Roots

This week I started a Bible Study with ladies at my church. We are studying a book called "Stuck."

It's a little intimidating because its a much more personal bible study than I realized it would be. Immediately we were talking about, duh, what has you stuck in your spiritual walk, and in life.  I was quite comfortable when it was my turn, to offer up my own examples of places in which I could say I've been stuck: Self confidence, worry, and trusting God for all of the things...not just the big things.  That seemed pretty safe and inside of my comfort zone...

And then when I got home I plunged into the individual study portion, and realized that I am going to have to go waaaay deeper... and possibly do  so in front of people I am not sure I'm comfortable with, like a few coworkers from the preschool, in addition to a group of women I am just meeting, and may forever be know to by what I say in the study. Yikes!  So I put the book down and decided I'd get back to it in a few days.  And then the next day came, and suddenly I felt like God showed me the root of each of those issues. The one I would have to tackle before anything else in my life could change.  Its huge, and if feels impossible.  But I was reminded of a quote used in the study by A.W. Tozer:

  “As God is exalted to the right place in our lives, a thousand problems are solved all at once.”

So...maybe its what I've gotta do.  Here's the deep down, core of most of the problems I face in my existance... I have spent my entire life with the deep down belief that somewhere in my core, I am fundamentally broken. I have fought sadness, anger, depression, frustration all toward God because of this, and finally somewhat believed I had settled on acceptance that I was created the way God wanted to create me.  Broken. For some unknown reason or purpose.  But the pain still festered, and over the last year as I have watched Gabriel struggle with many of the same issues with ADD, insane sensitivity, and an emotional intensity matched pretty much only by me, the festering has built into a volcano, seeping destructive lava, mostly in a slow dribbling, aching flow, and at times erupting in monumental and catastrophic displays of fury.  This is the thing I am going to have to deal with.  And just as I began to think that there is no way I can deal with this in a Bible Study setting, delaying the inevitable even further, Dan confronted me in a rare moment of clarity.

He may  not be perfect, but he sure is putting up with a lot.  Out of the blue, and out of his second bottle of wine last night, he had the sudden epiphany (knowing nothing about my Bible Study topic), that I'm going to need to deal with the fact that I believe I am flawed and broken before I am going to be able to deal with any of the surface issues and struggles that have been plaguing me.  Ba-Bam. Convicted.

So I'm going forward. I am still skeptical that a summer bible study is enough. I am skeptical that I will be willing to put enough on the table to really get what I need out of the study.  But apparently its time to put it to prayer, and challenge God to make it happen.  I need to trust and believe that I am no more broken than everyone around me, and that God created me not just how he wanted me to be, but that he made me to be OK, and whole.  Gah!

The Tea That Broke The Camel's Back

Its sad, and slightly amusing, that one tossed batch of sweet tea can be the trigger that made me fall apart.  To be fair, I've been falling apart quite a bit lately, and I know some of that has to due with not being on my medications. The medication battle is an ongoing one.  I forget. I have to plan on feeling sick for one to three days in order to start back up.  That's if we have the money to buy them... which, when we take an impromptu four day vacation to Carlsbad and spend $700 on hotels, we are bound not to have the money... but that was only the most recent unnecessary expenditure that found its way ahead of meds in the priority lists.  Oh my goodness we are so bad with money. So so bad.

Back to tea.  I had just brought the kids back from a failed attempt at geocaching.  They were tired, disappointed, hot, and did I mention tired?  I had been so excited to open up this new adventure for us, and we didn't even find the cache. In fact, by the time we got to the right area the kids were so tired and we were so far from the car, that I knew we couldn't even spare the energy required to hunt for it. Not to mention I wasn't sure it was even still active, since my attempts at signing up for a geocaching.com account and loading the site onto my Android had failed miserably.

I sent the boys up to play with devises in bed for quiet time, and spent a good 30 minutes getting Sara to sleep after one of her epic screaming and crying fits.  And then I saw that Dan had tossed the sweet tea I had just made. Not good enough. Again. I get bored with routine. I can't eat or drink the same thing endlessly, and so I had tried to switch things up. First I made a batch of sun tea using blackberry tea for half of the tea bags.  I think its delicious.  Dan does not.  So I promised him I would make another batch.  Only, when it came time to add the lemon and sugar I remembered that I had used the last lemon on the blackberry tea.  Suddenly I had an idea that I thought was brilliant!  I had been using lemon oil in my water to add flavor, and thought it would be a perfect substitute!  I tried one glass first so as not to spoil the whole batch, and it tasted perfect!  Or so I thought.

About Two hours later Dan took another sip of his tea, which I had noticed gleefully that he had been sipping away at.  But something in that one particular sip caught him awry, and he twisted up his face and scrunched his nose in dissapproval.  "Did you use lemons that had maybe gone bad when you made this?"

Are you serious? I swear no one else on the face of this earth would have been able to tell the difference between a few drops of lemon in his tea instead of the juice of two lemons. GAH! For some reason this irritated me to no end, but I didn't really let it fester until after the geocaching fail. Suddenly I  found myself feeling like I am no more than wasted space.  Good enough to maybe keep the kids alive, and occasionally put passable food on the table.  But other than that, I fall short everywhere.  Not good enough at housekeeping, not good enough at laundry. Definitely not as good at cooking. Not good enough at keeping the kids on task.

This is a huge ridiculous pity party. I totally get that. But aside from getting myself out of the rut of negativity, how can I stop feeling like I fall short, especially from Dan's perspective?  Some days I feel like we are doing it. We are making it. We are spending family time, having game nights, laughing together, laughing with the kids, and then some days I feel like we are a ticking time bomb. Faking it for as long as we can until the facade finally cracks, or time runs out.  I have been so negative lately that I have ditched facebook for at least a month in an effort to stop myself from blabbing my negativity to my friends.  I have even become too much for them. They would of course never say it, but I feel it.  And if I were to say that to them they would be put in a position to tell me I'm wrong whether they mean it or not. And even if they did I doubt I'd believe it.

In order to try to get back to positivity, and living in the moment, I have decided to sort of shut the world out for a bit and focus on my family.  I suppose I had some pretty valiant images in my head of what that might look like, and our geo-caching fail this morning snuffed those out pretty well.  But I need to keep it up. The change isn't going to happen overnight. My attitude has created cycles within the family that will take time to unwind and undo, and if I give up at the first failure, or even the second or tenth, those cycles will never be broken.  For now I will come here to lay out my struggles and vent my darker moments, while posting successes and positivity in the more public places.

Here is what I need to remember as I take this time of refocusing:

1) No matter how useless I feel, taking myself out of the picture will never help my children. I may feel like I am failing them, but being here allows the opportunity for good, while removing myself from the equation is only one possible outcome. Negative.

2) I have not been talking to God, or spending any time in prayer.  Before I run around trying to prove myself, I need to spend some time with Him. Reflecting, searching my heart, and allowing Him to provide me with strength and purpose.

ADD and OCD

Interesting reading up on possible links between ADD and OCD. I never would have considered it. I wouldn't classify myself as ocd- I certainly don't have rituals like washing or checking, and Lord knows i am not a neat freak.

Also the underlying thought patterns seem to be different, but I can say with certainty that portions of my day/week etc are very carefully inscribed into my mind out of fear of forgetting, or fear of -insert ADD characteristic-.
When I am forced to shift gears or re-write the plan, especially on the fly, I really fight panic. I become fearful (terrified actually) of dropping the ball or letting something slip.

Going In Deep

I suppose there could be many reasons for blogging, and if I'm honest with myself, I have no idea what my reason is, aside from maybe a half-assed desire to put myself out there without having to really look people in the face and put myself out there. Brave, right?  Also, I just love to write, and I can never seem to find a pen, let alone a piece of paper that doesn't have Iron Man or Batman drawn on it in thick marker.  So I blog.

But today I have a reason. I'm going in deep, and it has a purpose. Life is complicated, and as Glennon Doyle from Momastery puts it, brutiful. A combination of brutal things and beautiful things which can't completely be untangled. They weave together and make our story what it is. And the most key ingredient in our brutiful story is our attitude. Unfortunately I often let my attitude color my story a little or a lot more darkly than I need. It is a process I have been working on my whole life, and need to continue to work on. At times my shades are a little rosier, and at times they are a little dingier and in need of a good wiping off. But there is some back story that I think needs to be opened up to the world. Not because I need any sympathy - sympathy is certainly not over-rated, its just not what is needed in my case. What I need is the reminder to make the best of the beautiful times so that they shine through into the brutal times to remind me what I'm here for.  The reason I want to shed light is because I think I often give the world the impression that the so-called "brutal" parts of my existence are external struggles that I must contend with, when in reality, the gifts I have been given by God including my husband and my family, are the beautiful parts of my life.

My brutal is an ugliness that comes from the inside. This may be the hardest thing I have ever chosen to be open about, but I believe I owe it to the people that I sometimes, or often, tear down when the emotions inside of me become tornadoes with a will of their own.  Namely my husband. Dan is not perfect. But if he had been perfect I never would have taken a second look at him. I don't want perfect. I don't like perfect. Perfect is fake. What Dan is, is real, genuine, loyal, sensitive, and loving. But he is a man. And men are not like women. If you want to know about the conflicts the differences between men and women create, read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.  Our real problems come from deeper inside of me.  Those who know me know that I am a pretty functional, though often spacey and emotional person. You may think other things of me, but you have been kind enough to keep those things to your self. Thank you for that.

I am fairly functional. But from my pre-teen years on I have struggled with deep bouts of major depression, anxiety, ADD/ADHD and PMDD. All of which can somewhat overlap eachother and become muddled to the point that I have decided that in general, the diagnoses we and our Dr's give ourselves are not helpful for any purpose other than to help narrow down medication needs. I have caught myself often getting too wrapped up in the labels, but I think the best way to look at them is to remember that almost all of us have some form of something if we really want to look hard enough. It is all a sliding scale, and it should only be important to your Dr, and maybe your teachers, and only in the event that you need medical intervention, which, if you do, you should not be ashamed of.  But now that you know these things about me I am no different that I was before.

What I want you to understand is that I am trying my hardest to learn how to keep the people I love out of the path of my storm. Sadly my husband lands in its path most often. The fact that he has stood by me and weathered those storms for 9 years now should tell you something of his character. I love him dearly, and he is my even keel, much as my mother was when I was in my late teens and early twenties. I think that while being a stay at home mom has been one of the most profound blessings of my life, it has also been one of the most difficult times for me in learning to manage and regulate and maintain schedules, emotions etc.   In the corporate world I thrived. I showed up, I followed protocol, I had resources to assist with organization when needed. There was structure, there were not only accolades given for doing what you were asked to do, but when I could go above and beyond, just like in school, I was able to receive even more validation. I think those things really held me together in school, sports, and the work world, and I think I am learning to manage without them at home, though a little bit more slowly.  I do look forward to someday entering the workforce again in some way and finding a venue to knock peoples socks off so that I don't need to seek validation elsewhere (like through sewing lol).

For me these days, the things that are most difficult aside from remembering to take the medication that keeps me from forgetting to get my children to brush their teeth and take a bath, and that helps me to make the best of my beautiful days, which is the majority of them, is that when the world crashes down, I can't trust my own emotions. Some days I feel I have the right to be angry at something, and the next minute I realize it could just be a reaction to medication, lack of medication, too much gluten, not enough sunlight, pms, and even if its none of the above, the people close to me will likely attribute my emotions to those things anyway. And so down the rabbit hole.

Do you want to know what God has given me to ensure that I never give in? Everything I need. I know that may sound like part of the crazy, but I believe with all of my heart on my most sane of days that this is a fact. I have attempted suicide twice. Both times in my teens. Both times with a well thought out plan. Both times the key to my plan went missing at the last minute. I believe God intervened so that my life would be saved.  Then my nephew Kenny was born, and I loved him so much that I was terrified every day that something would happen to him. It still brings tears to my eyes to even think about. I have never mentioned this to him - he is now 16. But his life saved mine several times, because I knew I could never let my nephew who I loved so much, down. And then more nephews came, Caleb, Lyle, Braden, and the love grew and God had placed a net beneath me.  Then I moved far away and the net became a little harder to feel.  Until somehow I realized that every time I hit that rock bottom low point, if I could just hold out for 3 days, I would wake up and the world would be right again. And that three day rule has continued to work. I believe it is my gift from the Lord because I prayed many times for his help. I have truly feared that I would not be able to live out my days because of this depression, and I believe he has given me the tools to conquer it one day at a time.

So why else am I telling you all this (all 5 of you, ha!)? I don't really know, other than maybe someone who reads this needs to find hope that they can make it through too. Maybe God has a reason for not taking it away completely, but He will help you get through it.

To my friends who I have allowed close enough to walk with me through the good and the bad days (Faith, Dan), thank you. To any who I may have frustrated with a distance kept, please know it has nothing to do with you. I am protecting you from a level of neurosis you really probably don't want to deal with, lol.

For those of you who read through all of this and now wish you could un-read it, when I find a button for that I'll be sure to include it in each post, but for now, thanks for reading... and lets all just pretend we didn't see this... mmmmkaaaaay?

A Mile In Their Shoes

So, I can be a whiner. I know this. And I don't like it. But I fight a little battle in my head (loooooony!) regularly between the side of me that wants to share and the side that doesn't. So, since Facebook is a little more in your face, I figure I can say what I want here and those who can read it and take it with a grain of salt are welcome to, and those who would rather not can avoid it easily.

That being said, I gotta tell you what happened to me last night.  I literally had an asthma attack. I don't have asthma.  I thought when I was a kid that I had exercised induced asthma, which I always thought might be a little bit of 'you're-just-outta-shape' asthma.  Last night confirmed it for me.  What I had as a kid, was not asthma.

I can totally deal with being sick. It happens. You get to lay in bed a little, lay low, all that stuff. Of course I don't like it, but I try not to worry to much about it. I generally don't go to the Dr until well after I should, but I also go to the Dr a lot since my body doesn't seem to fight off infection well.  Whatevs.  I was sick all day Monday. Dan left the house putting Maddox in charge since I was pretty much lifeless on the couch.  That resulted in a lot of messes, a lot of Easter Candy being eaten, and fortunately no real drama. 

So I'm in bed texting a friend when I realize the weight on my chest is feeling heavier and heavier.   I decide to take a super hot shower and sit in the steam to clear things up a bit.  I was pretty sure it would work. Its what my mom did with me as a kid growing up whenever I had croup. Which was a lot.  So I wasn't too worried.  But something happened while I was in the shower.  I had another coughing fit, but suddenly it was more of a bark than a cough, and suddenly I couldn't breathe without it sounding and feeling like I was gasping for breathe.  And then I realized I was gasping for breathe, and I panicked which of course made it worse.  I banged on the wall of the shower, and Dan was down in no time.  I literally felt like my esophagus/throat was going to collapse like a balloon with the air being sucked out of it. I don't know how else to describe it.  It took everything I had to keep from ripping at my chest in a panic.  Enter Dan.  He was able to help me calm down and after several sobbing failed attempts, take slow breaths.  We sat there trying to decide if I needed to go to the ER. How much was from panic? Did I have pneumonia? Would I be able to drive myself? Would he need to call 911, and for a few seconds I prayed that he would because I just wanted something on my face getting air into my lungs stat.  But his calm and persistence paid off. We got my breathing under control enough that he was able to walk away and just check on me in a few minutes. And by the time he came to bed, Nyquil had calmed me down (knocked me out), and I was able to get some sleep.

I woke up still feeling like a truck was parked on my chest, but I made an appointment and got in to the Dr.  I might be a little dramatic... only a little... but I kinda thought they were going to tell me I have pneumonia and either give me breathing treatments, or in my more dramatic (read:Hypochondriac) imaginings, I saw myself being admitted to the hospital.  I wasn't surprised that when the Dr checked me out she saw that I was basically a mess who just wanted to go back to bed. But what did surprise me was that she noticed that my ears and neck and face were swollen, and that I had had, and was possibly still having the effects of an asthma attack brought on by allergies. And that the buildup from the allergies had also caused basically a sinus infection.  She said that something had blown into the area that was messing with all of her allergy and asthma people.  It makes sense that whatever this allergen is, isn't the norm because I really have not struggled with allergies in TX until the last couple weeks. 

While she was surprised that I hadn't ever been diagnosed with real asthma, she and I were both comfortable believing that this was probably a one time, perfect storm situation.  We will of course be keeping an eye on the allergens, and be wary of another bout of allergic reaction, but what I have come out of from this, is a brand new understanding and empathy for those with asthma.  I have had to deal with it once. How many times have others, and children dealt with it. Felt like they were literally going to die.  I was not going to die, but its the closest I have ever felt to it. 

All in all, I got some good drugs, and I'm going to be just fine in no time. But it was such a big experience for me that, while I don't want to go around boring the whole world telling them about what "happened" to me, upping my neurotic-hypochondriac-whiner rep, I still wanted to share it.  May not be a difference, but oh well.  :)  Nyquil is now coursing through my veins and calling me to bed, so I will obey and sign off.

Unanswered calls,
Questions still hanging.
Waiting for you
And the silence is clanging

Ringing around in my ears
clouding my mind.
Shattering self worth
I've worked so hard to find.

I've come at you with anger
I've come to you with tears
I've screamed to break your silence,
I've cried so many years,

I used to try so hard to please
to be someone you'd finally see,
But it was never good enough
to make you look one time at me.

I told myself I could just change
I'd be the one you wanted
but I'm tired now, it didn't pay
and you, still empty, haunted.

So we circled awhile
out of each other's way
drifting in and out
of an endless stream of days.

Going throught the motions
keeping our routines
but I'm tired now, its hasn't paid
but I don't know what that means.

I've come at you with anger
I've come to you with tears
I've screamed to break your silence,
I've cried so many years.

I've come to know I'll never
feel needed, loved and warm,
So now I pray for strength to stay
and live with what is done.

On Being Open

I have never been good at the games people play in social life.  I opt to surround myself with people who will say what is on their mind, and allow me to do the same.  People who, like me, do our best not to offend, but who keep ulterior motives off the shelf. I've found that I am just not any good at doing it any other way.  This also means that I keep my guard up, instinctively, until I have tested the waters a bit.

But here in blogland it is different.  I still aim to be open and honest, but I have to accept that not everyone who reads what I have to say will appreciate it.  But I have to be ok with that.  On this blog, I have already opened myself up far deeper and wider than I have to most people in person. In fact, all but one or two.  So here's what I ask.  Take me for what I am. My blog "personality" and my IRL personality are essentially the same, but writing is a passion and a release for me. Something I love to do whether anyone wants to read it or not.  Maybe you feel I share too much here, or even in person, and that's ok with me. You don't have to read what I write. But everything I write comes from deep within me, and I don't think there is anything good that comes from false pretenses.  I have a lot of things in my past, present and future, and while I don't feel the need to share it all with everyone, I have a feeling that if I continue to blog, much of it will be mentioned here and there, in bits and pieces, and I'm ok with that. 

Everything in my life that has happened to this day, has been part of shaping who I am today. And as life continues to unfold before me I will continue to be shaped by it.  I refuse to let circumstances from the past, or any that may come my way, to make me be afraid to be who I am... and since I am pretty reserved in person, I guess maybe this blog is my way of opening the doors a little. Letting a little light in, one step at a time.  Toughening up my confidence in who I am as a friend, a wife, a mom, a woman, a Christian who maybe doesn't seem like a lot of the other Christians out there, a daughter, a "writer", a creative being, etc etc etc.

So should I end this speech with a "tadaa!!" a "thanks", or what??

How about just hasta la vista, I gotta pick up my babies!