Live With Desire

How To Be Superwoman...or not

After reading my best friend's "rant" about a blog she found, I went in search of said blog out of sheer morbid curiosity. For anyone who read her post, yes, it was as bad as she said.

My thoughts took a somewhat different turn as I skimmed through this very homeschooley, very homemakey blog. First I laughed - the all-too-familiar super-spiritualizing about cooking, cleaning, and changing diapers does that to me. Makes me laugh. I didn't think I would read anything that made me feel remotely guilty. I have long dispensed with thought patterns that hold up the do-it-all perfect homemaker/wife/mom as something to be admired, much less emulated.

But something else started getting to me as I read through the pages; another familiar voice. The voice that reminds us to "be good and do good." The voice that tells us that nothing we do will ever, ever be enough. The voice that tells us that we should strive, through our behaviors, to be perfect - that this is how we show our love for God. The blogger even quoted Spurgeon:

We ought to be Martha and Mary in one: we should do much service, and have much communion at the same time.

I know this girl's intentions are good. I know she has a heart for God. I know because she reminds me so much of my self, the self I used to be. Consumed in lists, like this one -

• How can I make my devotions more fruitful?
• What is one area I can grow in godliness?
• What is one family relationship I want to give more attention to this season?
• Am I using my gifts to serve in my local church?

Feeling good about yourself and your relationship with God if you check off everything on your list...feeling distant from God if you don't. And of course the list has very little on it to nourish yourself; it's all about serving your husband, keeping the household running smoothly, cooking healthy meals. It's all about doing, striving, working, serving.

And not a bit about resting, communing, loving, or being.

It made me laugh. But it also made me cry.

It was this perception that God wants our constant activities that led me down many paths that eventually led to complete burnout, emotionally and physically. Even now, as I am clawing my way back to health, my throat constricts and my heart begins to beat faster whenever I read something like this. I recall Jesus saying something about how his burden is light, and a bruised reed he does not break, but this kind of living feels very burdensome, and I know I'm not the first person it has broken.

Not surprisingly, the blog in question praised highly a book I ran across recently titled "Shopping For Time: How To Do It All and NOT Be Overwhelmed." I had looked it up on Amazon, again out of sheer morbid curiosity (do I have too much time on my hands or what?!) - and was appalled at the content of the sample pages. The book (at least, what I gathered from the sample pages) defines "walking not as unwise, but as wise" as carefully planning out every hour of your day to emphasize maximum productivity for God. Already tired women are encouraged to join the "5 am" club in order to "do" their daily quiet time and still do all the rest.

Now, some might think 5 am is godly, and still others might need to rise at 5 am simply to get through their day, but for some people (read: me) this would kill them. Quite literally.

I won't go into adrenal health here, since it's not the topic of this post, but suffice it to say: the adrenal glands (that handle our stress and activity and well-being) rest, repair, and heal themselves between 10 pm and midnight, and between 7 and 9 am. For many of us overworked, tired out, burned out women (who got that way by trying to "walk as wise, not as unwise") sleep during those hours is crucial.

For years I measured my spirituality and relationship with God according to how much I did. How much I prayed, how much I studied the Bible, how much I evangelized, how much I served others, how much I accomplished during the day, how much I studied.

For years I defined myself by all those things. By all those things I did.

In the last two years my "doing" has been taken away from me. I have chafed, and watched some very dear dreams sit on the shelf, but in so many ways this has actually been a relief. Scary - to be sure. If I am what I "do" and my relationship with God is measured by what I "do", what the hell am I...who the hell am I...when I am not doing anything?

For the last two years it seems that God has been asking one thing from me. But it is not another burden. It is to relinquish all burdens - to rest. It is hard, to let go of my doing, to let go of defining myself my lists and accomplishments.

But I've realized that he doesn't really want all that. I truly believe God isn't so interested in what we do. I don't think that after we are saved, his primary job in our life is to reform our behavior, or to make sure our days are filled with as much productivity as possible.

No...I think he wants our hearts. Our very being.

It's possible to be Martha....scurrying around "doing" things for Jesus....and never be Mary, sitting at his feet. Who did Jesus praise? And when did he ever say that we should be both Mary AND Martha?

It is still hard for me not to think that a good life is a life in which I am frenetically busy doing many wondrous things for God and for other people. Harder still to know that I have value apart from anything I might do...even those things I want to do.

My relationship with God doesn't have all the bells and whistles it once did. I do very little for him.

But for the first time, I'm starting to believe that he delights in me. Just me. Not all my doing, or striving, or purposing. Me. My heart. His redeemed creation. His daughter. I reflect him best not by trying to do a million things, but rather - by living loved, and being able to turn around and give that love to others.

What a relief and a rescue from the world of "trying to do it all and NOT be overwhelmed."

Pilgrim of Sorrow

This is how I feel right now...

I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow, I'm tossed in this wide world alone. No hope have I for tomorrow; I've started to make Heaven my home. Sometimes I am tossed and driven, Lord, Sometimes I don't know where to roam. I've heard of a city called Heaven; I've started to make it my home.

-Traditional African American Spiritual

Ministry Would Be Great if it Weren't For All the People

Sadly true.

Church-Hate?

This post by Naked Pastor is worth reading, especially for anyone who thinks that having doubts about the church means that we have animosity towards it.

Objectification

I've been thinking a lot lately about the objectification of women. I don't know why; it just keeps coming up. Maybe it has to do with having teenage sisters and worrying about them growing up in a culture that, for all its feminism and forward progress, doesn't often value women as more than objects. Maybe it has to do with still being a "newlywed" and encountering much of the "objectification" of spouses that goes on in many marriage books. Some things I've just stumbled across, like a blog discussion about modesty (here and here) and a book titled "The Lolita Effect." Mike has also encountered some streams of thought through the men he works with.

It's had the cumulative effect of making me really think about the general objectification of women.

I used to think the objectification of women was fairly narrow. We're an advanced culture; women can get pretty much any job they want now, and while the debate continues to rage as to whether they're getting equal pay, it is no longer uncommon to find women who are lawyers, doctors, scientists, and soldiers - jobs once the domain of men. Women can get the best education in the world. Women are allowed to vote.

Yet despite all this progress, has very much changed since the day when women were chattel, bought and sold, owned by husbands and fathers?

Consider:

• Conversations my husband Mike had recently on a business trip. The men he traveled with and spent time with on his trip were admittedly from a certain culture (think inner city/gang/crime/join the Army to avoid jail time), but their attitudes towards women were appalling. They talked about "keeping their women in line", and while they all admitted to extramarital affairs, they said they would kill (yes, kill) their wife if she ever had an affair...basically, they felt that they "owned" their women.
•  From an article on Salon.com with the author of The Lolita Effect: "Girls are always supposed to be changing their bodies and dressing up in order to attract male attention. There is not much emphasis on girls enjoying their own bodies, or even any reciprocity where boys might be thinking about what they could do to please girls. It's not very mutual."
• Why are the headlines on popular magazines like Cosmo always geared towards how to please men, as if it is our role in life as women?

Those are examples from "out there in the world." I could probably list a dozen more - the sex industry is an obvious one - from porn to prostitution to child trafficking. The impossible physical standard of beauty women are expected to attain. Seriously, what real woman wears a size zero, and is the drive to be unhealthfully thin that much different than footbinding in a Chinese culture that valued small feet? The expectation on women to have a successful career AND have a beautiful, well-kept home, well-behaved kids, and a gourmet dinner on the table every night. All those things point to a view of women as Stepford Wives, beautiful sex goddesses who make money AND cook.

What do we learn about women by looking at modern media and cultural portrayals and expectations?

That we are objects for the enjoyment and use of men, and that we are expected to be superwomen.

But I think the truly disturbing thing to me is seeing the same thing in the Christian community. Objectification of women is not just "out there in the world." It's right here at home too.

Consider:

• The woman who is told at her wedding that she has been a strong, capable, independent woman in the past, but now she will have to place her needs and desires and dreams under those of her husband, and follow what God has given HIM to do. (I'm not making this up, I heard this at a real wedding.)
• The popular Christian marriage book that tells women that it's normal for their husband to "need" them to retain the same body shape she had when they got married. For forever. Through children, metabolic changes, and menopause. And if she doesn't? Well then, she's just willfully not meeting her husband's needs.
• From a blog titled "Families Against Feminism": "Of course she is extremely gifted and talented, but the beautiful part is how she uses her God-given abilities to constantly minister to the needs of others. If someone is sick? She's there with a meal. A new baby? There with a meal, maybe a pretty quilt, or other sweet homemade treat. Having a hard week and she hears about it? They are there. Elderly neighbor needs help? There. Post office clerk who needs a gesture of love? She's there with cookies. That's the essence of the gospel. "
• The wife who says that she told her husband her opinion about a decision but follows it up with "of course it's his decision to make." Why?
• The fact that very nearly all messages/sermons I've heard directed at women talk about two things: modesty and submission.
• Speaking of modesty, being told as a woman in the Christian world that I am a "siren" who, if I don't cover up properly, will provoke my brothers into sin. In short, I am responsible for their sin.

The essence of the gospel? Really? Being superwoman is the essence of the gospel? Funny, I thought it had something to do with Christ being the cure for sin so that we could come near to the Father.

I've written about submission in the past. But the whole modesty thing is something I've just started thinking about in a new light given the recent blog discussions on the topic. I always knew there was something about the way we approached it that bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on it until recently.

I think the way modesty is commonly approached in Christian circles - "you shouldn't wear that because it'll make some man lust after you" objectifies both women and men.

It basically says to the woman, "Look, your body is inherently tempting (dirty even, in some circles.) So you've basically got to hide your shape and cover most of your skin, or you're responsible for the thoughts men have about you."

It says to the man, "Look, we know that you're basically a brute who can't control where his mind goes when a beautiful woman walks by."

Both men and women are reduced to something less than fully human.

And this approach ignores the fact that modesty is cultural and within time (as opposed to timeless.) In some cultures, an ankle or a neck is considered sexually provocative. What is considered appropriate attire is not a moral absolute.

That's not to say that modesty isn't a Biblical concept (I loved Sonja's thoughts about manipulating people by the way we dress), but rather that the way that it is framed in the church today is missing the point completely.

• Women (and especially girls) are told by our culture that they need to dress a certain way because they are objects for the use and enjoyment of men.
• Women (and especially girls) are told by the church NOT to wear certain clothes because as objects for the use and enjoyment of men they hold the power to make men sin.

• Women are told by our culture that they need to have a successful career, a perfect home, and model children to be considered a "real woman."
• Women are told by the church that they need to constantly minister to the needs of others, bringing meals, knitting blankets, baking cookies, in order to be considered a "Proverbs 31 woman."

• Women are told by our culture that they need to strive after gaunt, unhealthy thinness in order to be considered beautiful - in order to be worth something.
• Women are told by the church that they need to meet their husband's needs by maintaining the body they had at the time they got married.

• In parts of our culture, it is considered acceptable for men to sleep around before and after marriage, while virginity and faithfulness are expected of women (because women exist for the use of the men.)
• In the church, women are expected to "meet their husband's sexual needs" as if they had none of their own.

• In parts of our culture, men talk about "keeping their women in their place."
• In the church, we tell women to be followers, to be less than their husbands.

The fact is, I fail to see the difference between the root issue in how society treats woman and how the church often treats women. (As an aside, it is clear that there is equally wrong objectification of men going on, but I'm focusing on women because I am one and it's a little closer to my heart.)

Why? Why do we have to objectify people in order to understand them, control them, manipulate them, make sure they do the right things, look the right way, whatever?

Why is it so hard to look at another human being, male or female, with respect and grace and understanding that this is "another myself", someone as equally valuable and equally flawed as I am myself?

Why do we make ourselves feel better by subjugating others, by requiring things of others that they could never live up to?

We do we often treat ourselves as less than human by voluntarily objectifying ourselves by participating in systems that don't value human beings for, well, being human beings?

Monday Dinner

Menu for tonight's dinner:

• Garden Salad with Homemade Raspberry Vinaigrette
• Grass Fed Buffalo Short Ribs braised with vidalia onions in homemade beef stock and a splash of red wine
• Baby Red Potatoes served with Raw Butter from Grass-Fed Cows

It really is true - real food just tastes so much better.

A Self in Relationship

"When these two life forces for individuality and togetherness are expressed in balanced, healthy ways, the result is a meaningful relationship that doesn't deteriorate into emotional fusion. Giving up your individuality to be together is as defeating in the long run as giving up your relationship to maintain your individuality. Either way, you end up being less of a person with less of a relationship."

"Differentiation is your ability to maintain your sense of self when you are emotionally and/or physically close to others - especially as they become increasingly important to you."

"True inderdependence requires emotionally distinct people."

"When we have little differentiation, our identity is constructed out of what's called a reflected sense of self. We need continual contact, validation, and consensus (or disagreement) from others. We develop a contingent identity based on a 'self-in-relationship.' Because our identity depends on the relationship, we may demand that our partner doesn't change so that our identity won't either."

"People whose identity is primarily dependent upon their relationship don't facilitate the development of those they love. They lose their identity when others change."

"Differentiation occurs by maintaining yourself in the presence of important persons, not by getting away from them."

"What I'm describing is mutuality. Differentiation is the key to mutuality; as a perspective, a mind-set, it offers a solution to the central struggle of any long-term relationship: going forward with your own self-development while being concerned with your partner's happiness and well-being."

~David Schnarch, "Passionate Marriage"

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Mike and I have started reading through a book called "Passionate Marriage". Makes for some nice evenings curled up on the couch. (And I'm thinking, hurray! We came up with something to do other than watch TV!)

The other day we read chapter two. There weren't any huge lightning bolt moments for me, as thinking about differentiating has become common for me in the two years since first reading this book. But the thought that kept hitting me over and over was:

This is really hard.

• It is hard not to need others to validate you.
• It is hard not to need others to understand you.
• It is hard not to expect people to want to hear everything about your life and tell you everything about theirs.
• It is hard to let people be who they are, and not who you expect them to be, or want them to be, or who they were yesterday.
• It is hard to let relationships change and not try to make them what they used to be.
• It is hard to disagree openly with someone who is emotionally charged about a topic that you have a different perspective on.
• It is hard not to define yourself by who you are in relation to others - whether a spouse, a child, or a friend.

Mutuality is hard. Intimacy - knowing yourself and freely offering yourself - is hard. It's much easier to settle into expectations and needs and demands. Unfortunately those are the very things that kill true intimacy, true knowledge of yourself and of another person. Maybe that's why, throughout history, we've often set up expectations of what "role" we are to play in life. In the Christian tradition, it's the whole  "man-as-leader/woman-as-follower" thing. Rather than mutuality, each spouse simply interacts on the basis of what is expected of them. They define themselves by how well they fulfill that role in relation to the other person.

The same sort of pathology can be seen in any relationship...two people who settle into a way of doing certain thing to fulfill certain expectations. The mystery of who I am, who this other person is - it's all negated for the easier path of doing what's expected of me.

I've often wondered, in the almost-two-years since we got married, why everyone says that marriage is so hard. We've been lucky in many respects, and married life is blissful. Not that we don't have tough conversations every now and again, but it really doesn't feel like marriage itself is hard.

What is hard, I think, is the work that we have to do on ourselves. We have to work at our own personal growth, our own personal identity. We have to work at differentiating, freely offering, walking together in mutuality. We have to work to be grown-ups, and let go of any and all expectations we have of the other person to fulfill all of our needs or fill a certain "role" in our life.

It's a hell of a lot easier to just read some book about what my role as a woman is, what his role as a man is, and strive to do the right things.

Much harder to figure yourself out, think things through, and become fully yourself while walking in close relationship with another person.

But also so much more worth it.

Humph

Typepad just ate a blog post of mine as I was trying to publish it. This has never happened before. Now I'm REALLY going to switch to Wordpress. Ugh.

Happy are the Spiritually Bankrupt

You.Must.Read.This.

Now.

Happy are the Spiritually Bankrupt

Meeting Another

"I want to love you without clutching,
Appreciate you without judging
Join you without invading,
Invite you without demanding,
Leave you without guilt,
Criticize you without blaming,
And help you without insulting.
If I can have the same from you,
Then we can truly meet each other."

~ Virginia Satir

You Must Make Friends With the Tiredness

How many levels of letting go are there? How many layers of giving up this war with reality, surrendering the compulsive daily movement meant to reassure ourselves that we are doing something that will "make a difference." I have dropped down below surface layers of hanging on and pulling away, but I am still miles from the bedrock of being. But ideas of time and distance do not really apply here. Willingness and grace melt ceaseless struggle in an instant. The gift of sweet surrender meets all resistance like sunlight dissolving a whisp of cloud in the clear blue sky. And it is a gift, this surrendering, not something any "I" can achieve or make happen, a generosity, a continuous flowing toward me whether I am mindful or forgetting, at my best or my worst or- more often- somewhere in between.

So, I make friends with the tiredness, the occasional impatience, the moments of anxiety and distraction, the hours of not-knowing. I welcome them, knowing they do not interfere with but in fact are part of what is longed for and needed. I let go of wanting to be anyone in particular, or any way in particular, and for an instant, I am free.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

What Story Do You Want to Read?

An encounter with a friend a while back left me thinking about choices...specifically the power we all hold, in our choices, to determine the course our life takes. We live in era of unprecedented freedom in that regard. In former times, people just had to do what was necessary to survive and put food on the table. Today, most of us in the Western world don't have that problem. Instead we face many choices - about education, careers, hobbies, who to marry, whether or not to stay married, how many kids we want to have and when, etc.

I read Kelly's post the other day about how she didn't grow up to be the person she wanted to be, about how her life has turned out so differently than planned...and she is discontent.

As I was reading I was thinking something along the lines of..."Hmm, my life has pretty much gone according to plan.."

And yet I, too, am discontent.

My "plan" for my life, of course, has already morphed a few times by now.

When I was a kid, I thought I had life all figured out: what I wanted to be, how it was going to happen, what it was going to look like. One choice at a time, my life took on a different shape than I ever imagined at the age of 12, which was the last time I really knew everything. I grew up a "good homeschooley girl" whose goal was to be a wife and mom; college wasn't in the picture until halfway through high school, when I realized that the truth of the matter was that I loved the violin and really didn't want to get married and start producing babies when I was 19. So I went to college. Upon graduating, still not married or engaged or even dating, I expected that I would start teaching violin lessons and (hopefully) get married before too long. Instead, an offer to go to Germany for nine months showed up on my door. In the face of a lot of questions and fears (how am I going to pay off my student debt? what if I hate it?), I ended up deciding to go, largely influenced by my friend Brian, who asked me a very simple question: "What story do you want to read?"

I think that was the first moment where I started thinking about the creative power we have in our own lives.

When I got back from Germany, I didn't know that a few months later I would start dating my now-husband. I decided I missed school and wanted to pursue grad school. It didn't work out, largely because I had undiagnosed health issues that kept me from being 100% during the preparation and audition cycle.

I started my violin studio.

Almost two years later I got married.

No kids yet, but I'm sure they'll come in time.

See? According to plan. But...so what? Is this, just this, the life I want? I've felt bound, in a way, not just by what I previously thought I wanted, but by being sick. There are so many things I can't do right now that I want to do - I want to go dancing, I want to go hiking and camping, I want to explore the world. I want to write books. I still want to go to grad school...for music AND maybe for psychology or theology. I want to play my violin for people, not just teach it. The thought of which makes me very tired right now. But I still want it.

There are so many things I want. And so many things I don't think I've let myself want.

I've been struck recently with the tendency many of us have to treat life as something that happens to us. We are practical fatalists, making choices when we absolutely must...but generally avoiding them at all costs, preferring to wait and see what happens, take what comes. So we stay in a bad marriage or bad job, seemingly unable to make the choices that could transform our present situation. Worse, we often think of our circumstances as something we have no control over, rather than a reality we helped choose to create.

Certainly there are things that happen to us that we have no control over. Victims of abuse or natural disasters do not choose their lot. But too many victims of abuse refuse to walk away from their abuser, and too many of us likewise refuse to acknowledge the choices we do have, even when life is being shitty.

It is true that God is sovereign, and is the ultimate Author of our story, but I think sometimes we take this truth too far and begin living like fatalists who believe all the choices have already been made for us. Rather than accepting responsibility for the choices we make that influence the way the story is written, it's easy to start behaving like victims - victims of the choices other people make, and even victims of "God's will."

There is such a thing as true victimhood - the child who is abused, the woman who is raped, the member of a religious group who experiences spiritual abuse. They did not choose those things and are in no way responsible for the abuse.

There are other things we don't choose - like natural disasters and the deaths of people close to us.

But by and large, I think we have a lot more ability to influence and even change the story than we think we do.

I'm discontent. But I think I've stopped asking how I got here. Now I'm asking a new question.

What kind of life do I want to live, and will I make the choices that will take me there?

Planning to...

I am planning to blog more. And I think I might switch to Wordpress, but Mike would have to help me because I have no idea how to do it. I just know I'm a) getting tired of paying Typepad, b) want more creative control over the look of my blog, and c) want to be able to import all my current posts (something I couldn't do if I switched to Blogger, which I also considered since Blogger is now much cooler than when I started using Typepad.)

But the most important thing: I want to blog more.

The end.

Being Me

"Integrity and integration are one and the same. You're describing a lack of integration between who you think you are and who you aspire to be."

"You don't think your way to a new way of living. You live your way to a new way of thinking."

"What part of you do you use to reach out to your partner? Do you reach out from the best in you? Or do you reach out from the part that feels inadequate or wants to hide?"

"We assume that intimacy hinges on acceptance and validation from our partner. We've confused 'good communication' with being understood the way we want and getting the response we expect. We never consider the kind of intimacy where we validate our own disclosures when out partner doesn't. We've distorted what intimacy is, how it feels, how much we really want it, and how best to get it. Once we realize that intimacy is not always soothing and often makes us feel insecure, it is clear why we back away from it."
                                                                                  
                            ~ David Schnarch, chapter 1, "Passionate Marriage"

This week, Mike and I started reading together through "Passionate Marriage", a book we read while we were engaged that has deeply influenced how we view marriage and relationships in general. Now that we're approaching our two-year anniversary, we decided to read through it again - together this time - and see how actually being married affects how we read the book.

One chapter in, and it is no less challenging than the first time around. Despite living with the concepts in this book for a couple of years now, I still struggle to fully be myself.

The central theme of the book, you see, is how to become more yourself, and hold onto yourself, while being married (or in a long-term relationship such as family relationships or friendships.) How do you share life deeply with another person - especially in those times when they might not always understand you or give you what you think you need? How do you grow in intimacy rather than grow in the number of topics you "just don't talk about" because those topics breed misunderstanding and offense?

A while back an engaged friend of mine asked me to define intimacy. I was well aware of the common ways we think of intimacy - knowing another person deeply, walking closely through life with another person. But what I said was this:

Intimacy is knowing yourself deeply, and offering that self freely to another person who also knows himself deeply and is freely offering that self to you.

Too often, I think, we think of close, intimate relationships as those in which we have a lot of common, those relationships where we feel understood, those relationships where we are constantly affirmed and validated.

There is nothing wrong with any of those things, indeed, they're all pretty nice to have in a relationship!

But I think we'd be lying if we said that our husband/wife/mother/father/friend/sister/brother *always* understood us, *always* validated us, *always* affirmed us, *always* got us.

And what happens in those moments when they don't?

That's what this book is about.

And that's still what I struggle with. I was telling Kelly last week, when we were talking about this, that the easiest people for me to talk to are the ones who affirm me throughout the conversation. I could care less whether they *agree* with me or not, but it's nice to know I'm being heard. It's nice, when I'm sharing something (especially something that requires me to be especially vulnerable), to have them say things like:

• "Mmmhmmm."
• "I hear ya."
• "How did that make you feel?"
• "That must have been hard for you."
• "You must feel really ___."
• "What next?"

Basically, anything that lets me know that this person is interested in what I have to say, is tracking along with me, and is "getting it" on a basic level. Again, I don't feel like they have to agree with me, I just like to know that they're not getting bored.

I think it's okay to want these things when I communicate with my friends and loved ones. But again, what happens when I don't get it? What happens when the person I'm talking to seems, for all intents and purposes, bored? What happens when we're on the phone and I can't see even their facial expressions and it seems like maybe they don't want to hear what I have to say (perhaps this is why phone calls are such a difficult medium of conversation for me)?

My usual response is to shorten the story, to leave out details, to finish quickly. If I think someone's not interested in what I have to say, I don't say it.

The problem is that I think a lot of times, people ARE interested in what I'm saying, but they don't show it or don't know how to show it. Meanwhile, I shut down, thinking they aren't really interested in me. And growing the relationship stops.

Re-reading the first chapter of "Passionate Marriage" made me wonder what it would look like if I just offered myself, whether or not it seems like anyone is interested? If I validated and affirmed myself, rather than expecting that from others?

I think I might talk a lot more.

And I think I might grow closer to a lot of people.

I don't think I'll ever morph into the kind of personality who just talks and talks and talks without ever being asked a question. But I think I can safely assume that my friends want to know me, and it's ok to just bring things up and talk about them without necessarily being asked. Even if those topics are hot-button topics or things that might not be popular. There might be some awkward moments, and maybe every now and then someone will even get offended or misunderstand me.

But I think that's ok. I don't want to be constantly crafting a version of myself that I present to the world, a version of myself that I think people want to see. I just want to be me.

Warts and all.

Meanderings

It's been over two months since I've posted anything on this blog, and almost three months since I've posted on my other blog. I've just been sort of "out of it", blogging-wise. I haven't even been really keeping up with the blogs in my Google Reader...I have almost 200 posts there to catch up on. I don't know what it is. I think I go in phases of really needed to communicate, converse, connect....and then I go through phases of needing to withdraw, process, contemplate. These last few months have definitely been a case of the latter.

We went on vacation to California the end of April, to visit Mike's family and celebrate his dad's wedding to a wonderful woman. (His mom died five years ago and this was truly a blessed event!) We got back over three weeks ago and I've been in a fog ever since...my health had been doing much, much better - but the stress of traveling knocked me backwards. So I've mostly been sleeping and doing more of that withdrawal thing - tend to my health, my diet, my energies.

In the last few days I've started to wake up from the fog, my energies have started coming back, and suddenly I find that there are many things I want to say...and I don't even know where to start. Oh, and I've been catching up on my Google Reader. :)

So needless to say I'll be posted more frequently for awhile, altho' I can't promise how long it'll last. ;) In the meantime, here are a few blogs that caught my eye while I was catching up on all my blog reading, some of which may just turn out to spur a post of my own:

• Dying the Cloth With Grace - this is from one of my all-time favorite bloggers, Barb. Her insights are just so incredibly amazing about the way that God saturates us with his grace. Here's just a tiny snippet of this beautiful post:

It is not my job to control people – not through anger, or sham or threat or by being the best you can be. Grace says, “This part is my part, that part is God’s.” Grace says that I don’t have to make people do what would make me happy. Grace lets me be me and it allows others to be themselves – and above all Grace loves through it all.

• Love Explained from Abmo over at Windblown Hope: Abmo never ceases to amaze me with his perspective on the love of God. It's like he actually knows God and walks in the reality of being loved by him! Amazing, and all too rare. I'm still processing this post, and I think I will need to read it again and again before it sinks in.

Our question is not right and wrong anymore.  It’s, where are you taking us Father?  In our case God’s love is the kind of love that moves you to take people into your home when you do not have enough money to take care of your family.  It’s the kind of love that when you take a certain person in your home, people stop visiting you.  It’s the kind of love that allows people in your home even when they steal your stuff.  (Or is my stuff God’s stuff?)  It’s the kind of love that give money to send a selfish person on a holiday when you do not have enough money to buy your children christmas presents.  It’s the kind of love that when you begin to feel it, really feel it, you break.  Yes, we made the mistake to ask God that we want to see people through His eyes.  It’s not fun.  You cry a lot.  We asked Him to stop it, but the effects linger on.  You see people’s value.  Broken people become living sermons.  It’s the love that gives people rest.  They come and lie on your couch for a weekend.  You don’t have to talk to them, but when they leave they feel better.  It’s the kind of love that do not speak a lot.  Not a lot of advise-giving.  More the listening kind.

Our question is not right and wrong anymore.  It’s more a choice between what’s easy and what is difficult.  It’s the kind of love that moves the jock at school to make friends with the nerds and lays his life down for them.  It’s the kind of love where the beautiful cheerleader makes friends with the discarded and gives them hope.  It’s the kind of love that moves the gentle to take a stand.  It’s the kind of love that give the lonely a voice and friends.  It’s a love where the weak is honored.  It’s the kind of love where you lay your life down for the person who do not like you.  This love overshadows money.  This love is sticky, insistent and unrelenting.  This love can be frustrating.  This love is unfair because it’s for everybody.  This love is to be found in the ruins of a person’s life and it can even ruin a person’s life.  This love is open to all.  This love contradicts our sense of fairness.  This love gives a place for those who have no place.  This love keeps us off balance.  This love flows through the incompetent, incomplete and the broken.  This love can leave us frustratingly stuck, slow us down and take us to a place where we have to acknowledge that we are not needed.  This love has a wildness and fury that cannot be contained.

• Hiding Behind an Alias - this is from another one of my all-time favorite bloggers, Eric. Eric has written for a few years about his struggle between his homosexuality and his faith, and his reconciliation of the two. Now...before you start hurling stones either at me or at him...this is a guy you have to seriously engage with before being able to criticize. You may not agree with everything he says, but he is deep. His faith is real. His desire to walk authentically before God is real. Mike and I had the pleasure of meeting Eric a few months ago when he was in town for a conference, and the conversation over dinner was among the best that I've had in a long while. So don't ignore this post because you believe being gay and Christian is an oxymoron. Eric's deepest identity is as a Christ-follower, and I believe what he says about authenticity in this post is something we can all stand to hear.

Here's the thing . . . . as a gay man, it's not about sex and it's not about men and it's not about sexuality and it's not about gender. For me, the Lord has granted me a lens for which to see the world that He loves. As a gay man, I understand prejudice. I understand insecurity. I understand vanity. I understand suffering. I understand being misunderstood. I understand the desire to give up and attempt death prematurely. I understand the need for intimacy in a broader culture that defines it by gender or holiness or unholiness. I understand the gray areas. I understand the hot zone.

It is because I am a gay man that I can empathize. But the catalyst for my empathy for others is my own authenticity. Because as long as I remain in the closet, in one way or another, whether online with an alias or at work or in church or among family and friends, I remain detached, disconnected, separated and unknown - unable to fully love others in the context of their journey, struggle and experiences because, being in the closet, I was unable to fully love myself in the context of my journey - being gay, being non-white, being un-super-modelish. Who could love the real me? Not me. And so I hid. My loved ones were denied the opportunity to really empathize because I wasn't even presenting the real me. So what was there to empathize with?

• The Accountability Question - from Wayne Jacobsen, about whom there is so much I could say, so I'll just say this: God has revealed himself to me through Wayne in many ways. This guy knows God. In this post, he tackles the question of "accountability" outside of traditional church structures.

My issue with accountability is that Scripture never uses that word in our relationships as brothers and sisters. We are all accountable to God. That is clear. We are called to love each other deeply, not hold each other accountable. That said, I don’t ever see love ever separated from truth. Matthew 18 and Titus (and many other passages) are simply about believers walking in love and truth with each other, not allowing blatant sin to become embedded in their midst. Love always speaks the truth and tries to rescue people caught in sin with gentleness. It does not delight in holding people accountable. So that kind of honesty for me is not accountability (which is an institutional word), but a relational reality of loving God and others with his life and truth.

• Modest - this discussion of modesty from my friend Sonja (whom I recently discovered lived 30 minutes down the road from me - we had a great time conversing over coffee shortly after finding that out - it's so fun to meet blogging friends in real life!) is a spin off from several other posts about modest which Sonja references. I'm still processing through this one, but I really like this perspective offered by Makeesha (whom Sonja quotes in her post) and Sonja's comments on the whole thing:

… we promote modesty from the wrong angle. It becomes about the man instead of being about the woman. It becomes about acceptance from God based on what a woman wears. In other words, I should dress modestly because my body creates some sort of temptation. My body isn’t about me, my body is about the man, about society. It’s an object to be controlled and preached about from the pulpit. My body is scary and shameful because it causes others to sin. My breasts aren’t beautiful creations that have 2 purposes of sexual pleasure and providing food and bonding for my progeny - they are temptations. My shape is to be veiled because it’s bad, because it causes my brothers to stumble. I am the object. I am the sin. I am the receiver. These are the messages the church sends when dealing with this issue. Regardless of the intent, this is what many many women hear - for some, it creates shame that causes the woman to hide away, to cover, to follow the rules - for others it creates a shame that causes the woman to seek validation by uncovering.

So...that's the kind of stuff I've been reading and processing. I have a lot of thoughts but they're not the least bit organized at the moment...hopefully that will come. Right now I'm a mixture of tenderly taking care of myself, learning to see myself and others with love, to get beyond the right and wrong question - letting my life get soaked with grace, resulting in authenticity. It all ties together.

Til later. :)

My Regime

I've had a number of comments and questions from people about the specific things I am doing to regain health. Dave's comment the other day reminded me that for some people, more information would be helpful. So what follows is for them (or you, if you find yourself in that camp.) The rest of you might find this boring, so....don't mind me.

Supplement Regime

First thing upon waking up, I take the two prescription meds I'm on (Hydrocortisone and Armour thyroid) and a handful of OTC supplements:

*Hydrocortisone, 10 mg. This is (OMG!) a steroid hormone, but what I didn't know all those years I heard freaky stories about steroid hormones is that our own bodies produce steroid hormones. Hydrocortisone in its pure form (i.e. not prednisone or medrol) is identical to what our bodies make - and if our own adrenal glands aren't making enough, it can be helpful to "fill in the gap" for awhile and let the adrenal glands rest and start producing their own cortisol again. Used properly, in small doses equivalent to what the body makes naturally, hydrocortisone does not have the side effects of the high doses of steroids used for inflammation and asthma. (Just as the right balance of cortisol in our bodies in a function of good health, but too much or too little makes us ill.) I have been using hydrocortisone since last April and I am currently weaning off because I feel that my adrenals have stabilized. It gave me my life back. Read here about self-tests for adrenals and proper treatment of adrenal fatigue.

*Armour Thyroid - 120 mg (2 grains). Natural thyroid hormone, "bioidentical" which means biologically identical to what our bodies make on their own, dosed according to symptom relief and temperatures.

*Iodoral, high potency iodine supplement, 2 tabs. There is a lot of good research that indicates that optimal iodine levels are higher than we think, can't be reached through iodized salt, and that most of us are iodine deficient. This is the leading cause of goitre or growth on the thyroid, and also contributes to low thyroid hormone (T3) levels. The suggestion is to take 4 tabs a day while building up tissue saturation, then drop to 1 tab a day. Some people experience detox symptoms at the high dose but I never have. I HAVE, however, experienced a massive energy boost from taking it (and a massive energy drop if I stop.) It is suggested to do an iodine loading test before starting on iodine, but I never did because I was fairly certain my symptoms indicated iodine deficiency. Given my results, I'm also fairly certain I was correct. This is a good article about the health benefits of iodine, not just for thyroid health but also for prevention of cancer and other things.

*SAM-e - a naturally occuring amino acid, 400 mg. SAM-e protect joints (and is good for arthritis pain), supports DNA health, supports liver function, and most importantly for me, aids in the synthesis of neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. I use it to deal with the horrible physical depression, and if  run out for a few days I notice a quick rise in anxiety and stress. It's an expensive supplement, so I'm on the smallest effective dose. I wish I could take more (up to 1600 mg is considered safe) but I can't afford it. I buy it at the Vitamin Shoppe, Jarrow Formulas brand (one of the few supplements I don't order!)

*L-Tyrosine - 1000 mg. This is another amino acid that supports the production of both thyroid and adrenal hormones. It also supports neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine so it also helps with depression and energy. I purchase it from Natural Healthy Concepts.

*Herbal Adrenal Support Formula - 20 drops. This is an herbal formulation of maca, licorice, siberian ginseng, and ashwaghanda, all herbs proven to support adrenal health. I just started taking it this week, and voooo-voooom, I get a massive energy rush and sense of well-being after each time I take it.

Morning, Round Two. When I go downstairs to make breakfast, I take my vitamins and minerals. I don't take a multi, because I'm convinced that real food sources are the best place to get these vital nutrients. Multivitamins have never helped me anyway, where I can feel a huge effect from the living sources of vitamins and minerals:

*Living B Vitamins

*High Vitamin Cod Liver Oil/Butter Oil Blend - to supply 20,000 IU Vitamin A and 2000 IU Vitamin D (this is considered a therapeutic dose.)

*Pure Radiance C - a natural food source of Vitamin C; NOT ascorbic acid.

*Concentrace Ionic Minerals

*Raw Milk Tonic - 1 c raw milk (sometimes mixed with 1/3 - 1/2 cup raw colostrum), 1 raw egg yolk, 1 TBSP blackstrap molasses (loaded with iron and other minerals.)

4 hours after waking:

*Hydrocortisone, 10 mg

*Armour Thyroid, 90 mg (1.5 grains)

*Iodoral, 2 tabs

*Living B Vitamins

*Herbal Adrenal Support Formula, 20 drops

*L-Tyrosine, 500 mg

8 hours after waking:

*Hydrocortisone, 2.5 mg

*Isocort, 1 tab - this is an OTC adrenal cortex supplement, said to provide 2.5 mg of hydrocortisone per tab, although it isn't as potent as hydrocortisone and probably has more like 1.5 mg per tab. I'm using the Isocort to help me wean off the hydrocortisone. So total I'm on 22.5 mg of hydrocortisone (down from 32.5) and 1 tab of Isocort. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I'll drop the Isocort, and then in April I'll drop to 20 mg of hydrocortisone plus 1 Isocort.

*Herbal Adrenal Support Formula, 20 drops

As needed throughout the day:

*Endorphigen - this is the amino acid d-phenylalinine, which naturally boosts endorphins. I take this when I start feeling a headache come on, or any other ache or pain. It is my miracle supplement - if I had to pick a favorite, this would be it!

*Pregest Cultured Enzymes - if I eat something that's harder for me to digest (carbs), or feel like my body needs some extra help, I take these digestive enzymes.

*Probiotics - I used to take a synthetic probiotic blend, but lately I've been sticking to kombucha and kefir.

At bedtime:

*Tryptophan - 500 mg for each 50 lbs of body weight...my last amino acid of the day. Helps with sleep quality, but most importantly for me, it helps with synthesis of neurotransmitters and therefore, the depression I'm dealing with. It's one of the most potent natural anti-depressants. It used to be prescription only but recently was made available OTC - hurray for me! I purchase this from the same company that makes Endorphigen.

*Magnesium - 1000 mg. Magnesium is important for SO many processes in the body, and also helps with sleep. I need all the help I can get! I take it as a delicious, highly absorbable tea.

*Natural Progesterone Cream - 20 mg (1/4 tsp.) I use this from days 14-28 of my cycle. It has helped me overcome estrogen dominance and some of the nasty symptoms that go along with that - awful PMS, awful cramping, heavy and long periods.

My Diet

My diet has changed a lot since getting sick. I don't always adhere to this perfectly - sometimes I'm just plain tired and can't bear to cook. But as I get healthier, I'm also more consistent with eating as I should, which also helps me get better. It's a cycle - unfortunately one that can be potentially vicious or potentially helpful.

Basically I have begun following the Weston A Price Foundation's ideas on nutrition - having read "Nourishing Traditions" and "Eat Fat, Lose Fat", I'm convinced that this nutrient-dense, traditional way of eating helps heal our bodies and keep them running well. It's hard to summarize but it basically involves a relatively high fat, moderate protein, low carb way of eating. High in good fats - like coconut oil, butter from grass-fed cows (loaded with nutrients!), and olive oil. Good fats are very important for hormone synthesis and a low-fat diet can contribute to hormonal imbalances. Saturated fats are especially important, and I have learned a great deal about how cholesterol is an essential nutrient that doesn't actually cause heart disease like the vegetable oil lobbies have tried to tell us, as well as what are the true causes of heart disease.

I get most of my meat and dairy from farms where the animals are grass-fed and organic. This is important because grass-fed animal products are much higher in nutrients than grain-fed animals, nutrients that will help rebuild my body as well as help protect against things like cancer.

No sugar, no/very limited grains, no caffeine, no MSG, no preservatives. Whole, clean, real food.

Lots and lots of vegetables. Limited amounts of fruit (because of the carbs/fructose.)

Raw milk from grass fed cows - again, positively LOADED with nutrition. It's amazing how much less hungry I get since adding raw milk to my diet. I have learned that many times, hunger is a function of our bodies trying to get the nutrition they need. If we load up on artificial, fake foods, we might be getting plenty of calories but no nutrition - and our bodies will keep asking us to eat more. Obesity in many cases is actually a case of malnourishment!

1 or more tablespoons of coconut oil before meals.

Summary

I also exercise-to-tolerance (as much as I can without making my symptoms worse) - lately I've been managing 20-30 minutes 5x a week. I hope to increase that. I try to go to bed early (before 11 pm) and sleep until my body naturally wakes up, which ends up being 9-10 hours. I drink a lot of water and avoid busyness and stress as much as possible. I am proactive, always reading and researching and learning more about my body and how I can nourish it and care for it.

It's working. I'm getting better. Sometimes I'm impatient - I want to be better NOW. But I am also realizing that it took years of bad habits to get sick, and it will take a long time to reverse the process. I am continually amazed at how amazing the human body is, and how God has designed it to be able to heal and recover. I have spent a lot time hating my body. I am beginning to learn how to nourish it, and I hope in time that I will be able to love it and thank God for it.

I hope that if you are struggling with unidentified symptoms or overwhelming fatigue or chronic illness, you will be encouraged to be proactive about nourishing and caring for your body. Your doctor won't do it for you - the best can help you, though the worst will harm you. Take responsibility for yourself and treasure the gift God has given us in our bodies. Without our bodies we would not be able to laugh, make love, smile, dance. A body is a truly amazing thing, worthy of our time and attention and care.

Now...off to the gym for me!

To-Do's and Have-To's

I started thinking about to-do lists when I read Kelly's blog post about it the other day. I was never a person who *liked* lists, despite my rather anal-retentive/OCD/organizational personality. Nevertheless, I have often lived by lists. They have kept me on track (or so I thought), helped me to not forget things, and given me a sense of accomplishment. On the flip side, I think that I sometimes unknowingly slipped into letting my ability to check everything off of the list give me a sense of value. The joy from all those crossed-out items - no matter how insignificant - was misplaced, and I knew it, but I didn't know what to do with it. I prided myself on my ability to keep myself organized during end-of-semester madness. One semester, I took 22 credits. I survived by making a list each weekend of all the homework due the following week and proceeding to check off every item by the end of Sunday night, thus finishing papers and reading assignments days in advance. I never pulled an all-nighter in college, and I was proud of it.

Yeah, I was an overachiever.

Was.

Funny how that word just slipped out from under my fingers.

Anyway, being sick has wreaked a sort of havoc with all of that. I've been heading down the path of being sick for over four years, but it didn't get *really* bad until a year and a half ago, after our wedding. I still made lists - finish wedding thank-you notes (despite being sick I prided myself on finishing them in under three months), cancel that one credit card, register the warranties for all our new stuff.

Very little of what was on my lists ever got done. In fact, I sort of had the same list for the first four months of our marriage. It sat by my computer, mocking me with its gleaming, uncrossed-out ink...so in addition to experiencing a major physical crash, I felt like every kind of failure.

I don't know when I threw away the unfinished list. I don't know when I stopped making lists at all. But somehow, somewhere along the line in this journey through chronic illness, it happened. Occasionally I write something on a sticky note and put it beneath my computer monitor screen - but those usually only have to do with not forgetting to do something imperative, like pick up my co-op order from the farm. I missed it one month and that was not good.

It's not that there are less things that need doing. It's not even that I never do them, so why mock myself with a to-do list? I usually get around to doing what needs to be done, especially as I'm feeling lots better these days. But I never want to go back to the tyranny of a list.

The list ruled my life. I woke up in the morning and what was on the list was what made my day go 'round. Sure, I got a sense of accomplishment by checking each item off the list, but the inconvenient truth was that most of those things I crossed off the list were not that important. Sometimes, I even wrote something on the list post-completion and crossed it off, just to make myself feel good.

Being sick has afforded me the freedom to live my life in a way that most healthy people can't...

..and in a strange way, today I am incredibly grateful.

I wake up, no longer bound by a massive to-do list. I can look around the house and see what needs to be picked up or taken care of - I don't need a list to tell me that. And I know now that nothing bad will happen if it waits for a few days...if the dishes sit in the sink and the trash doesn't get taken out. When I wake up, for the first time in my life, I'm able to ask myself what I want to do with my day. There are very few "have-to's" left in my life because my ability to guarantee I could accomplish them has been stripped from me. Pretty much the only "have-to" left is my violin studio teaching, which only comes to about 12 hours a week right now.

So instead I get to think of life in terms of "get-to." Even previously annoying chores feels like a "get-to." I "got to" clean the whole house today...I had the energy for it...it felt wonderful.

Lately I've been able to pick up my violin and play again - for fun. For fun! That was something I NEVER did back in the days of to-do lists and "have-to's." Practicing 4 hours a day was a "have-to" for almost ten years. Now, every moment I get to spend with my instrument is a "get-to." I've spent so long not having the strength to even HOLD the darn thing, that I'm surprised now when I'm still able to create something beautiful. I light candles, I'm at peace, I'm getting to do what I love. And it doesn't matter if I do it for 5 minutes or 20 minutes or 2 hours. Have-to is gone.

I've been going to the gym pretty frequently lately. This was something I started enjoying during my senior year of college and really got into, loving things like kickboxing and yoga before I got *really* sick. When my adrenals crashed, I couldn't exercise. I tried - and it always made me feel worse for days afterward. My doctor eventually told me NOT to exercise, and in my researching I read that exercise burns up cortisol...so if you're deficient, like I was, it will make you feel worse - not better. So for most of the last year and a half, I haven't exercised. I kept my gym membership, because I was determined that I would be able to go back. I've gained a lot of weight, and I've been really frustrated. So to me, the fact that I've been feeling well enough and my adrenals have been steady enough that I can work out several times a week - that is a huge "get-to." I get to go to the gym. How many people can say that?

During most of the time I've been sick, we've eaten out a lot. Thai food and Chipotle are our best friends. ;) It hasn't been good for our budget, and it hasn't helped me get well...but a lot of nights, I simply didn't have the strength to stand at the stove, to decide what to make for dinner. Lately I've been getting into gourmet healthy cooking, and the fact that I get to make a delicious, nutritious meal feels like a gift.

I haven't liked being sick. In fact, I've hated it. I've been really depressed and angry. But it's funny how sometimes the best gifts are the most painful ones. The truth is, I don't want the life everyone else has - one full of to-do lists and have-to's. I'm starting to love the one I've got - full of "want-to's" and "get-to's." I feel really lucky to be able to approach life this way.

So - to hell with lists. I'm just going to live.

Do you want to obey Jesus...or do you want Jesus?

Abmo over at Windblown Hope has done it again with this wonderful piece. Beautifully written with quite a punch packed at the end.

Introducing...

...my new blog. Actually, it's the brain child of my dear friend Kelly, who asked me to be a contributing writer. We created this blog, "If I Had Not Believed", as a place for us to write about our struggles with depression. We both sometimes hold back from writing about it on our own blogs because (at least this is true in my case) we don't want to sound like we're whining. But if you've struggled with depression and want to find a safe place where you'll be understood and can hopefully be encouraged by the fact that you're not alone, come visit us. Leave us a comment and introduce yourself. One of the things depression does is isolate us from the rest of the world. Let's try not to let it, okay?

 

I wrote my first post there today, titled "Rage."

By the way, the links on the side aren't working yet. But they will be soon. (Just as soon as Kell gets back from California! :-P)

Replicate the Early Church? No Way...

One of my favorite bloggers, Brant Hansen, wrote an awesome post about how (and why) we don't need to replicate the first-century church. Read it. You'll thank me. And it's funny too. :)