Eclectic Waters

Archive for 2007

weary from the tears of the weekend

i force my throat to swallow the ball of pain that would continually push itself out of my mouth and into my eyes

causing

me to pause, paralyzed

hopeless.

i can’t be feeling this way

the shame and disgust i feel for experiencing these emotions and this hopeless loneliness only exacerbate the problem.

——

“I don’t hang for her answer anymore. There’s a weight off me. I said it all out loud and the world didn’t come to an end. I listened to my story, let loose, running around free in the morning air, and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. It didn’t even take that long to tell, once I got started.”

– Rayona in A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris.

——

I’ve been focusing on the fog this recent rain has caused. It’s blurred my vision and instead of calmly waiting for it too fade, I have been screaming at it.

Leave!
This does not help.
It just seems so pointless. I work, save money, pay off school loans, buy a car, only to start the process again… to continue the process. I’m bored.

Maybe there’s not enough challenges in my life, and maybe I just need to find new opportunities to grow.

People tell me I am making a difference, I am a special lady… but their words fall dim.

Come on ears – listen!

I fight to believe and to accept their love as my emotions and state of mind dictate meaningless failure and despondence.

—————–

Teeth accumulate caulk through everyday activities. This is why we brush teeth and floss them (even if we don’t, we know we should).

What can I do to remove the caulk from my soul?

It builds up until I am weary and heavy from moving – I want to take dynamite to blast it from me.

——–

At least…

I am alive.

Two years ago, I was experiencing similar emotions and questions, and they ate my very life until I was thin, ghostly and weak. Today they are here, but so am I -

fighting,

exercising,

eating right,

getting sleep,

listening to the love of those around me

and

moving forward…

one day,

one moment

at a time.

It’s all I can do – those great questions,

well,

hopefully the answers will come later.

——

I have been contemplating a change of scenery – but I know the decision must wait until I am out of this valley.

Good decisions are rarely made in the valley -

the valley is where we keep pushing forward and learn to be faithful…

God,

I am waiting for a break in this weather of my soul.

Before I went to boot camp, I was the strongest spiritually I’ve ever been, (pause) but I’ve done a lot between here and there. (longer pause) I’m not sure I’m a Christian anymore…

I watched his eyes, tinged with regret. He held his story in front of himself, like a rag he was inspecting. The regret was sentenced to a small cage on the outskirts of his face. Steel entered his eyes, saying, “I am strong.”

When I found out his age,

20,

I inhaled.

He’s so young

to have only small crumbs and a starving bird of hope cowering in his hand.

Hello, there you are,

self.

I love getting better after being sick and not only do I feel as though I’ve rediscovered myself, but I feel clearer minded and stronger.

Sometimes it’s physical – and sometimes it’s mental.

We talked about healing in the Upper Room today and how sometimes God may not heal us physically, but he may heal us emotionally, or give us a new perspective…

I haven’t had major physical ailments – but I have had emotional and mental wounds – and I am very glad that the God of David is a God capable of healing.

I used to think of healing as a straight line – you are broken and then you are healed.

While this is sometimes true, the healing in my life as been progressive – a series of small steps, choices, and encounters with the divine until one day I wake up, touch the wound and find it is no longer raw.

One of my favorite quotes of Madeline L’Engle is from a character who captures the thought:

From Certain Women:
Emma turned on the flame under the coffeepot. Once I was in a show once with an actor who’d had TB, and when I was concerned about his going out in a horrible rainstorm, he told me not to worry, that his TB was cured, and that scar tissue is the strongest tissue in the human body. I suspect that spiritual scar tissue is strong, too, and that it should make us more able to be human, rather than less.

I feel like typing something. I’ve procrascinated and so now its 10:14 – way past my bedtime, but like I said… just because…

I feel like typing something.

I have a picture on my wall that I sketched on the camping trip for small group leaders. We were given an hour to wander, find a quiet spot, and to spend time with God. The paper and charcoal were optional. Despite the fact that my sketches are distant relatives to the vibrant pictures in my head, I took paper and charcoal with me.

Wandering up the road past the small wood cabin that was established over 100 years ago, I found two rocks sitting side by side with a mound of pact dirt between them. Perfect. I sat on one rock with my feet resting on the other. After reading, I began to search for the item I would transcribe with charcoal to the page.

It was the largest tree on the hill. Branches stretched themselves up and sideways to create a symphony of leaves and shadows. I sketched its shape. Remembering Psalm 1, I began to sketch the outline of a woman in its trunk with her arms stretching inside of two of the thickest branches, towards the sky. The righteous man is like a tree planted by streams of water… I drew a stream. Because the tree looked somewhat horrific, I thought that company might help it. The charcoal quickly added a forest of trees behind the first and shaded in more people with their hands raised. I thought about how we are all like trees – alive, growing and in need of water – the substance that gives us life.

Lately, I’ve been in a season of waiting. When I try to articulate where I am going and the thoughts that are beginning to form in my mind, it doesn’t work. I run in circles around the main thought and when I stop, I have not even touched its hem.

So… I am learning from the quietness of the tree.

Silence.

Waiting.

“The words of the mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a rushing stream.” Proverbs 18:4

I hope to find it.

Ben tagged me, infecting me with the aforementioned virus. I’ve been procrastinating.

Because I will be 25 next month, I’m going to pretend I’m 25 now because that makes the math easier.

10 years ago I was 15 (wow, I’m good at math). I turned 15 shortly into my first year at boarding school at the Black Forest Academy. My parents and siblings were aboard the Logos II. I remember being incredibly lonely as I waited for close friendships to develop. This was the second major move that convinced me that my deepest thoughts, wounds and dreams were better kept in an iron box beneath the flesh of my heart. I did not want to reveal how deeply I was hurting, and how I longed for stability because I was sure I was only experiencing pain because I was not strong or godly enough. If God had called my parents, surely that meant I should be okay?

For my fifteenth birthday my closest friends from my time in Germany (2nd to 6th grade) came to celebrate. We were known as S.K.D.D.R. (Salome, Kylie, Daphne, Deanne and Ruth). I had moved away from them about 2 years before boarding school. As we laughed and talked, I became acutely aware of the distance that occurs, and the natural change of friendships when friends are no longer caught in the daily patterns of each others lives.

If I’m not careful to watch my mind as I type these words, it starts to linger over the loss of those years. I have to keep reminding myself of the gift of those friendships – of those seasons – although they were shorter than I would have liked.

Moving on.

Twenty years ago I was 5.

I have no idea where I was. We lived on one of the three O.M. (Operation Mobilization) ships, or we may have been back in Canada to visit family. Before my parents moved across the states to S.C., I asked my mom to give me a copy of the location of my early life. Which ships we were one when, and the countries we lived in. I have the paper somewhere.

Thirty years ago – I did not exist – My parents were dating or engaged and I was just a twinkle in my Dad’s grey green eyes.

—-

This was a depressing assignment. Thanks Ben

I am convinced that grieving follows a circular pattern. After spending an entire summer in counseling and having a kind woman named Pam walk me through facing the loss in my life and the lies Satan sold me when I was in pain, I expect the pain to stay away and for those scars to no longer hurt. While they are no longer as intense and overwhelming – the echo of the wound still slithers in my heart and if it were not for the grace and mercy of God and the knowledge that just as my grief is circular, so is His healing.

His mercy and healing pursue me each day – and although I am often ignorant of the healing that needs to take place, He knows and He continually brings me face my darkest fears and He walks me through the pain of birthing my deepest tears because as they are expelled from my eyes they allow space to be freed in my heart for love: His and others.

—-

The people I want to tag – infect with the virus – are Kathy, Michael P., and Mary W.

Blog on – or if you don’t have a blog (Mike) – feel free to leave an extra long comment – I can always copy and post it as its own special post – if that’s okay with you.