Chapter 13
In this chapter Dr P mostly talks about her first pregnancy and the premature birth of her son and how she found out about the importance of human touch. How babies that are massaged and held so much a day with skin to skin contact go home 45% of the time sooner than preemies who are not. She also talks about how she was alone (her husband was completing their contracts while she was placed on bed rest) and getting worse reports from the Dr's almost daily and she said the only thing God would tell her was that “no matter what happened He would be there for her” and that His grace was sufficient for her. She said she felt so very alone.
This is the story of my life. I stopped wanting pity a very long time ago, but I have to admit that I have seldom felt anything but alone all my life,and not just my adult years. I remember being severely depressed and desolate as far back as 5years old when I started school and my cousins who were my whole world stopped playing with me on Saturdays because they were boys and were discovering school and other friends and girls, and I was so terribly aware that I was being left behind. It was a time in my life when I desperately tried to make everything stay the same and I couldn't do it and the first real desolate depression I remember hit then. From that point on, I can only remember terrible sadness all through my elementary, middle, and in high school I became so depressed all I ever though of and wrote about was killing myself. I didn't want to die, I just wanted to be loved, wanted but others and no one ever really wanted me around. I honestly don't know why unless it was because I was a downer all the time. We don't even want to talk about college LOL. In college things got much worse because I became very hard and angry and was very cynical and harsh. It was the only way I was able to lock all of that pain inside, and I stayed that way for almost 8 years until God decided it was time to call me back to Himself.
So, what she felt for a short time in her life, I have felt for roughly 40 years. How have I survived? Two reasons. 1. God created me with a strength of will that few have any clue about. Even the people who are closest to me, have no real awareness of just HOW strong my will is. God knew what my life would entail and He made sure that I was equipped to face it by giving me an extremely strong sense of self. (That also works against me :) in that it is very hard to die to self when your sense of self is all that has kept you alive for 40 years). I have one of the strongest mental wills of all the people I know and eventually I take responsibility for my own choices. And 2, God tagged me with the Holy Spirit when I was 9 years old at Bible School and even though I didn't really comprehend the all that it involved, I made a choice that God accepted and blessed and made sure that I had a way back for the time in my life when I jumped down the rabbit hole into the darkness.
Then we get on to the power of the human touch and my mind stutters. I have read the book and through a bit of research found that my primary love language is... I bet you will NEVER guess.... touch. I know that I am truly loved when it is accompanied by a touch... on the shoulder, on the head, a hug, etc... In England, my supervisor remarked one day after about a month that I was a “toucher”. She just noted that I was always patting the children's heads and hugging them for a good job or patting them on the shoulder. It is how I express all the love I have inside that I am not allowed to express in words. I can't express it in words because I feel so deeply that when I do express it, history has shown me that people tend to react badly to the intensity of emotion I feel and reject it outright or run away. I have come to the conclusion that most people do not feel the depth of emotion that I do, they can't, there is no way that they can ignore what they ignore and do what they do and feel what I feel. Unless they are as broken as I am.
Dr P says that the value of human touch is almost incalculable, and if that is true then the opposite must also be true, the damage caused by the lack of human touch is also incalculable. Where does that leave me? Profoundly damaged, but still a vessel of God.
Chapter 14
This chapter really made me reflect on the anger and bitterness towards those whom I thought were my friends from the abandonment I felt after my heart attack and recovery. The first sentence was about how a simple note of encouragement or a phone call can make a difference in a difficult time. And all I could think of was how all but 2 people from my church left me alone., abandoned me to suffer and and slowly recover from a MAJOR trauma alone. How my BEST friends (and even now I say it with bitterness and sarcasm) couldn't even be bothered to call me and check on me every day much less bother to come and see me. It is not that I hate these people now, it is that my own sense of self worth has been so completely destroyed that I hurt so much, like an animal in pain I lash out at those around me in response. At the people that are so obviousness to what they have done it only reinforces how unimportant I am … to anyone. We all have this illusion of … if things get REALLY bad that our friends will be there for us.... if is what allows me to accept the frequency of being forgotten or ignored, but when the world fell, no one was there and I had to pick up the pieces alone.
Love, Dr P says is the defining difference we make in any situation big or small. It HAS to be done with love or the offering is worthless. Almost no one did anything for me, defining myself to be worthless. Unworthy of help or affection or comfort, or even the love of a friend. Ultimately I learned that no one cared if I live or die. Ultimately, my life has no meaning to anyone outside of my family and the loss of that life wouldn't really affect or bother anyone. For someone who finds so much of myself in social interactions, this was a soul destroying blow that I don't really know how I will overcome. Right now all I want to do is shut out the world. I have no interest in “making nice” or being friends with anyone, because no one can be trusted to not abandon me when I desperately need them most and I would just rather not ever have to feel that worthless again.
Then Dr P states that a famous person once said, “What seems to be generosity is often disguised ambition, with overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.” Her point she said was that seemingly good things make little difference without love. All too often I fear that this is where the church is operating from. The “meals” they provide some people who get sick are more for show or because it is the more “important” people of the church that has the need. When “important” people in the church have a need, so many people jump in and things get done and meals get provided and help is sent, but let a lesser member of the church, one without family connections or important position have a need and they are ignored and forgotten as soon as possible. It reminds me of the thing Jesus said about jocking for position at the table at the church. I mean isn't this just an example of that. In a much nicer view, I could say that the church has let the world in so much that they are so busy that unless a need affects them personally, they are oblivious to it. And in all honesty, despite my bitterness, this could easily be the case instead. No deliberate bias, but just plan old unconcern because they are too busy being concerned about other things.
Throughout this chapter I kept seeing things that used to mark me as a child. I was such a loving child. I was always aware of birthdays and special dates and always doing things for others that was never returned or reciprocated until I just stopped. And although I did do much of my sacrifices because I loved the people around me, I did it more I think because I was trying to buy their love. I was so desperate for affection and felt so unworthy of it that I desperately tried to buy love and loyalty and friends. I did outgrow the pathetic desperate need to be wanted and loved and I found worth within my self, but there is still the seeds of unworthy deep inside and what happened to me after the heart attack just set them in very fertile ground.
I think that is the crux of what I am struggling with now. My church family and “friends” just proved to me that ultimately I have no worth to them in any way and that my life is irrelevant to theirs and I have forgiven them for not being there, but under it all is the knowledge that ultimately regardless of weather they apologize or not, and many have, they have PROVEN that they really don't care.
It isn't about them anymore. It is about how do I believe that I am worth the air I breath when every one around me (with the exception of Debbie G and Juanita) has shown me exactly what I am worth to them... nothing.
I don't know where to take this from here. This chapter has made me so depressed because I KNOW the truth of what she talks about, but I feel lost and adrift because I know that I didn't get the things she says are so important. It is not about what others did but about how I can find how to move forward when I am still plagued by so much pain and doubt.
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