Eclectic Waters

Walking by a baby picture of my friend, I thought about how she struggles with depression. In the picture she is smiling, and her brother stands beside her. Her parents are smiling in the next picture on the wall. I wonder what they think about the fact that their daughter struggles with depression. Then I think about life. What I think about life? Well, I would tell you, but I think I’m thinking far too seriously and so I won’t.

At times I wish I could write a funny story, or write as David Sedaris does. I always laugh when I read his writing.

This morning I watched lizards. I didn’t intend to, but the path I was running on seemed to be filled with them. The sun had barely risen but already the heat from the pavement was drawing them. They crouched, push-upping their bodies until my shoe almost touched them and then they scurried, slipping their tails across their tracks.

I talked to the one I love today and we admitted that we both love each other. I am glad about that, but the rest of our conversation and thoughts is private. Just thought I’d let you know.

This evening I watched a movie by myself. As an introvert it is too easy to forget to take time alone when I have someone I could watch movies with. But the alone time is necessary. It keeps me sane and content.

Ten minutes ago I was listening to Enya and while my goal was to sleep by 10pm, another of my goals was to write each day, even if it is not the most artistic or well-written piece. I suppose I am doing the traditional thing, journaling each day, except that my “journal” is online and it will not always contain words regarding my personal life.

Funny image: a girl is sitting on the driveway in front of her house next to a car. She is wearing a hat and half of her hair is falling out from under it because it came loose from the ponytail she pulled it into earlier. The reason she is sitting in her driveway, in the dark, at 11:06pm at night is because she is trying to connect through the wireless service of her neighbors to post a blog she just wrote. Goodnight.

Missionary kids are the coolest people. Not that I’m biased or anything. Okay, I’ll admit I am an MK. When I meet another MK there is usually an instant connection between us. They are entered into my “friend” and “trusted” list, even if I have only talked to them for two minutes.

Today I got to hang out with a fellow MK. Yes! We went walking with her two children down a trail that led up a small hill in the middle of the Californian beauty, which is an acquired taste. Dryness. Rocks. Jagged bushes. We saw a rattle snake and for the rest of the time after her small daughter kept pointing back and saying, “Snake? Snake?” She is two.

While this woman grew up in Spain and the US, and I grew up everywhere (Germany, U.S., Canada, three ships that sailed to countless ports and countries), we connected. She is 25 and married with two small children. I am single, childless, and 23 years old. Despite this we found similarities in how we react to certain situations, people, and in our pasts. It was refreshing to have someone tell a story and to be able to relate, almost completely, to the emotions and reasoning behind it.

We are chameleons who find it easy to adapt and change. We have both felt like aliens and have been misfits. We both cried out to be normal. I cried when my counselor told me I was, I had never felt it or heard it before. We have both survived being moved from country to country. We have both survived adolescence and the depression that came from a new place and being friendless. We both laughed at each others stories; we understood. We shared what we have learned. Our lives as children, and our lives as adults, have not been easy.

Healing is not linear. Healing is recursive. We have been hurt in the past and God has healed us. However, life is continuing to hurt us, because hurt is a part of life, and even the hurt of the past is sometimes awakened. But we are choosing to get up and we continue to seek healing. We are living — vibrantly flawed but perfected through Christ’s sacrifice.

We both found God at an early age and were re-saved, as she put it, years later. We had been Christians, but our knowledge was in our heads, and only once God had healed part of the hurt we carried from childhood were we able to allow his truth to sink from our heads into our hearts. We now understand the Bible and the truths we grew up with. She was re-saved at 18; I was re-saved at 23, as God allowed me to emerge from the depression that came after I taught high school.

God is faithful.

I thank God for that.

I lay in bed this morning watching the sun highlight small dust particles. They seemed to be swept in a breeze, floating. They looked golden. People say that dust is around 80 % or more skin cells. So I was really watching bits of my family float in the sun. Then I laughed, how silly. I love twisting thoughts in my mind and pushing ideas into different forms, and while I tend to take myself far too seriously, at times I have to laugh and embrace the mind God gave me.

Thank you to Randy,

Yesterday Charlie and I met with the pastor who was going to marry us. Randy is what I call a Christian version of Jim Carey. He is hilarious, uses language that is both direct and vivid, and he has the full voice and facial expressions to match it. The difference is that Randy is a Christian and speaks truth. He jokes that he only speaks in churches once. He is one of those rare people with the gift of making others uncomfortable with the truth. But the only people he makes uncomfortable are those who are hiding from the truth and those who do not wish to change. I love him and his wife Angie.

He knows me. And yesterday he gave me some invaluable insight into myself.

Deanne, you love to surround yourself with splinters, because you don’t like falling and so you surround yourself with splinters so you don’t fall.

What’s a splinter?

It’s a piece of wood or something that holds you up and supports you.

Oh.

But growth happens when the splinters are pulled away. You have to be held up by your internal frame, by Christ in you.

It made sense, but I didn’t fully understand what he meant. Today it’s a little clearer. Whenever I feel uncertain, I reach for a number of things around me. People. Comfort. Money. Safety…

And when those things are intact, I feel like I am standing.

When I got done with teaching, all of those things failed me, and I found myself completely dependent on God’s grace and mercy. He is the only one with life.

Today as I was driving I thought about Randy’s words. I was listening to Spanish music; not understanding the words allows me to think through things in my own mind while distracting me from the depths I would otherwise plunge into emotionally.

I looked at myself and how much God has changed and grown me since teaching. I did an internal check and realized that the frame of Christ in me was stronger. Christ has not changed, but I have been meditating on truth and fighting the lies that teaching uncovered. The lies are that I am not important, that I am a failure and that God is out to hurt me and make me into a lonely but strong person through pain.

God and His truth are so much better than the lies. His grace, love, truth, justice… all of Him is so much brighter than the darkness and than the grey I thought was light.

I am not completely sure what my splinters are or what I should do. But I know I will keep reading God’s word and I hope the calcium deposits in my inner man grow. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and His grace is sufficient for me. He covers my weakness, making me strong. In my weakness, He is strong. I am His glory, and I will ever praise Him. I want to be like David.

My life is an open book. I’ve always wanted it to be.

If anything I am going through or experiencing will help another human being, I will share it, but only to a point. I have a keen sense of who I can trust and who I cannot and I also guard the lives of the friends and family I love and my own life. Some of my most poignant stories will never be told.

The pen was writing today, in a fragile hand.

I am not engaged. Today.

Yesterday (pause on paper) I was.

It’s that simple. On paper.

I never understood how people could be engaged and then not be engaged. I thought that when you knew, you knew. Well, now I know not only how it happens, but what it feels like. It feels like shit.

Shit is one of my favorite words. But you would have to hear me use it to know that I am not cursing, but merely expressing exactly how things are.

Today is where I live. Yesterday was easily written. I am Christ’s. But now, as the one I loves pulls back from me, I must choose, each moment, to believe.

To anyone who has ever been here, I don’t have to explain. To those who have not experienced this, there are no words.

Other than that today was picturesque. I watched Rebekah today, this morning, when I was still engaged. Instead of taking our usual route around the lake to the playground, we went swimming. Afterwards I sat with her wrapped in a large blue and green beach towel. She was sucking her thumb and nestled close to me. I thought about how wonderful children are. When I love my children, I am actually loving a part of myself, a part of my husband, and of course my child. They are symbols of the one life that was created when my husband and I took our vows. And that child will become a reflection of us as it watches us and learns from our behavior.

Shaggy, Rebekah’s dog, and her dad greeted me at the door. I keep pushing Shaggy away but his wiry wool body jumps and pushes close, “please pet me” , and then he slobbers all over me. I smile. The rest of the morning he sat on his large blue cushion watching me. I think he is phlegmatic.

My parents and two sisters are arriving home from Canada tonight. In about two hours. I need their arms right now. I hope you are all well and that regardless of whether you are crying or laughing that you know God’s love, even if you don’t feel it.

Whenever something goes wrong in my life, I am overwhelmed by the fear that my life will be a tragedy. You know, the ones Shakespeare wrote, where everyone ends up dead, and where every plan comes to naught. Yesterday I talked to the person I had hoped to marry, and while we are not calling off our engagement, we are postponing our wedding. The world I built was fragile. I realize that now. But it crashed down, and even though it a lightweight building, the vibrations it sent through the earth left me trembling.

What the heck am I doing?

I was overcome with the familiar feelings. Why didn’t I see this sooner? What’s wrong with me? I must not be lovable. Will my life amount to anything? What am I doing? What do I want out of life?

I saw myself. Beside my grave. The rain left dents on my checks. My hair sagged in the rain. What was my life amounting to?

But as a Christian my life is not a tragedy. I remembered.

I already know the outcome. God has made me more than a conqueror with Christ. At the end of my life, after my death, and at the beginning of my new life a marriage will take place. I, along with my brothers and sisters who are Christ followers, will be married to Christ. We are the church, his bride.

And so, referring back to my notes from highschool, that means that my life is not a tragedy that will end in death and destruction, my life is a comedy. It will end with a happy marriage and rebirth into a new body and new life in heaven.

I belong to Christ.

I will not marry until I find someone who loves me unconditionally and passionately, as Christ did. That is, after all, the command gives to husbands (Ephesians). I will not marry until I am able to respect and honor the man. He will be the head of my household and will be the father to my children, guiding them in wisdom and truth.

I have rushed. I tried to take a shortcut, and while I may still travel the long road with the one I currently love, my life is in God’s hands. I wait on His guidance and clarity.

But at the same time, at least I can rest on the fact that my life is a comedy. Even through the tears, and current trials, I can rejoice and smile because my life is after all a comedy. I will find rest.

God is good. He has a purpose and meaning for my life. I will trust Him.

The only words I want on my gravestone, besides my name and the years I lived, are: “She loved deeply.” If that is all that I live up to, if that is all I achieve, my life will be rich. I do not seek to be loved or accepted. I seek to love and to have my heart molded into the shape of God’s heart. He is love.

“The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than others peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” –Deuteronomy 7:7-8
He did not choose me because I am strong. He did not redeem me because I was pure. All the good you see in me is HIM.

He came to me because He loved me.

I rest in HIS LOVE, although I do not understand it.