Chapter 19 & 20 Seeds and Barking Pigs

Chapter 19

Dr P began this chapter talking about how she felt she never had the stick-to-it-ness that women who “made a difference” had. She observed that women who made a difference always stuck with the task they were given no matter what. No matter that it might have seemed impossible or had constant obstacles.

This was when I realized that throughout most of this book I kept finding all the things that I did not have that I would need to be successful at life, but suddenly I have something. I have something that Dr P once felt that she needed. I have stick-to-it-ness. I have the strength and perseverance to keep going even when things get hard. What an amazing realization. I have one of the basic commodities that allows someone to be a person who “matters”. Just imagine what I could do if I felt the overwhelming love of God for His creation with the strength and perseverance of someone who continues, no matter what.

Dr P then talks about how the qualities needed to be a person who makes a difference emerge as we began to make our difference. It is like the fruit of the Spirit. We don't have to TRY and reach for it, we don't have to struggle to find it, it will just come as a result of stepping into the role we choose to step into.

So, the reference here is that if I just start to reach out to “make a difference” then the “love” that I need to feel with come.

Dr P also states that we should never be afraid to feel inadequate. God says in the Bible that it is when we we are at our weakest that He is the strongest. She also reminds us that when we do make a profound difference it is not because of what we have done, but because of the gift He placed in us. THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!! It is NEVER what we do that makes a difference, it is the Holy Spirit in us, the gifts given to us by GOD to minister to the world.

The next thing that jumps out at me is when Dr P talkes about a dream where a woman walks up to Jesus and He asks her what she wants and she replies peace, joy, happiness, and the freedom from fear; not only for herself, but for the whole world. Jesus looks at her in the dream, smiles and says, “I think you misunderstand me. We don't sell fruits, only seeds.” This is what making a difference is really all about. We cannot create the fruits of our gifts, we can only plant the seeds. If we are very lucky, we may be allowed to see some of the harvest that comes from the seeds we planted, but even if we never see them, they are there. Because WE did not make the difference, we just shared the gift God gave to us and HE will make the difference.

Therefore, our whole purpose in life, the total focus of everything we do and say, is to become as Christlike as possible. The qualities that will produce fruit in our lives and the lives of those around us regardless of what “path” we walk will grow independently of anything we do or do not do BECAUSE it does not depend on us.

This is my answer to seeking compassion for others and on how to love. God will have these things “bloom” in my life without my having to work for it. All. ALL I have to do is seek after God with all my heart and everything else will come to me.


Chapter 20

Dr P opens this chapter by talking about how Cinderella's real job was to sit around and wait. She was not a participant in her own life. Then she talks about how an elementary school class puts on a play about Cinderella and one little boy, who was... different... and how he decided that he would be a pig in the play who followed Cinderella everywhere she went with no words only mimicked everything she did. When the teacher told him there was no pig in Cinderella, the small boy replied, “Well there is now.” At the end of the play, Norman, the pig, barked once and then received a standing ovation. It turns out that Norman, the pig, WAS the Cinderella in the play.

Well, there is now. What a life changing statement. After my heart attack I began to process my life and found that I have been “sitting” on so much of WHO I am because I didn't want to take a chance on offending anyone by being who I really am. Because I have been rejected so often by just exposing a piece of myself. What would happen if I truly exposed myself. But after my heart attack I found that I am no longer afraid of being who I really am.

I am different. I march to the beat of a far different drum and there will be an overabundance of people in my life who cannot accept that, but it is time for me to say, Well there is now!!

Dr P also asks if we identify more with Norman, the pig, or the teacher who made a difference by allowing this little boy to be himself and rise to shine. We are both. Sometimes we are the little “different” Cinderella wanting to make a difference in our lives that requires that we say... “Well there is now!!”. And sometimes we are the teacher providing the permission and encouragement and support for someone else to be Cinderella and change their world by saying.. “Well there is now.”

All of us have a Cinderella moment in our lives at some point or another. But it is time to get up off of our hearth, waiting passively for our “prince” to come an rescue us from a life of not making a difference. It is time to recast ourselves as the barking pig and become a participant in our story. As a side note, it is also well established that it is usually when we are in the middle of living that our “prince” whatever that may be, will find us.

Chapter 17 & 18 – Compassionate Witnesses Anyway

Chapter 17

“If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.” Neil Simon.

This is the quote Chapter 17 opens with and Dr. P begins to talk about taking risks. At first, I thought of my self as a risk taker. I mean, no one else I know has the guts to leave everyone and everything they know to fly across the world all alone to a different country. But then she redefined her definition of risk taker as someone who is not afraid to receive a critical comment or not afraid of offending someone. I do not want to be rejected, exposed or hurt so when it comes to my heart I am not a risk taker.

Dr P talks about a person, who was basically a stranger, who went FAR out of her way to just be there for her at a difficult time in her life. I realized then, that once upon a time I was a risk taker. Growing up, my heart was huge. I remembered every birthday of every person I knew, I remembered every major event and knew exactly what my friends and family liked and didn't like in gifts. I gave and gave and gave and no one ever gave back. Before you get the wrong idea, I didn't give to get, (well, mostly :)) but the highlight of what I am describing was my 21st birthday when I invited everyone on our college bus to come to a lakeside party and no one showed up. That was the beginning of the end of my risk taking I think. I just remember sucking it up and hanging out with two friends and not letting them know how I was bleeding inside. I don't think I was rejected as much as I perceived it growing up, being so consumed with depression and self-hatred, but somehow, through the years, the perception became the reality. Perhaps because I began to push people away and put a wall around my heart. And now, I am no where near as closed off as I used to be, but I am still a long way from trusting anyone not to hurt me and after this heart attack I am terrified of letting ANYONE ever again have the power to shred my soul and shatter my heart. But with that desire to protect myself I am struggling to forgive selfish behavior and I have lost my compassion for others.

Dr. P talks about feeling so hurt by other's responses that she didn't want to reach out anymore. She also talked about being so disappointed that she wanted to give up because someone knocked her down because they misread her intentions and motives, but then she said she eventually picked herself up because she realized that God knew her intentions.

That is where I am right now. So hurt and damaged by others that I don't want to do anything except crawl into a hole and pull the dirt in over me. And I have been looked down on by others and misunderstood and misread by people for so long that I don't even know what to do anymore, much less loosing any desire to do the work required to change those perceptions not to mention that I do not think it is the place of the person who is damaged to have to heal themselves. If a person has broken legs, you don't tell them to get up and walk, but people think that they can just demand that people with severe depression “get over it.” If you want to help a disabled person learn to walk, you get them the right tools and provide motivation and encouragement. Why do people find it so hard to do the same for those with broken hearts. I don't have an answer, I just find it sad that both I and so many others are left to grieve and hurt alone when we need tools and motivation and encouragement to face our darkness and overcome it.

Dr P ends the chapter with a quote that I like.

“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good people, will accuse you of selfish ulterior
motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true
enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas
can be shot down by the smallest men and woman
with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor the underdog but only follow top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed
overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you
do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get
kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”


Chapter 18

This chapter is about the need we have for compassionate witnesses. This is not people who will indulge us, but who have made the effort to really get to know us and that we have given “permission” to speak into our lives when a strong word is necessary. Dr P notes that the adage that 'Time heals all things' is not quite true. Time only heals the wounds that are shared and understood. NOTHING can make a greater difference than a friend who not only cares, but really listened and gave positive perspective.

The other important detail Dr P says is that a compassionate friend MUST be available, even when it is not convenient or easy. I figure the only way to be a compassionate friend is to also be aware of the concerns and hopes and fears and MUST be willing to step out and make the first move and extend the hand of compassion and understanding to be able to impart the truth of direction. Without the relationship of trust and compassion, offered words, ESPECIALLY harsh or negative ones (even if they are true) will be rejected because they are spoken outside of love.

I began this with the “righteous” anger of someone who has been betrayed by those I thought were my friends and Christian family, but the truth is that this lesson is for me. When God helps me get my compassion back I want to be the person who goes out of the way to be there for others, like I wished that someone had been there for me. I am not alone in my aloneness, there are others out there who also need people to care, I want to be one of those people not one who is too busy with my own selfish concerns that I leave them out in the cold alone and hungry after saying be warm and be feed. And yes I know there is still tons of poison and bitterness in that, but I am trying to give it to God if for no other reason than I NEVER want to be like them.

Which ultimately means that I HAVE to forgive them truly because THEY are broken and damaged. Their damage is not in their heart but in their minds, they are allowing the world to dictate their lives, not God and therefore I need to be strong for them. I need to make sure that I am in a deep and close relationship with God and listening to whatever He directs me to say and do.

Chapter 15 & 16 Whispers and Timing

Chapter 15

This chapter is about care. Dr. P defines care as a kind of compassion that allows a person to enter your world and feel your pain or joy. Care says that what happens to you, happens to me. Care says that your life makes a genuine difference in my life. When we care, we pay close attention to another person's experiences. We actively listen for ways to be helpful. We take notice and attend to someone else's world as if it were our own.

Caring, Dr P says is so germane, so essential to making a difference, that if often goes unnoticed, in fact if you ask people what matters most in making a difference, care does not often even make the list. But, when you put this quality on a list of traits and ask people to rate it's importance you will always see it near the top. Why? Dr P says that without care, difference making is not possible. The three words, “I don't care” are like a deadly bullet in the heart of any attempt to make a difference.

I will go one step further and say that any action that shows that you “don't care” weather you do or not, is exactly the same as saying “I don't care” and the bullet is still shot from the gun.

Right now in my life, I do not know a single person who shows the concept of care except for their own family or close friends. This includes me. No excuses, I have stopped caring about the people around me like I should. Weather that action feels justified or not, it is not the action that God expects from his people.

I went off last blog about how hurt and angry I was about how I was treated and the lack of “care” I received from my church family and friends, but this time I am going to talk about me and where I fail. She talks about how we need people in our lives to believe in us when we are stuggling to believe in ourselves. People who will encourage us and remind us of a better vision of who we are than the one we currently see. I don't have that and only had it in minute amounts from past friends like Wendy and I think that is a LOT of where I fail now. How much better would I be if I had someone in my life to remind me that I have worth and that God sees me as important. So, the message to me, is who am I providing encouragement to? Who do I provide a vision of themselves as successful to? Right now,I am failing BADLY at that. I have let anger and bitterness guide so much of my words and actions that I have not provided hope to anyone but harsh truth. Truth is good, but there are different ways of providing truth to others and it does not have to be hard and harsh, it can be done with kindness and love. In FACT, if Truth is not delivered with real love, then it will be more harmful than helpful. God NEVER sends His truth without His complete and total love.

Dr P talks about a friend that randomly buys the meals of the customer behind them at the drive through as a way of expressing care and another friend who know her friend was going from grief to anger and was not going to let her friend face that alone and without a way to express it which she desperately needed it. It is easy for us to offer “care” to those we naturally love... our families, and close friends, but how many of us offer “care” to complete strangers or casual friends. How many of us actually “love” the people around us.

Dr P ends the chapter with a reflection on anything being more important than a caring friend who cares enough about you to find out what you need and lavishes you with love? Someone who hurts when you hurt and is willing to enter into your world in order to say and do just the right thing? Which actually reminds me of today's sermon. Jack talked about our being willing to repent when we need to repent and how it is just as important to accept forgiveness when we need to accept that we are forgiven. When we need help, we must be willing to accept that help, weather it is a word of encouragement, a couple of dollars, or a ride somewhere.

Chapter 16

Dr P talks about how she shut out her father for over a decade and was afraid that it might be too late to rebuild the bridges between them after all that time and how it wasn't too late and the healing begin after over 10 years of bitterness and pain. Her point, it is never too late to began the process of care and rebuilding broken relationships.

She makes a point of saying that there is a process of grief and anger that usually has to be worked though before beginning to reconcile relationships, otherwise I question how you can truly work to reconcile relationships with love if you are still consumed with hate or resentment or anger.

She ends the chapter with a note that most of us if not all of us have a relationship loose end that needs to be mended or perhaps we closed a door too soon on an opportunity to do good for someone. She asks what tugs at your heart when we read this chapter and do we put off a difference making opportunity because we fear that we have missed out chance or that too much time has passed and she says that time is no barrier to making a difference and to reconciling a lost relationship.

Chapters 13 & 14 Human Touch and Ultimate Good

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.

Psalm 20 - NIV

For the director of music. A psalm of David.

1 May the LORD answer you when you are in distress;
may the name of the God of Jacob protect you.
2 May he send you help from the sanctuary
and grant you support from Zion.
3 May he remember all your sacrifices
and accept your burnt offerings.
Selah
4 May he give you the desire of your heart
and make all your plans succeed.
5 We will shout for joy when you are victorious
and will lift up our banners in the name of our God.
May the LORD grant all your requests.
6 Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed;
he answers him from his holy heaven
with the saving power of his right hand.
7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
8 They are brought to their knees and fall,
but we rise up and stand firm.
9 O LORD, save the king!
Answer us when we call!

Do NOT read if you want to hear joy and happiness

What is WRONG with me??? I HATE living! Life is intolerable and it has been since I was 13 years old. I can’t stop crying and I am crying so hard I have given myself a headache. I don’t even want to know WHY anymore, I just want it to end. I could have died TWICE and I was made to keep living this horrid hateful pain filled existence.


I am tired of pretending I am quirky and happy all the time just to shut up the people who can’t deal with anyone who isn’t perky and happy happy happy. They make me sick. There is so much anger and hurt and bitterness all boiling inside me. And it is all being stirred with a huge stick of loss.


I have lost too much, when I didn’t have enough to start with. I just want to scream and scream and scream until my physical heart is overtaxed and QUITS for good! Why not, my emotional and spiritual heart is shattered beyond repair and I am totally at a loss as to why the physical one keeps beating when there is nothing inside to fuel it.


I can’t even escape into dreams anymore. Sleep will not come and dreams elude me. And up in His Holy Untouchable House, God sits silently and allows it all. I am so damaged I am useless to Him and His Kingdom, but He doesn’t seem to care other than to force me to live. I want to believe that He truly loves me as an individual, but the truth seems more to be that some of us were born to be cannon fodder. Extra baggage to be thrown beneath the tanks in the battle. Course, I don’t even get to be cannon fodder, I HAVE to keep breathing and my heart keeps to keep beating when I just wish it would stop.


Life is dark and hopeless and there is no light in the distance. There is no light anywhere. The lights provided by beloved friends was will-o-wisps that led me only deeper into the miry swamp only to disappear when I became in desperate need of them to find my way. My “friends” LEFT me, literally left me to die alone because they didn’t care enough to find out if I lived or died. That is what my life is worth. The people who I would have done ANYTHING for, couldn’t be bothered to even call to see if I was still alive after a massive heart attack.


The pain is so great I can’t even breathe through it anymore. I feel like I am going crazy and mind is shattering to match the state of my heart. I am lost, lost to all hope now. Pretending to the world that I am fine, that life is a series of funny quips, and that I still march to the beat of a different drum, when in truth, the drums have long been silent now and the sound of marching merely an echo from the past. My actual footsteps now are mostly silent except for the soft sound of the foot deep mud releasing my feet as I struggle to make another step in a quagmire of hopeless empty sad loneliness.


Yeah I know, so cheerful isn’t it? Well I can be a hypocrite or I can tell the truth. If you don’t want to hear it, don’t read it. I have had a belly full of “friends” who threw me away at the one REAL time in my life that I needed them. So be it, I have NO ONE and the really sad part is that I have obviously NEVER had anyone, because the label of friend and best friend was so obviously lies to begin with. It is better to walk alone than to believe in people who really don’t care anyway.

set like stone

It’s so weird. One day I am actively seeking more ways to connect to other Christians and to learn more and the next I don’t really care if I live or die. Not suicidal by any means, but I just have no interest in living anymore.

I always used to whine and cry that I was broken and worthless and nobody wanted me blah blah blah. Yeah, whatever, but now I really believe it and I am not crying into my milk over it, I have just accepted that I am broken. That whatever God wants with me (of which I have no clue other than the basics) He does have a plan, but I can’t see or hear it.

Something shattered in my soul after my heart attack. Something in me that always held out hope, even when no one reflected that hope, it was still there holding on to the hope that someday someone would care. That if I was REALLY in trouble, they would respond. They would come to me. But they didn’t and I had to face a reality that I truly have no worth to anyone in this world other than a casual relationship. I broke. The hope broke. There is no more false belief in my “friends” and no more hope that tomorrow will be better. But I also accept that it is not my time to die. So I sit here in the dark, after years of being in the dark and alone and know that no one is coming and that no one really cares and I have no hope that it will ever be different. And I don’t know what to do.

I go to church and I make the right motions but I have no real connection to anyone other than Debbie. I go hoping to find God there, but I haven’t felt His presence there in a long long time. May be me, or may not be. I just keep going because I don’t know what else to do and I cannot tolerate being preached doctrine instead of the Bible like they did at the Baptist church I went to. AND I do love the kids at my church.

I go to work and smile while I am shattered inside. I sit in my office in the mornings a fight not to break into hard sobbing tears of hopelessness. I walk from class to class and try to help my kids survive in an education system designed by an asinine government to fail them.

I walk after work every day and I eat the right foods and take my meds and I drift through the endless hopeless days. I come home each night to an empty house and sometimes go for days not talking to another person. I eat alone, I watch TV alone, I read books (lots and lots of books) alone, I sit on my computer for hours and hours waiting… hoping, someone will post something on FB just so I can interact with someone. Sometimes I feel like screaming at the emptiness on those days when I am tired of reading and watching mindless endless tv.

One of the blogs I was reading today when I googled where does God want me to go was about God not so much directing our every step as being a part of everything we do. It made since of something David said all those years ago about God not caring where we went to college as long as we took Him with us. The bloger went on to say that God put wants in us for goals and dreams for us to pursue and that we are to take Him with us in pursuit of our dreams and goals. His next question was, “What do you want?” I am going to try and answer that here and see if God will reveal anything to me.

1. I want to be married. I am a social creature, created by God to need social contact. Give by God a HUGE heart to love in deep and permanent ways. So, I want to love someone and to be loved by someone. I want to belong to someone and have someone who wants to belong to me.

2. I want to be of worth to the kingdom of God in a major way. I want God to look down and say, “Whom shall we send?” So I can reply, “Send me!”

3. I want to travel. I love seeing the world, especially Europe and the American West. But the truth is without the 1st want this would be a hollow journey.

All three of these wants have major barriers. World barriers that only can be breached by the Grace of God. Now I not only have the barrier of being fat and unattractive, but I am now damaged as well. No one in their right mind would love me now. Worth to the kingdom of God? He doesn’t even consider me of worth enough to send anyone to me from my church of 15+ years when I needed them. And Travel. The student loans and medical debt will take years of diligent work to pay off. By the time I am done, I will no longer be able to travel and that will be just one more dream unfulfilled.
I am done writing now. My head is echoing with the empty hopelessness of it all and I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t, but I have no other options and will face forward without hope and set my face to walk to walk down my own trail of tears fearing only empty death and loss as my future.

Choices (now poem I am working on)

I come into your presence here
With shattered heart and soul
At the end of all I am
Longing to be whole.

All the wisdom of this world
Leads to an empty grave
You alone my only hope
You alone can save.

So Father, now I come to You
Forgive my doubts and fears
Forgive the sins I’ve held so long
Forgive my wayward years.

Save me from the emptiness
Lift me from this strife
Fill me with your presence
Holy Spirit, Take my life.

Breathe your breath of life in me
Make me something new,
Change my heart and fill me with
Desire for only You.

God of Glory, Hope, and Joy
Mercy , Peace, and Love
Take my life and make it Yours
Fill me from above.

Rebecca Franklin07/27/10

Little Alters

From Malachi:

* If God is my Father, am I showing Him the Honor of that position?
* Have I honored Him with my actions AND my lips?
* If a sacrifice does not cost me anything, it is not a sacrifice!
* The value of the things we do may never been seen here, but they WILL be seen
someday.
* God promises to return to us, if we return to Him when we go astray, but the
Holy Spirit NEVER leaves us, even when we sit in silence.

From Ezekiel 36&37:

* The valley of Dry Bones was empty and dead with no life when God breathed it
into them.
* It is not about healing a broken person, it is about recreation through the
breath of God.
* I can't make myself new, but I can make better choices in preparation of God
making me new and hold on to the faith that He will.

* The weapon being used is not important - it is the Spirit behind the weapon that
carries the power.
* It is not the "job" that I am doing that is important, but the Spirit in which I
carry out my duties that carries the power of God.
* Samson killed thousands with the jawbone of a donkey.
* Regardless of the ass's jawbone I am using due to the state's stupidly, how many
children can I help anyway because the Spirit of God is in me?

I am not here. I have a long way to go to make these a living part of my life, but seeing is the first step and accepting is the second, so I only have the 3rd step of reconciling to go. I accept, I repent, and I will try to change while waiting for God to recreate me. I have been hurt for so long and betrayed by those I loved most, and those things are not just going to disappear, but I have been given a vision of what I have neglected and I need to change what I can. I cannot change the actions of others and I cannot change how much it hurts, but I can focus on other roads and let God enter and not just heal my broken heart and soul, but recreate me by breathing His life into my dry bones.

I am a long way from where I should be, but I am not where I once was, lost in a dark and sinister world of witchcraft and bitterness and hatred. It has been a long road, and full of hurt and betrayal, but in the worst place it was still better than having no hope. Drifting in a dark nightmare is still hard, but with God, at least there is an anchor to hold on to while being beaten a battered by life. It still isn't fun, but you at least have the hope that it means something somewhere somehow.

Heartbeat

I found a plateau. The spiral stopped spinning and I was able to face my feelings and start looking up. Arming myself with Malachi and Ezekiel I accepted some truths and made some decisions. Then, as I started to reach to climb up, the sides fell in. Doesn’t change the fact that I need to make some changes in my life, but right now it hurts so much I can’t breathe. And the friendships of the past truly slip away on secret feet that trip in the light.

Heartbeat

In a single heartbeat the truth is reveled.
The bonds of love and friendship fall
Like luminance raindrops of shimmering glass
With soundless explosions they shatter on the ground
Filling the air with the buzz of countless shards
Shooting into their target of soft tissue and bone
Not strong enough to kill, but leaving no place untouched
When the last tear falls there is only the darkness
That eats at the broken and bleeding soul
With punctured lungs and still beating heart.

03/14/10

I don’t know what tomorrow holds; right now I just have to get through today.
One breath at a time, one tear at a time, until I can once again face the endless night. No fault but my own in loving too much and trusting in anyone other than God. For in the end all friendships fade leaving behind only empty memories carried by the ones who are left behind.

Last post update

I don't know what to do or not do. Since my last post, I received an email from someone I care greatly about and she pretty much ripped me apart. I spoke with someone I trust to steer me truly and that helped me get control of the water coming in thorough the hole my friend punched in my side. And now, I sit here and think that perhaps it is time to let go. I don't know if I will be able to do it very well, I have never been able to do it in the past, but I do love my friends and it seems that our friendship has outlived it's use in their lives, so God help me I am truly going to try very hard to let them go. I think this will be only traumatic to me, because I feel like to them, they are already gone. So is life. Well, my life anyway.

And for the record, I still love you guys, not that you will ever see this or ever know, but I do and I don't want to hurt anyone anymore. This is about me, but it is mostly about trying to do what is best for you guys.

Finite

Life moves on - trying to find peace in pain by putting it in words

It has been a while since I posted anything and I thought now was as good a time as any.

I went to CR tonight with no real understanding of why I continue to go. I mean, it is really a great place for the people who need it, but I just can’t find where it does anything for me. I have been going because it was somewhere that I could contribute and help others by playing my flute and singing in the choir. The “sharing” times don’t help me at all. I have never been one to “hide” my thoughts or emotions so there is no real “release” in getting them out. I am finding, after 40 something years of being a wide open person, that not letting the people around me see what is really going on makes everybody happier. It makes them happy to see that I don’t talk about any dark and overwhelming thing and they can go on with their lives (not that they wouldn’t have done that anyway, but I give them the benefit of the doubt to think that they at least would have felt bad for me) J. Truth is, people don’t want to know. They do not want to hear anything sad or negative or whatever, so I am learning to not tell them. And it is HARD!! Let me tell ya. I was not made to keep things inside, but I am getting better at it.

Now, I went to CR thinking perhaps it would be the last time because it might be time to quit, but once again (it happens every bloody time) when I get on stage, something changes. I cannot explain it except to say that I just get happy and funny. I will admit that I like the fact that the others think I am a bubbly and funny person who always has a smart remark or quip to keep everyone laughing, but no matter how I walk in the building, weather sad, or angry, or just blah, something happens when I step on stage and I just fall in love with playing and singing all over again. It may also have to do with the fact that I know I am wanted up there. That my voice and my flute are welcome additions to the choir does make me feel happy, but it is beyond that. I believe it is supernatural enabling of God. Not sure why, but I think He is what reaches into my soul and for that time on stage changes me. Sometimes the feelings go with me when I step down and sometimes they don’t, but I keep going back for the joy I feel in being a wanted part of something ministering to others.

Now, daily life has not been so good this week. I am in the downhill fall toward my birthday, which is rarely a happy event for me and work and school are very stressful as well. I just continue to struggle and hope that everything turns out ok for these last two classes for my MA. I am so proud of what I have accomplished, everyone things school is so easy for me, but they don’t know how much I work for it. Add to that, the personal responsibility I take on my shoulders concerning my job and how I struggle with feelings of low worth due to a job I did not ask for working in conditions that are not conducive to really making a difference in students, which is why I became a teacher. I take some of my sense of self from my career and when the government ties your hands to prevent you from truly making something work, I take it as a personal sense of non accomplishment. I HATE doing things that I consider a waste of time, and I seem to be doing a lot of it this year.

On the personal level, I feel my last friends slipping away. Something is going on and I don’t know what, but I know there is something I am not being told. One is understandably drifting away due to location and lifestyle changes in family circumstances. Another seems to have just stopped talking to me. After years of being in tune with each other on a special level, she just seems to be done with me. I don’t know if it has to do with something I have done, something she is going through, or something that she just can’t face telling me, I just wish it would change back, cause I miss my friend. And the last, I don’t even know how to address the loss of the last leg of my trio. I let myself fall in love, which I know was stupid and a mistake, but I thought he would be able to handle my stupidly without letting it mess up our friendship. I was wrong. He didn’t walk away, he ran. Apparently, me loving is a bad thing that nobody wants. And the really heartbreaking part is that I just want my friend back. He used the excuse that he would not have time to communicate, but the reality is that he chooses not to. He has time to do other things and talk to other friends, but not me and he is a fool if he thinks I don’t know that. If he would just talk to me, and occasionally let me know that we are still friends, I would be ok with that, but the silent treatment is exactly what Zak did before and reminds me that I am worse than someone who is hated, because I am not even worth acknowledgement of existence. Even dislike means you occasionally think of someone, but distant unconcern is like being told you are no more than dust beneath their feet. Not even worth a 2-minute email or short text. But to be honest, there was only one person in my life who has ever really treated me like a friend. Only she has ever wanted to be my friend enough to give me the social contact that I needed to feel wanted and a part. Everyone else had “forgotten” or just didn’t care enough to give me that tiny bit of social contact that I so desperately need and without my reaching out to them, most would have just let it go like it never mattered at all. Huh, maybe it never did.

Did I do it? I don’t know. I feel like I did, but no one will talk to me, so I can only assume it is my fault somehow. Is there something so damaged and wrong with me that no one wants to reach out to me and be my friend? If I don’t reach out, will I continue to fall into the dark alone and be forgotten by everyone? Sigh, I just don’t know anymore and I don’t want to make them be nice to me if they don’t want me around anymore. I just wish I didn’t feel so alone.

I feel totally rejected at the moment, by everyone I have ever loved. Not one of them has contacted me in weeks. I just don’t matter to them anymore I guess. Fair enough, people move on I guess, I just wish I could let go as easily as they do. I wish I didn’t care.
I hurt so much right now; all because the people I love more than my own life, have left me behind, without so much as a backward glance. Three friendships that I would have sworn that I would never loose no matter what, gone, drifted like smoke on the wind because they didn’t care enough for my friendship to hold on to it. So, what does that make me? God is still here, and I am SOOOO grateful for that, but I still hurt and the saddest part is that there is no one left to tell it too except a black page and an empty blog. I am so pathetic; I can’t even stand me right now. lol.

Trying to find the way out

First let me say, this is dispairing and dark and not happy and hopeful, so fair warning for those looking for the lighter side. This is not about asking for comments or help, this is just the only way I could think of to release intensity and it at least provides me with the illusioin of friends that are still here. So read this knowing that I don't want peppy little comments or condolances from people who think that they have done their Christian duty by making a comment and thus made some kind of difference. I know that seems harsh, but the time for empty words is over. To be honest, I don't expect anything from anyone. Everybody has their life and their needs and their issuses, mine are just mine and honestly, I don't think anyone but God is going to be able to address mine.
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Keep it hidden, keep it personal, keep it in the family, keep it to yourself…. I used to think that if I shared the pain that overwhelms me at times that it would make it easier to deal with. That sharing the sadness would make it less somehow. I have no idea if that worked or not, but times and places and people have changed so much I have no one to share it with now, so the point it moot. So I come here to pour out all the pain and sorrow and anguish to a world that doesn’t really care either and hasn’t got the time to deal with any distress but their own. Fair enough I guess, oh what the hell am I saying, it is not fair at ALL but it is the way it is.

Sometimes the pain and sorrow crushes me to the point that I cry until my head is spinning. Not silent pathetic tears, but loud anguished and hopeless sobs. No one hears them, except Jesus and at the moment all I know about that is that he could make it better, but he doesn’t, therefore he must feel that I deserve it too. Bad enough that you are subject to sadness that you don’t deserve, but to be such a screw up that you do deserve it and will never have anything but despair. What do you do when you feel that even Jesus has deserted you to pain so great you cannot even catch your breath.

I sit here, typing as a flood of tears soaks my shirt and my heart squeezes tighter and tighter until I wish it would stop. Most of the time I am ok living on a hope that tomorrow will be better and it will not always be this way, but I am drowning right now. Dear GOD I am drowning and there is no one to care. Nowhere to go and no one to call. I am too high maintenance emotionally for friends to stick around. Even those who once called me friend don’t want to deal with the title-wave of pain and sorrow. And the rest, the rest is silence lol, self-righteous people who have NO CLUE and cannot even imagine the weight of what keeps me from taking a deep breath. I actually like that they keep their mouths shut, because silence is better than the platitudes of the “holy” masses that would say “get over it” or “cheer up.” Even the thought of those people makes me want to puke.

Is this life, well it certainly seems to be mine? Is this a spiritual attack, possibly, but I am so buried that I can’t even breathe, much less fight a battle, especially a battle that I cannot see how I could possibly win. I never win. For 40 years I have lost this battle and I don’t want to see the battleground anymore. I don’t want to see tomorrow under the same hopeless skies. There seems to be no way out. I say seems, because I know that in the end, I am not so much giving up as desperately trying to find a way to write myself out of this hell hole of pain and hopelessness. It doesn’t seem to matter, nothing matters more than getting another breath and even that desperation starts to fade as time passes and the despair doesn’t end.

Do I want people saying poor me? No I do not. Do I want people to give me platitudes or promises that they can’t deliver and God doesn’t promise me? Hell no. Do I want my family to see the utter darkness I am trapped in? No, there is no point in hurting those who are happier without knowing. Their knowing will not end this pain; therefore there is no point in telling anyone. Why am I posting this on a blog then? I guess somehow, somewhere deep inside me it is the only way I have left to ask for help. Those who have left me are gone and are not coming back and long distance destroys everything over time. I know there are 1 or 2 of you that might read this, and I apologize for that. I don’t know how to explain that I really am sitting here unable to get a good breath from the pain that is ripping through my mind. You have your own lives and issues and don’t need to worry about mine. And those I love most have stopped caring because it was too much effort. I don’t blame them, but I stagger under the pain of that loss on top of the hopeless agony I am already buried under.

God, if I could just breathe. If I could just stop crying long enough to find something to hold on to. I love you God and I know Your word says that You filter everything we go through both good and bad. But God, this hurts so much and I just can’t face it. I am sorry I am such a failure. I try to build up some sort of pride in the fact that You have me walk alone, endlessly and always alone, and sometimes I succeed in that, but today all I want is for it to end. I see love through the window, but I cannot enter without Your opening the door and You just stand there showing me what I cannot have, and giving me no alternative. And You know I am not speaking of a specific person (for anyone reading this) and I don’t want love for love’s sake, I simply want to belong somewhere, to someone. I am so very tired of drifting upon an empty endless sea.

I am tired of talking, I am too tired to cry anymore, (still can’t breathe lol) but at least now the numbness is setting in and the pain is settling to it’s normal background roar. I am tired, so very very tired. No more daydreams no more hope… at least not for the moment. Now, I will just curl up on the couch and softly cry into the darkness until I fall asleep.

It is kind of funny that the “big” issues and “political” ideas that I have discussed at length with friends and family all seem so pointless and empty now. Finish college, not finish college, leave, go, it just doesn’t matter. If I have to do it alone, it doesn’t matter where I live or what I do, it is all sound and fury… signifying… nothing.