journal and then read some of a book I am slowing reading, The Sacred Romance by John Eldrigde. In the section I was reading it was talking about Lieutenant Dan in Forest Gump and how he struggled with God after losing his legs. We don't always need to lose our legs, or something that significant to struggle. It can be even harder when what we have lost is unseen. There are lost childhoods...lost families...lost innocence...to name a few. The book went on to talk about a section from Acts,

Acts 16:26-28

^"From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' " The author was talking about how God engineers our circumstances to draw us to Him. As I read those verses in Acts some other verse in Joel popped into my head.

Joel 2:12-13
"Even now," declares the LORD ,
"return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning."

Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity."

I felt God's love coming to me through these verses under this Oak tree while I was eating lunch. As I read through those verses more verses came to me.

Psalm 119:32
I run in the path of your commands,

For you have set my heart free.

And then John 8:32, 36

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

God wants me to know him intimately and he loves me. He wants to show his grace and compassion to me. Most of the time, I just need to slow down enough to spend some time with him. I need more times of rest under his Oak trees.

Writing....

Tonight I was sitting on my lawn picking weeds out of the lawn and reading a book called "Write Your Heart Out". As I sat there reading cars drove by and I thought, "I really love to write." At times I feel guilty when I could write and I don't. But there are times when your just life happens and you need to enjoy it. I need to enjoy things like kicking the soccer ball around with my son, things like reading a good book, things like holding my son who just woke up from a nap, like watch a favorite show on TV. I am a writer and will always be a writer; I need to relax.

My mind needs to take a break from writing sometimes and needs to let everthing marinate around in there like a good stew that always tastes better the next day. I get myself all wound and coiled up like a spring and the guilt of not writing bounces around in my head. I don't know if I will ever be a writer full time but I will always write. Finding ways to put writing into my life is a way to keep writing. I volunteer to write articles for my church newletter that comes out once a quarter. I write poems, but have not written any in month of August, that's ok though, everything will be ok. I will keep writing in my journal and I may someday write a memoir (can't everyone do that?). I will write in this blog, and others. I have a novel in me about a dog name Fido that keep I working on here and there. I will keep collecting my writing quotes and one day will put together some kind of quote book. I will improve and grow in my skill and craft; having fear over not writing does nothing for me. I won't be dauted....

"I am a writer if I never write another line; I am alive if I never step out of this room again....the problem is not to expand a feeling, but to condense a feeling--all thought, tangled and tumbled in the empty crowded head of a writer--to one clear thought, one clear form, and still preserve the enormity, the hugeness, the unbearable all-at-onceness of being alive and knowing it, too." ~Tess Slesinger, A Life in the Day of a Writer

And I will follow Ray Bradbury' advice:

"...if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. . . For the first thing a writer should be is -- excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it’d be better for his health"
~Ray Bradbury, From: "The Joy of Writing", ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITING..

Grace

God is so graceful to me. I went to counseling on Monday and I had so much more hope when I left. I have been very afraid of facing my pain. When I told my counselor that I have been avoiding time alone with myself and God she asked me what I was afraid of. I didn't really know what to say, I couldn't put it into words. Fear is like that sometimes. The fear of the unknown can paralyze and overwhelm. After talking a while it came to the fact that I was scared that I would be out of control of my emotions. Back in the early 90's I had a time where I was very heartbroken and was crying all the time, but I was still functioning even in the midst of all the pain. I went to school, went to work, saw friends and still functioned in my life. I felt worried that once my emotions started flowing it would be like a car rolling down a steep hill. Would the brakes hold and allow me to stop? We then walked through all the worst case scenarios and gave solutions to each one and that helped me. I am a very emotional person and sometimes my emotions can really rattle me and roll over me. It helps going things logically, step by step. That is not my normal way; I think my logic is more like "scatter shot logic", jumping from A to F, maybe back to B, then I could go all the way to step Z, and so on.

My counselor said that God is so full of grace and he loves me just as much when I meet with him everyday or only meet with him 3 times in a 2 week period, which was the case for me. There are times when I know things in my head, but emotionally I am not there. My counselor also said that God is "Wooing us back." When she said that my mind went back to that verse in Job that I posted the other day:
Job 36:16
"He is wooing you back from the jaws of distress to a spacious place from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with good food."
I watch for repetition or patterns and when I see them I see that God is trying to teach me something.

My counselor said that I need to be easier on myself with the "shoulds." I "should write in my journal everyday," "I should read my Bible everyday," "I should be writing poems," and on and on. She also said maybe I just need to give myself a break during this time and do things that make me feel comforted and safe, such as "going to a hill and just sitting there reflecting on God's nature." When she said that I immediately thought that I am going to play my guitar. I used to play my guitar a lot, singing and playing worship songs to God from a book, or sometimes I would just make up my own songs on the guitar and sing them really loudly to God.

So when I got home I pulled my guitar out from the back of my closet and tuned it up. I played for a few minutes and then put the guitar out on its stand in my room as a reminder to "go on a hill" and play my heart out. I couldn't jump in right then because I had to take care of my kids.

Fear does not need to have a strangle hold on me because God is wooing me and loves me so much.
Isaiah 41:13
"For I am the LORD, your God,
who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, Do not fear;
I will help you."

Distractions

I have been browsing through a lot of different blogs and learning the ins and outs of blogging and was happy to discover Blog Rolling. There are quite a few excellent blogs that I have found out there that are both well designed and well written.

I find that my hunting and searching through the various blogs has been one way to distract myself from my upcoming counseling appointment that I have at 5 P.M. today. It is much easier to focus on something such as setting up a blog or how to blog than face myself and the issues I am looking at. Honestly, at times I am scared to look at myself and the pain. I just want to be "normal and happy," whatever that is, and not have pain so close to the surface. But I know that will not do. If you stuff the pain it will come out in one way or another.

I was encouraged by reading a blog entry titled from the "jaws of by distress" by IPHY over at, i took the red pill, (an excellent blog). While I don't know all the circumstances of her family pain and brokenness from childhood, I was encouraged by her candor and the better life that she has built with her own family. I was especially encouraged by the verse that she put at the end her post:
Job 36:16 "He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food."

The "distress" that I felt as a child from about age 7 or 8 to age 15 still haunts me today. Sometimes I hear God wooing me to his table but I am scared of facing the pain again. So I distract myself, not always consciously, but sometimes knowingly. I need the freedom from the restriction, from the wounds that bind me. I know God is with me as I am on this journey to healing; I just need to meet with him and let him do his work on my heart. I know God will finish in me what he started, "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6

Hiding

I started counseling about a month ago and since then I have, at times, been hiding from both myself and God. I know I can't hide from God but I sure can get busy and fill my time up and go from surfing the net to watching the Olympics to listening to the radio, and on and on. I have been afraid to look at my past and the pain. I had been trying to write out the pain through poetry, but the pain is just always under the surface. So, I decided to go to a Christian counselor and I have gone 2 times so far and I go again this Monday, August 23rd. When I went almost 2 weeks ago I was really shaken up and I cried. Now I know that is the sort of thing one does with a counselor, but I was caught off guard. I end up leaving that time with a lot to think about. There are a number of things that I want to resolve but I didn't really know I had self-worth issues to deal with. That seems like such a cliche.

To back up a little, on my first visit I told her about my broken childhood stories and gave a bunch of my pain poems for her to read. She brought up one of them, "For The Children", which I talk about my parents divorce. She read part of it back to me, which was a little weird, but anyway here's what she read:

"You think the pain is gone, then suddenly the scab
is ripped off your wounded heart—again. . . . . .
The pain has shaped your whole life.
It's like you are wearing rose colored glasses
but these are more like gangrene covered glasses
thatyou can't throw away.
You try to shake it, you try to find healing and solace
and at times, you do.
But you know that damage has been done
and at any time or place there might be a reminder
that you are collateral damage
of a marriage tossed away:
a radio commercial for a quick and easy divorce,
Hollywood couples changing marriage partners
as if just changing into a new outfit,
a Blended Families Bible Study at church,
someone you know who has thrown in the towel—“It’s just too hard,
we've grown in different directions and don't love each other,
anymore.
All of these things, like little daggers, prick and poke you,
reminding you of what was taken from you."

My counselor focused on the part about the gangrene glasses and how in this poem, and and others, I really saw myself as wounded and that she said that this is true, I can't change this. But also at the same time, I was a fully devloped personality when I was 8 years old and that now there are great things about me and that I am so valuable to God. I was hearing her, but she must have seen that I was not getting it because she repeated it a couple different ways until there was a bit of understanding in my eyes. Next she did something that really struck me hard:
She took one had and she said that hand represented me as a child who was wounded. Then she took her other hand and said that that hand represented God valuing me as a person who I am today. Then my counselor put one hand on top of the other and said they are both equally true. That simple illustration made me cry, a lot. While crying I said that I felt robbed of my childhood, uncared for, unloved.

I sat in my car afterwards and jotted down a bunch of notes on an evelope and the image of putting both hands on top of one antother kept coming back to me. Since my counseling on August 9th I have been a little numb and scared. I don't know what I expected, but I was surprised at the emotion that came up. I have been trying to hide from myself and God. But I can't hide from God. A couple days later I read in Psalm 139:7-12, the following, which I have read many times and I have know them intellectually, but not emotionally:

"Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you."

I could go on a lot longer but will close off for now with a verse that I am going to be clinging onto for a while:
Psalm 34:18
The LORD is close to the
brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in
spirit.