Heartbreak on Display

     There is a new type of porn running rampant, “tragedy porn,” more aptly called “heartbreak porn.” I can scroll through my Facebook feed, or I can go to any news station website and there will be any number of videos or pictures putting someone’s heartbreak on display. There is a new breed of ambulance chasers. Technology is dehumanizing us. Too often we sit behind the safety of an electronic screen. Sifting through the rubble, wreckage, and ashes of someone else’s life. Perhaps with thoughts of “How awful.” “What a shame.” Services them right.” Glad it’s not me.” “Someone needs to do something about that.” But there is a degree of separation.  We get to walk away from without getting dirty, no ashes to wash away. The truth is we are not walking away clean, or at least we should not be.  The part of us that makes us human is getting dirty. I will confess that I will read stories. I will check as many facts as I can. I do not watch videos if I can avoid it. I will occasionally look at photos.  During my time wandering through the lives of others, I pray. Most often I have no words, just a heart that is broken. It is broken for the families that lost loved ones in an accident. It breaks for those that have lost everything in a disaster. My heart weeps for those that feel shame in their lives because they have some type of stigma attached to them. I am heartbroken for the victims. I am sad for the person that is victimizing.   My heart is broken for the homeless and the hopeless. I am grieved for more than I can put into words, because words are too simple for the grieved spirit. I am angry. I am appalled. I am dismayed. We as a people are failing. One thing that I do have is hope, confident expectation, or as a dear friend and sister says JOYFUL expectation. The wonderful thing about HOPE is I do not have to know the how and the why for it. HOPE, much like FAITH, is assurance that things which are uncertain, unclear and unknown will change. HOPE and Faith require action. An action of LOVE. LOVE is not passive. LOVE moves to COMPASSION.  COMPASSION is LOVE in action.

Not in My Father's House

They say smell is closely linked to memory and can be a trigger for emotional memory. Whomever they are they are right. I was at Wal-Mart the other day getting a few things for work. Over all it was a good morning for me. I had gotten some sleep. I did not hurt and was able to walk, so that is a good start to the morning for me. Then my emotional world came crashing in on me. I walked by a man that had on cologne, and the smell of it triggered an emotional and physical  response  I was afraid.  I wanted to scream. I thought I was going to throw up, and over all become hysterical in the frozen food section. All I could do was repeat over and over in my head “God help me.”  I managed to get out of there without any hysterics. I managed to only have a few tears fall on the way to the office. By the time I got to work, I was doing okay.

I wanted to tell my husband about this, but by the time I had a chance, it was late, and I did not want to think about it before going to bed. I did not want to have any nightmares. I did mention it to him Wednesday evening after church. I felt confident that enough time had passed that I would be okay and did not need to worry about any nightmares. I was correct. By Thursday, I had not thought anymore about it, perhaps because no specific memory was triggered just emotional and a little physical reaction.  

Last night, early morning, the nightmares came. They came in crushing waves, drowning me, suffocating me. The last one that I woke from had me sobbing and shacking, and I watched as the last of the darkness turned to light.

I will not go into any great details. They are not needed. However, there was something very important in that last dreaming.  I was in a house, a huge house, call it a mansion. It seemed to have a million rooms, and every room I went into something awful happened. The first rooms were not as bad as the last. One thing that was the same through each room was what I was saying, “ Not in my Father’s house.” By the time I was in the last part of the nightmare, I was screaming it over and over again.  I am struggling not to cry as I write this. Hard to type through tears.

Upon waking ,I had no idea why I would be saying that. I knew that the house in my dream was not my dad’s.  

As the fear and horrors of the dreams started to loss their grip on me, I realized what I meant by my words. “Not in my Father’s House.” I am a child of God. Every part of me, my waking and my sleeping mind, both are my Father’s. My mind is a part of my Father’s house. Those demons that waited had  no right to be there inside my head. My subconscious mind knew this and was rebuking them. Even though I know it was all nightmares triggered from a smell, the emotional effects are still there.  I also know that even though I have felt distant from my Holy Father, my subconscious mind still cries out for Him.

I have felt as though I have been going through the motions of life spiritually and, well, just living in general. My body hates me more days than not and lately. It has added more things to starts failing. It takes a toll physically, but it is the emotional toll that does the real killing of the spirit.

I can say it is well with my soul, because I love God, but my spirit is as ill as the rest of my body, perhaps in some ways more. There is hope. I know this because of the nightmares from last night. I have always had Daddy to help me. I now have, “Not in MY FATHERS HOUSE!”  The enemy has no rights, and, as Abba’s child, I have the right to proclaim this and to rebuke any and all enemies from trying to take it away.  

Time,Rest and Trust

     For all those who are able to do your everyday things the simple things such as taking a shower, combing your hair, walking to check the mail. Enjoy them. It is very frustrating to not be able to do them without feeling like you have run a race. I am thankful that I have family and friends that are helping me. It is harder than you can image I am not the kind of person that likes to be taking care of I am the one that takes care of others. I am discouraged, perhaps even feeling a little down on myself. This is not something that I ever would have thought would happen to me. I thought that by know I would be facing the world head on again. But I can hardly comb my own hair out without getting tired. I know that it is hard for me to really think about how bad things did get and how bad they could have stayed. I am so thankful for all the prayers that have been lifted up on my behalf. It has not been easy for me to pray. I guess it is some mental block, denial over the whole heart attack and having to have a stent placement. I keep putting on my brave face, however each day I feel it starting to crumble. I want things to be back to normal for whatever normal is. Even if normal is something different.

     God has brought me a long way from the place that I once was in. I know that there have been some areas in my life that I have still kept closed off from Him. After I had my first stroke in 2000 I had become very fearful of dying at any moment. I prayed when I walked down the deck steps, when I went out to feed the horses, driving to the store. I was so very afraid and sure that God was going to strike me dead at any moment. I was a little crazy and very irrational with this fear.

    Even though I prayed and did all the right things to not make God any angrier than what I already thought He was at me, I never walked closer, never changed my relationship with Him. After some time that fear left me as did my communication with God. Soon after that life went back to normal in a manner of speaking. I thought I was there on some level but I never fully got back into. I was still very afraid to live. So much so that anytime we would be going out of town I would not have a good meal. I had this insane thought that if I did not have a good meal then it would not be my last. However at the time it was very sane and rational thinking.  I was not a very happy person. I missed out on so many things during that time. Granted the stroke was not the only factor. During those times I would ask God or maybe even tell God please only gentle reminders when I would feel myself close to the edge of crazy.

      It has been over three years now that I have come to see God as God. Not this thing that hates me or wishes ill for me. On a very intelligent level I get it. I do. However this child that I am is frightened. All this health stuff over the past few months I keep blowing off as no big deal, trying to put on a brave face, trying to make it all go away by not thinking about it. I keep reaching and reaching but it is hard to grasp the hand of Christ when I am holding on to whatever it is I am holding on to.

      God did not take me those many years ago; he has not taken me this time. I do not have that gut wrenching fear as I once did. On some level I think that this feeling of denial is worse. I don’t want to think about it. I want to get up in the morning take my bath, comb my hair and walk outside and be perfectly able to face the day.  I should be able to do all that and more. I can’t do those things. My heart is not ready for it, but my spirit always is.

     I was praying the other day asking how long all this was going to take. All I got back was time, rest and trust, three of the hardest things for me. Time is short I want things done yesterday. Rest, I would rather be doing for others and not have to have others do for me. Then there’s that last little sneaky word, trust.  All I have to do is trust in a loving Father that has placed loving people in my life that can help care for me in the small things such as brushing out my hair when I cannot; help hold me up when I feel like falling down.  I know that perhaps I need to let the brave face crumble and just go ahead and stop holding back the tears and let it go. There is some fear in letting go and crying. That fear is a lie.  To let go and cry is to trust.                

I am doomed at being me.

      So much of my life is infused with emotions that threaten to overcome me. I take a moment to step outside myself to gain control. To what end do I hope to gain by such actions as these?  Control is nothing more than an illusion, a lie that I tell myself. To what end do I go to fool myself, to pull a veil over my eyes? As blind as I am to what I think is true about myself, my self-perception is nothing more than what I believe I can see reflected in the eyes of others.

    What of the eyes of others? Their sight is as much veiled as my own. Let me not forget my grand illusion of control. For all the good it does me to step outside myself, I must let God step in and stay. If I cannot do this and see my self- worth through the unveiled eyes of God I will forever be doomed at being me.

     As my emotions rage, I am a ship that is tossed in the subsequent tidal waves of the ocean that my emotions have become. They are always reaching to pull me under, no matter how hard I try to steer my vessel around the waves. It matters not the direction I steer for I am trapped and pulled under by the waves.

    If I could just hear the voice of God   telling me, “Be still and know that I am God,” Psalm 41:10.  However I am too much inside my mind. I have placed the captain’s hat upon my head. Even when I do ask God to take the helm, I am still trying to co-captain by shouting my doubts: “Where we going?”  And as if that is not enough I am telling God, “You’re going the wrong way.”  When I try and get still and listen to God I too often only hear my question, “Are we there yet?”

   The control over the vessel is not my own. I cannot captain or co-captain. I can only place the life preserver of Christ around my heart. I must trust in the pure and honest sight of God, that, regardless of the storm, He sees a vessel worthy of love to sail upon a sea of tranquil peace. I will not, and I am not doomed at being me.

Left for Decay

A journey outward and reflections of my inner self: what I was, who I am, what I will be. I have been in an inner struggle with myself for years. I am not sure when it started, perhaps whenever I first became conscious of “self.” Regardless, here I am at the age of forty, still in an inner struggle. I have come to a few conclusions about this. Not all are based in fact, however. All have truth in the simple sense that if I believe something, I give it life enough to become truth to me. The first thing that I need to do is step outside the inside of me. That thought, in and of itself, ignites a fuse, and chaos ensues. I am very fond of the saying, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” However, there is some part of my brain that is miswired and translates this into action: “Break it.” There are things that have happened to me that were well beyond my control. Those are things that will be addressed in time. There are also things where I can blindly see the damage that was done to others as well as to me. I use the term blindly for the simple fact that I have yet to organize the pieces into a clear image. I have seen some amazing pieces of art that have moved me deeply, pieces constructed from nothing more than what was tossed away and left for decay. I want to believe that somehow I can pick up the pieces of myself and cast them into something just as amazing. Yet I am unable to see past the smoke and fragments that cloud the vision I have of myself. How do I begin to gather up what is left and turn myself, my life, into something worth living?