Where wallflowers don't belong...

What I completely do not understand about myself is why, when I know that I am better off as a hermit, do I find myself doing non-hermit things?  Add to that is my confusion over my utter inability to be social.  I know I am a wall flower.  I know that wall flowers wilt under social pressure. And they break when out about in the social melee.  Still, I tried not to be a wall flower.  Stupid, silly me.  I repeat...stupid, silly me.

Yes, I am having a bad day. A part of me wilts at just those words.  What else is new, Myrtle?  I am tired, because I worked too hard in the yard--though the results are impressive and bolstering.  I am frustrated, because my laptop replacement of the replacement laptop crashed when I first started trying to load my software on it.  And I am struggling, because I am without the twice weekly support I have been getting to navigate the murky, raging waters of the Pandora's box that has been opened.   The first week was hard. This one exponentially more so.

Today is the day I would normally be with her.  Today is the day I would not be alone with the things of my past and the things in my head and the fears of both.  And the pit bull.  That wretched pit bull. 

Only, I was.  And the day was bad, colossally bad.  So disappointed was I that for the third time the firewood person failed to show up or even call about not showing up.  Deeply disappointed because I know that I have been struggling more and more, finding it difficult to shake off the volunteering fiasco and recover from the night terrors that remain, and fires calm and soothe me so. 

So, I wail on my Facebook status.  Truth be told, all day I did, with each successful Dell frustration...being disconnected three times, spending more than two hours on hold, and the ludicrous announcement that the solution would be to send a technician to my home to repair the replacement computer that had a problem from the moment I started it up.  Replacement computers should not require repair the first day of ownership.

I express my weariness with the day and with myself.  And a comment is made that comes across as Law to a person already crushed with her sin.  An immediate second of the comment felt like a second lash across my rather wounded and weary body.  I tried to speak about how weary and fragile I am from this day, even mentioning the lack of access to my help, to ward off any further commentary on my faith failure, and another comment comes straight away, harsher than the first, followed by the close second once more.

Neither one was spoken in unkindness.  But I was shocked after trying to say that I was not up for admonishment, that I was struggling, to have my cry fall on deaf ears.  To have my cry for help, really, go unheeded.

I don't belong out in the world.  I do not.  I have said that repeatedly here, so I have only myself to blame for the hurt that is washing over me, drowning me at the moment.

Really, I suppose, the problem is that I want Facebook to be something it is not.  It is not a support system.  Those people on my friends list are not really friends or family.  They are not a cadre of gentle folk who will not weary of my struggle.  I do not have a wall of cheerleaders urging me on in the war raging for my life, for my soul.  They are on there to have fun, to joke, to hang out...not to be my support system.  Not to stand beside me, swinging his sword at my foe...not...to stand between my foe and me.

I do not agree with the comment that followed with my plea to not fling an arrow my way.  It was about that I was forgetting Jesus died for me.  I have not forgotten that.  Crawling on my knees because I am tired and discouraged and afraid, saying that is where I am, does not mean that I have forgotten that.  I mean, the rejoinder could have been a gentle, sweet reminder that Jesus knows all about crawling, bloody and wounded.  Instead, what I hear, what I receive is that Myrtle is denying her baptism or despising the Gospel or making Christ's death moot.  I am not doing those things.  At least not any more than the sinner in me does every single blooming day. 

I know this isn't making sense, to be sure.  I just was foolish to stand vulnerable in my weakness thinking I might have someone slip an arm around my waist when really I should have known that what I would have is someone pointing out the folly of my weakness.


I really felt pummeled after already having taken a beating.  Right now, as I have been ever since those comments flashed upon my screen, I am scared of both how I feel and how weak I am.

 I am not the suffering saint. I am not the person who looks up from the ground and praises God for the blood mingling with the dirt and the bruises spreading across her body.  I do not lay there exulting in my tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within my heart through the Holy Spirit who was given to me (Romans 5:3-5).


I want to be that child of God.  I truly do.  That I am not crushes me even more.




Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

An unexpected blessing...

I have had many blessings in the move here, but one of them has been so very unexpected and so very profound in its impact upon my life:  The weather.  The why of this is difficult to fully explain.

I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis September 13, 1994 and have essentially lived indoors since due to the danger and debilitating effects of weather that might be enjoyable to you, but is too warm for me. Even the 70s, if humid, can be too much.  No longer are picnics or outings enjoyable to me.  I would grow frustrated and discouraged when the people I was with would insist on eating outside at restaurants.  I hated it because the majority of my attention was on how miserable I would feel and the price I would pay later.  Working in the yard--an activity that brings such stillness and peace to me--meant spending days recovering and was genuinely foolish and poor judgment to do.  At times, it seems the whole world lives and socializes outside, while I am trapped inside.


Today is Day 4 with no AC by my own choice. That truly boggles my mind!

I have spent more time outdoors now than I have probably since I was diagnosed--no exaggeration. I have spent hours and hours each day, sitting upon the back steps or lying in the grass (even though this is rather disconcerting to my neighbors).  Even on the warm summer days, evening cool breezes make sitting outside possible for me.  We had three weeks of the dome heat wave and this past week three days of stinking hot weather.  Other than that, with the AC cooling the house and the breezes cooling the great outdoors, I have been able to spend time outside nearly every day that was not filled with rain...even in the summer. Even in the summer!  

I feel so clumsy trying to put the joy and solace and peace of being able to do so into words.  I need sweeping metaphors, grandiose figurative language, and yet all I really have are tears of joy.  For one who has wept much over the past year, joyous tears are a most welcome gift.

I have seen sunsets that I have missed so dearly and bring thanksgiving for a Creator who loves us so to bring such beauty into our world.  I saw lightening bugs for the first time in decades, marveling in the creative mind and love of our Creator once more.  Mr. Hummingbird is a great companion, a true wonder and joy to behold. [Mostly, I think that I bought the pink bush just for him.]  I have watched baby bunny grow and frolic about the back yard.  I have seen Amos find his own kind of joy in sitting amongst the ferns or lying amongst the thistle.  A much as I would rather him not crush my plants, he sighs such deep contentment at those times that my protests fall silent as I join him in his moment of peace.


In my illness and anguish, I have been soothed in a way I am hard pressed to explain simply be being able to savor the out of doors.  In moving here, having heard the winters were harsh (I found it balmy) and the summers steaming (I find it perfect), I would never have expected this blessing.

And now, thanks to new friends, I was able to purchase a lawn chair a few days ago.  My the pleasure I have already had resting comfortably in the zero-gravity contraption!  Amos has even figured out how to join me.  [Yes, we have both napped in it!]

Indiana weather is glorious to me, a most blessed gift of my Good Shepherd. The mercy of God come to me, Myrtle, in a way I can grasp...the sun across my face, the fragrance of creation wafting about me, the wonder of His creatures before me, the breeze whipping through my hair, the moon shining down upon me, the stars twinkling above me.  All these things I have not been able to savor for years and years and years.  I believe that is undeniable in how God made smooth the rocky path before me that I might come to a place that is good for me in body and mind and spirit. For this, I give thanks and praise and hope that you might rejoice with me.



Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

I need a razor of one size or another...

I awoke rather ill today.  This is so hard to explain, but it is my head.  I think..that blasted nerve on the back of my head.

Imagine a cocktail of ever so slight nausea, dizziness, pain, and weakness.  Abject misery.  My hair hurts to move.  No braids. No bun. Just hanging there it hurts. Every time I move my head or even just my eyes, the malaise worsens.  If I am perfectly still, it eases, but does not disappear.   

At such times, I wish to just grab up a razor and shave my head.  Only lying down on a pillow bald would still make me ill.  Being bald might make it slightly more bearable, but it is not my hair making me ill, but something in my head.  Not even Dr Pepper helps.  In fact, I do not even care to consume Dr Pepper.

A guillotine, perhaps?

SIGH.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me! 

Scars...

It's been seven and a half weeks.  For everyone else, it's over.  For me, it's not.  No one really asks about it.  No one really speaks about it.  Over.  Past.  Move on.

I don't know how to do that.

My neighbor saw my knee tonight. I had pulled my pants up to figure out why it was itching.  [Somehow I got bitten over a dozen times while wearing pants.] She gasped and then asked me if it still hurt.  It does.  I need to see another doctor, but I am too weary to do so. Too afraid, really, since talking about what happened is still hard.

I still have scars on my body.  One, at least, will not be going away, as it is already hypertrophic.  I do not see the others leaving either.  Maybe still fading.  But that they remain now is hard for me. I look in the mirror and see them and I am back on that street, screaming over and over and over again.

I am screaming and falling and feeling my grip on Amos slipping. The concrete is grinding into my knees and wrists and elbows and head. My muscles are trembling. Terror has made the whole world recede to just this small patch of earth, where I am fighting for Amos' life.  And I am losing. I will lose.  Just once more trip to the ground and no matter how desperately I want to get up I will remain on the ground. The violence of it all.  Crashing to the ground. Stumbling to my feet. Screaming. Terrified.  Bleeding.  My blood.  Amos'  My screams.  His.  Amos...he is already my world.  How can I lose him now?

I catch sight of my scars, and try as I might not to be...I am there.  Terrified. Trembling.  Lost.  Alone.

Amos has scars, too. The one that bothers me most is from the deep puncture wound in his side.  It is shiny and so completely different from the rest of his skin.  It is hairless.  And it bothers him when I try to touch it.  It bothers him even when I do not.

So much, filling my mind and my heart.  Would it were that the scars were not also across my skin. In so many places.  Too many to avoid.


Lord, I am Yours.  Save me!

Like dirt again...

I have been strongly encouraged to volunteer, but I have not wanted to take the risk.  Most volunteering I know of these days involves background checks, applications, and interviews.  I simply cannot handle talking about myself, where I am from, why I moved here, what I do for a living.  All of those questions that are so unsettled in my life and bring to surface thoughts and emotions hard to bear.

So, someone set up a volunteering opportunity at a library, cataloging books.  Seems safe, eh?  He even sent a gently worded email saying that I just wanted to be told what to do and get to it and could not handle personal talk.

I arrived with my cane.  I did not know of a place nearby to park and did not know how far I would have to walk.  Sure enough, I was not close and I ended up being escorted to another building two flights of stairs and across the street and over a ways from the library.  I was tired by the time I got to where I was going.

After the short orientation, the woman overseeing my time asked if I would prefer working there when I came back or at the library.  I told her that I have Multiple Sclerosis and that the walk was a bit far for me, so I would prefer to work at the library.

I came home, discouraged, because I am so tired, after getting dressed, driving over there, walking about, sitting in front of a computer for two hours, walking back to the car, and driving home.  But when I got home I was dismayed to learn the woman has a concern about my being there.

She's pregnant and wanted to know what autoimmune I had to see if it would affect her baby.  I walk with a cane and I am a risk to her pregnancy?  I told her I have MS, a neurological disease, and she thinks I could be a danger to her baby? 

Her baby.

Silly Myrtle has been sitting here for a long while now, sobs wracking her whole body...so very bloody hurt that she's viewed as a danger.  So hurt and ashamed that the woman called the pastor who arranged my volunteering to express her concern.  So bloody hurt and tired and wanting to scream:  THIS IS WHY I DON'T WANT TO TRY TO BE AROUND ANYONE.

Something is always going to be wrong with me. Something's always going to be objectionable about me. Something is always going to be unwelcome with regard to me. 

Pessimistic, I know.
Speaking in absolutes, I know.
But I feel like dirt right now.  Again. 

Dirt and rather stupid for even trying to volunteer in the first place.

Another life...

I miss Africa.  I miss who I was there.

Not the one who made far too many mistakes.  Not the one who was too young.  Not the one who was confused.  I miss the one who was more free to be herself than anywhere else on earth.

I miss the wide open spaces.  I miss walking along a dirt path to work. I miss being challenged by my students.  I miss the lack of guile.  I miss communal meals.  I miss being in and out of everyone's houses.  I miss picking up coconuts in your front yard and having some for lunch.  I miss having a child fetch you a pineapple to go with the coconut.  I miss setting out ingredients on the counter at night and having yogurt in the morning.  I miss sunsets so beautiful you weep. I miss fierce storms.  I miss florescent plankton lighting up the ocean at night.  I miss a life bound by harsh realities, yet filled with an enviable certitude that God was there every single moment.

I miss Africa.

Today, I spent much of the day working on collateral for Lutherans in Africa, pausing to watch the videos I linked in the pieces and still more that I left out.  I spent part of the day praying for the mission, for the pastors, evangelists, and seminary students studying the pure doctrine and the flocks of God's sheep hungry to learn, hungry to receive the gifts of Christ. I spent part of the day wishing I didn't have a disease that prevented me from walking away from my life and just moving to Africa.

Only that continent already has enough of a mess; it doesn't need mine added to the burden it already bears.

The thing about Africa is that our foe wields a rather blunt weapon there.  No guile.  No whispers.  The lies are shouted out loud.  Brute force he brings to bear...through illness, violence, and corruption.  Oh, poor Africa, such festering wounds across her body.

Ravaged generations ago by greed, the sins of the fathers are certainly being played out to the third and fourth generation.  The worst of which...if you ask me...those called as Christians charging for Holy Baptism.  Oh, does that raise my ire, make my blood boil!

And yet...

And yet amidst that open onslaught is a faith born of tasting and seeing God in the tiniest of mercies and in the broad stroke of His grace covering all. I think it is a good thing to see sin all around you, to know that our foe is waiting to pounce every single moment.  It reminds you exactly this world we live in, a world warped by sin, filled with sin, crushed by sin. It reminds you the why of Christ crucified and exactly how wide and deep and high is the love of God won for us, given to us, poured over us, worked within us.

Have you heard about how every cell in our body is replaced within seven years?  That every seven years we are, literally, a new creation?  It is easy to forget that new creation is still rife with sin, still born of sin, still enslaved to sin.


In Africa, you do not forget this.  In Africa, you understand the need for the cross.  In Africa, you do not start thinking about how good people are, how good you might be.  In Africa, it is impossible to feel safe and secure in this life.  In Africa, it is impossible to be too busy to care for others, too distracted to see how endangered we are.  In all my years of church going, I have never heard hymns sung as I did in Africa.  I have never heard a longing for prayer as I did in Africa.  I have never seen the raw and pure joy of Jesus as I did in Africa.


I miss Africa.  I miss her beauty.  I miss her clarity.




Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

And then I am all kinds of stupid...

I see a headline that catches my eye and I click on it to read the story.  Only I know better.  But I do it anyway.  Why?  I cannot even say.

Well, I can, but does that really matter?

Do you know how, just before you slam your fingers in the car door, a part of your mind notices and screams at you to stop, but you don't...you can't?  It was like that.  I was slamming the car door on my fingers and I couldn't stop.  I didn't stop.

Because I did not, I spent the night battling my body's reaction to the things my mind cannot bear.  My heart raced and I struggled to breath. My stomach heaved, and I was sweating. Fear overwhelmed me until there was only the fear and the anxiety and nothing else.

The whole night.  Off and on this day.  Again tonight...in between...in between the moments when I could focus on accomplishing one thing, a specific thing, the moments when my mind was not still, could not turn back to the article I never should have read.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

I thought I could, but how could I...

I had a conversation yesterday morning with someone who invited me, some time later, to a networking meeting with key folk in the non-profit world here.  He knows people in several organizations it would be a privilege to serve.  And he insisted this non-profit would would be filled with organizations willing to accommodate my needs to have my skills.  My old boss has been rather insistant that I would be, still, very much value added.  I admit, in the course of that conversation, hope bloomed.

Today, I started tackling things on my hiatus list.  Too soon, I know. But I did.  The first task was small, something I have wanted to do for several months.

In my basement are four windows without curtains. I bought hooks to screw into the frames and rods for the curtains. I already have four pieces of lace curtains, but they are cut from longer ones, so a pocket needs to be sewn in the top.  I do not sew.  But I can pin.  I thought, since few visit me, that it would be better to have pinned curtains than no curtains.

So, I took the rods, curtains, pins, and hooks to the basement. I screwed eight hooks into wooden frames. I pinnned four curtains.  And I hung them.  Forty-five minutes of labor. Forty-five minutes of standing up and or bending over (while I pinned).  Easy, eh?

No.  It was not.  I was trembling like a leaf being whipped about by storm winds when I was through.  I collapsed on the couch.  And I fell asleep.  Tell me, how in the world could pinning and hanging curtains be so draining?

Sometimes I wonder how I got here.  Sometimes I wonder where I am going.  Sometimes I wish people would hear me...screaming...that this is where I am.  Where a simple task is too much.  Sometimes.  More times that I wish to face.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Talk to yourself, Myrtle...

I practically had an asthma attack laughing at the advice I was given today: "Talk to yourself, Myrtle."  How little did she know I've been doing that for quite a while now!  But...to be fair...not in the manner she meant.  I talk to myself to help remember something for a short time. I talk to myself to help figure out a task.  I talk to myself to rehearse what I want to say next. None of these were the reason I am to talk to myself now.

Sometimes, I have pain in my abdomen so bad that I believe anyone else would be racing to the emergency room.  Only, I know it is not my appendix or my liver or my spleen or my stomach.  I know it is not these things because I know it is my emotions.  Yes, I am writing in agony because I am feeling something.  Does that ever make me feel like a wimp!  Yes, feeling can fell me.

When I am curled in a ball, trying to get through the agony of such horrific abdominal cramps, I am to talk to myself.  Tell myself the truth. Speak the truth to me.

Truth is powerful.  Truth is healing.  "You are not ill, Myrtle, you are feeling...."  Be specific.  Be honest.  Speak the truth of you. Those are my instructions.

Several times of late, the idea of faith coming from hearing has arisen.  In many ways, I find that a wonder. I do not have to do anything in order to gain and increase faith!  In other ways, a comfort.  That means that faith comes from outside myself, outside of this person so overwrought that feelings can make her incapaciate her physically.  And, in other ways, I find that to be a relief because I have been asking, longing for the sweet, sweet Gospel to be spoken to me.  Spoken again and again and again, to hear the truth of me.  The specious truth our foe offers based on all that has taken place, but the truth given to me, Myrtle, through the Holy Spirit by the Son of God as He suffered and died for me.  And it is actually okay that I want to hear the sweet, sweet Gospel again and again and again.

Who am I? This question fells me for any answer I speak is one no one would wish to hear.  Who am I?  The answer Christ speaks is the answer I ache to hear.  Who am I?  I say I am a struggling, sinful, broken, marred, weak, anxious, ill, sorrowing, confused, unemployed mess of a human being.  Who am I?  Christ says I am a beloved child of God, washed clean and without blemish or spot, holy and sanctified.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

The thing that is I wish were not...

There are so very many things that I cannot face, I cannot touch.  Just as you might jerk your hand away from a hot burner on a stove, so I jerk, recoil, flee things in my life and in my past.  Whole things.  Big things.  And the smallest of moments.

There are far too many initials in my life.  Ones I should be proud of, but are most often ignored. Ones that seem to define me, but should not. A new set I try to pretend are not, but are.

PTSD.  Such a conundrum. Pretending doesn't work.  Not at all. 

I find it to be like I am held hostage.  Or maybe like walking through a maze.  Or perhaps like dodging enemy fire as I seek safety.  Really, it's all of that and more.  And more.  And lonely.

Today, out of the blue, only for a reason known, I started having a panic attack.  A gasp.  Whole body tremors.  Struggle to breathe.  Racing heart. Terror.  Being swallowed whole by darkness and confusion.  Suffocating. Drowning.  Exploding.  Because of whom I was with, I was able to navigate past the moment far better than usual.  Only, just like my asthma attacks, I have been hit with after shocks each time my mind returns to that moment. The panic wells within and I fight it back with my whole being.  I am scared.  Amos is tired of me clutching him.

I have tried to keep busy. I have spent time whacking bushes, scrubbing dishes, doing puzzles, watching television, hanging out on Facebook.  I have also gasped, had my heart begin to race, and tears slip down my cheeks as abject fear washed over me.

One more time. One more time to talk. One more time to have the fractured pieces of my life, my heart, my mind bound by another.  And then six weeks.  Six weeks of sitting and waiting and trembling and battling...alone....

I am a wimp.  I know this.  I have not hidden the fact.  Of course, my wimpiness has been like an onion of late...one layer of weakness revealed after another.  A veritable abyss of wimpiness.  I've known for months that this day was coming, this time.  I've known it would be hard.  In truth, I have not been able to fathom getting through it, but I knew it was coming and worked at getting ready. 

Smells. Touch.  Sounds.  That is what usually sets me off.  Today, it was words.  Trying to speak of the hiatus.  Caught off guard. Dropped to my knees by a sucker punch by our foe heretofore experienced. I thought I knew how hard this is going to be.  I did not.  I did not.  Lord, have mercy...I did not.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Again with the pain...

Someone started reading my blog from the beginning.  Egads!  When I was asked a question about something in July 2005, I went back to look it up and was very surprised to see that I was already talking about the cognitive problems escalating.  Surprised and sobered and saddened.  Then, I wondered: Just how many times do I talk about the same topic?  Not sure I want the answer to that one!

Yet there are topics I purposely choose over and over again, primarily because that which I want to say always falls a tad short, never quite becoming that which is in my mind and on my heart. I never seem to frame my world, convey the experience, in a manner fitting the moment, the day, the week. In this case, no matter how much I try to write about pain, it never really touches how I feel.

Twice this week, I have found myself in a battle of despair for the agony of my knees, wrists, elbows, fingers...all the bits of me that bend, I suppose you could say.  The change in barometric pressure from a front passing through is the culprit.  Yet another instance, for me, where there is nothing I can do but endure the moment, the day, the week.

Sometimes, I start downing Motrin or Tylenol or both.  Sometimes, I try something stronger, if I have it on hand.  Sometimes, I think that there is nothing I can possibly do to make the pain easier, better.  Perhaps there is, but I have never found out what.

Those pain scales?  Mostly, I find them rather useless.  I have had one pain or another or many types for so long now that I cannot think of a time when this was not so.  I know that I started Celebrex seven years ago and that was after a few years of trying to deal with the arthritis on my own.  And the nerve pain from Multiple Sclerosis has been a companion since the mid 1990s.  The spasticity in my legs?  How long?  I cannot say anymore.  Though writing those words causes me chagrin since I have not worked on stretching out my leg muscles in months.

The diffuse, constant agony in my joints when fronts pass through, when weather rears its ugly head, is difficult for me to bear.  Christ be praised that not all weather fronts do this!  The curious, ex-professor part of me wonders why this is so, what it is about the weather fronts of this week that trigger the pain.  But would the why really matter?  I cannot affect the weather.  All I really can do is affect how i respond to the weather.  Alas, I fear I do not rise to the occasion in this suffering.  [Bettina, do I get brownie points for NOT wailing to you about this?]

Is it coincidence that this week has also been a week where not a night has passed without agony from my joints of a different nature?

For a while now, I cannot rest my feet on something unless my legs are supported in some fashion or another.  If not, if the weight of my legs is born by my feet and my ankle joints begin to flare in intense pain from being separated a bit, perhaps moving in a wrong direction...the way my knee fails to stay completely together when I am overly fatigued.

That is why I sleep with pillows beneath my knees and arms if I am on my back.  To have my legs straight makes my knees begin to scream in agony.  I have to steel my nerves if I have fallen asleep that way and awake needing to move them.

It is nerve pain that causes my right hand to simultaneously grown numb, stiffen, and flare with agony if I roll over on that arm.  [With the torn muscle in my upper right arm from the pit bull attack, as soon as I roll over, I awake from the pain that still remains.  So, my hand has not been problematic in nearly six weeks.]

Lately, however, I have been having problems with both arms.  Whenever my arms hang off the bed, my elbow joints slowly begin to flare in pain, almost as if they are bending backward.  Move them at that point is almost more than I can bear.  Sometimes I faint.  I never use to find myself with my arms hanging off the bed, and to do so when I have been trying to sleep in the middle of the bed is just plain strange.  So, I am blaming Amos!

Only, to be fair, it happens on the couch as well.  Stretch out my arm as if I am giving blood and soon the pain flares.  Stupid me, by the time the pain is noticeable, it is to late to avoid the agony of moving the joint.  This is because, simply put, I am just used to hurting, every moment, day, week.  Some bit of me or another protests its use or merely its existence. I have become adept at turning the other cheek to those bits.  But with this particular problem I truly do need to figure out a way to notice sooner or avoid such positions altogether.

Pain is a weird companion.  Sharp pain.  Dull pain.  Centralized pain.  Diffuse pain.  Fiery pain. Tingling pain. Girth pain. Intermittent pain.  Constant pain.  You could almost call him dissociative, a companion with multiple personality disorder.  Only he knows who he is.  He is what he is.

I know full well that I have it easy compared to some, especially those with bone cancer.  I know that I also have it easy, per se, for the very fact that I have a fairly high tolerance for pain.  But I tire of it.  I tire of how this wretched companion colors my life, tears at my balance, and turns my mind away from that which I know to be true.

Romans 8:28 does not say that God causes all good things to work together for good.  No, it declares that God causes all things.  All.  What a pesky little word.  There is no way around it, is there?  It is an absolute.  A blessing, really, eh?  I do believe that verse. I do believe all verses.  I do believe in Christ crucified.

Sometimes, when I am over set with pain, I think myself rather churlish for not considering His agony, His searing pain.  I don't know how to see past my own.  I wish I did. Would that it were I could live more in Hebrew 12, fixing my eyes on the Author and Perfector of my faith who for the joy set before Him despised the shame and endured the cross...for me.  The truth is that I am Peter, sinking in the water, begging to be saved because I took my eyes off of Jesus and looked about me.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

The middle of the bed...

I have been trying to learn how to sleep in the middle of the bed.

I slept in a twin bed until I was 28.  When I graduated with my Ph.D., a "big" bed was one of the three presents I bought myself.  It is GREEN, of course, an iron full-sized bed. 

With Kashi being one of the other presents, perhaps my learning to sleep in the middle of the bed was doomed.  Many a night I found myself sleeping on the barest sliver of mattress because that small dog leaned against me until I moved over and over and over once more.  Still, for the 16 years I have had the bed, I have either slept on the right or the left, depending on what side I had my lamp and sleepmate and asthma drugs.  However, it would be wrong to blame my beloved buttercup.  He was not the reason I never took full advantage of my new mattress.

In truth, trying to learn such a thing has been difficult.  In fact, it is not going all that well for someone wanting to learn this thing.  As hard as I try, I find myself over on the edge again.  As if something within me will not allow me to have more than the sliver of mattress.  Perhaps I believe I am not worthy of an entire mattress?  Or is it that I have stuffed myself in small spaces when I am frightened since I was a small child and the edge of the bed is like a small space to me? 

[When in the dorm at college, undergrad and grad school, with the bed attached to the wall, I slept in the corner, my back pressed against the wall.]

Plus, there is the pain.

Lying in bed hurts, you see.  Lying on my back hurts, especially with my knees and elbows flat.  If I am on my back, I put pillows beneath my joints so they are not straight.  Even so, the pressure on my lower back become unbearable to me.  It is better to lie on my side, but when I do, the pressure on a nerve in my arm makes my hand eventually go numb.  Even though I can hardly move it and the surface is numb, the "numbness" is actually excruciating.  The right side is better than the left. I tuck pillows against my back so I can sort of lean against them to take the pressure off my arms, but they eventually fall off the side of the bed. I roll back over.  The pain awakes me.

For reasons unknown to me, I cannot sleep on my stomach.  I cannot lie on my stomach.  Whenever I do, I have great pain.  It is just something I ignore...and avoid. 

And, when I was a freshman in college, I torn a muscle in my neck when I dropped an old metal iron on it.  [Laugh.  Get it out of your system. The emergency medical personnel surely did.]  Ever since then, I have to have a pillow tucked securely beneath my neck.  If it is not fully supported, lying on my back or side either way, then I struggle with painful muscle spasms and nerve pain.


Finally, there is the asthma.  I sleep better propped up. Even so, I oft awake coughing and gasping for air.

Since I have lost all that weight, I can now bend over without pain in my abdomen.  [I sort of figured that the fat was squishing my organs since I carried much of my girth in my midsection.] At night, now, I often sleep with one or both of my knees tucked up nearly against my chest.  This straightens out my lower back and eases the pain there.  But then I have to try and avoid the pain in my hands.  Even before all this foolishness with the middle of the bed, sleeping has been difficult at best.

Amos has been confounded by my attempts to learn to sleep in the middle of the bed in the midst of trying to lessen the pain, prevent more pain, and breathe easier.  He still snoozes with his neck tucked against mine as I read my book at night; he still starts off the night curled atop my pillow.  Sleeping with his back against mine has been harder.  This is because the most success I have had is to sleep across the bed sideways. Curled up like I start off when I am awake, I do fit sideways.  Only, eventually, I find myself against the edge once more. 

The night mares and night terrors I face make sleeping hard, but the pain even more so.  I...just...hurt so very much when I sleep.  I move about and lose my helpful pillows off the side of the bed and awake.  Sometimes, I fall myself.  Amos is probably afraid of falling off the side of the bed.  I worry myself I shall send him tumbling in the middle of the night.  I think we would both be safer were I able to accomplish this lesson. 


If only...if only such was actually possible. Of that I have no confidence, if truth be told.  Still, I am trying.

I cannot say why I decided it was time I learn to sleep in the middle of the bed.  For one, right now is actually not the best time to take up another battle.  Only...well...a part of me wonders if I can learn this, then perhaps I can learn other things that I am needing to know.  Things I should have learned along time ago...an undoing of wrong lessons...finally understanding how God meant for life to be.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Ascribing too much...

I was a bit ridiculous about Kashi, especially the longer I had him.  I missed him while at work the last few years.  I did not want to travel unless I could have him come along.  He was not the easiest of dogs to own.  He was not a lap dog or snuggler or even very loveable.  He was opinionated and stubborn and grumpy.  Yet Kashi was my joy.  Never, not once, did my heart not melt when I saw him curled up in a ball.  Never, not once, did he fail to greet me with reckless abandon.  I was his world.  He was mine.

Amos is nothing like Kashi, for which I am quite grateful. 

Amos is everything I could want in a dog, if I were honest most things that Kashi was not.  He is more cuddly than I ever imagined possible.  He is soft and fluffy and does not shed.  He frets when I am out of sight and will follow me about the house if he is having floor time.  Washing dishes, I oft have him curled about my feet.  That puppy gets most of his exercise racing from room to room, anticipating where I am going and then rushing back repeatedly to ensure I am still on my way.  To be fair, Kashi had no problem with potty training.  Amos still gets an F.

Do I ascribe too much to him?  This, I do not know.

What I do know is that he is different with my guardian angel realtor than with my church friend.  He plays with the former and cuddles with the latter.  He seems to know what each needs. 

Do I ascribe too much to him?

Sleep has been elusive to me, even when taking medication that should knock me into next Tuesday.  Mind overrode body until body broke and body overrode mind.  Now, having slept a bit, mind is re-exerting control. I have been too afraid to sleep.

I did not fall asleep last night until around 4:00 AM. An hour or so later, I was trapped in a nightmare.  I was back in dark place, being smothered by a great weight and in great pain from what was taking place.  I screamed and screamed and screamed.  I suddenly awoke and realized that I was dreaming.  Only the weight and the pain were still there.

The pain is something I have to endure from time to time.  It catches me unaware.  Several months have passed since the last time...at least two by my reckoning, but I believe three or four.  It happened a while after I moved here.  One a scale of 1-10, it is a 10.  I lie there thinking I cannot stand a minute more, trying to hang on, waiting for it to pass.  Sometimes I pass out.  Sometimes I vomit.  It is horrible and there is nothing to do, really.  Just something I have to face.

When I awoke, I discovered I was screaming in real life as well, for I awoke with a very sore throat. And I awoke with a weight smothering me.  It was Amos.

Since the crate did not work with him, Amos has slept with me from the first. While I am reading, he will drape his neck across my own, as if trying to peer at the book as well.  Only I know he's not following the story since snores soon start filling my ear.  When I turn off the light, he will resettled himself on my pillow curled around my head.  Some time during the night, he moved to curled up back to back with me.  When I get up to go to the bathroom, he presses his back against mine once more upon my return.  He comforts me all night long.  Only, really, it is more like I am merely an oversized puppy to him.  He's just draping himself about me as he did his brothers and sister for 10 weeks after he was born.

Only the night of the attack, when I lay exhausted on the ground, Amos dragged himself across my lap.  He was in so much pain he didn't even want me touching him.  Still, he inched and scooted his battered body until it was draped across my lap.  The weight of him was so very comforting, as if he was trying to make himself the greatest presence in my life...not the dog owners threatening me, not the crowd of strangers, not the fear overwhelming my mind.

I still cannot hold him.  He still cries out most of the time I pick him up to take him outside to do his business.  You can still see the bruises beneath his white hair.  His wounds are not yet closed.  At night, he has slept on a pillow near me, but not touching.  I have greatly missed holding him.  But I have also missed having him curled at my back all night long.  Sometimes his small pressure against my back is what helps me have the courage to rewrite a nightmare and fall back asleep quickly.

Last night, though in far less pain than he was before, Amos once again draped himself across my lap.  It is like he knew I was being attacked again and wanted to protect me.  It is like he knew and did what he thought would help me.

Is it wrong for me to think that God created this very unusual puppy dog so that His weak and weary sheep might have the comfort she craves and a modicum of the peace she needs?  Am I ascribing too much to Amos?  Am I confused in how God provides for His children?


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

A lesson in horror...

My beloved puppy dog and I were out talking a walk Tuesday evening.  Walking aids in ensuring his nightly business is done out of doors.  We had just turned onto the side street to my own when I looked up and saw this large dark dog heading toward us at a dead run.  I knew what was going to happen.  Quickly, I scooped up Amos, and frantically looked about, but there was nowhere for us to go.

I am terrified.  Still.  48 hours later.

The dog was large and immediately leapt up on me and grabbed Amos.  I hung on with all my might, screaming at the top of my voice for help.  I screamed.  Amos screamed.  The dog bit and scratched and bruised us both. I screamed and screamed and screamed for help.

I hate MS.  Never more than I did that night.

The dog grabbed me by the upper arm and dragged me to the ground.  I fell hard, striking my head against the curb.  After scrambling back to my feet, I danced stumbled around trying to keep Amos wrapped in my arms.  At one point, the dog grabbed a hold of Amos' leg and pulled us both down again.  I regained my feet several times, but was back on the ground immediately.  He bit my wrist, pulling me to the ground.  At some point into the battle, two men came and started kicking the dog.  They couldn't make him stop and urged me to abandon Amos to the dog and save myself.  I could not.  I simply could not lose my dog.

The last time I got back to my feet, I knew that the next time the dog pulled me down I would not be able to stand once more.  I also knew that I would shortly no longer be able to hold onto Amos any longer.  The pit bull was about to win, because even though I wanted to still fight the MS made doing so impossible.  I was too weak.  Amos was no longer screaming, and I feared I was holding onto a dead dog.   I began waiting for the inevitable.

I do not know how it ended.  I just know that it finally did.  Amos and I on the ground, covered in blood, circled by people.  I couldn't stand anymore.  I couldn't even hold Amos.  He crawled across my lap and wouldn't even let me touch him.  He growled and snapped at everyone. 

Part of the crowd were the owners.  The woman kept telling everyone it was my fault, that I didn't know what play was and the dog was just trying to play with Amos.  The man got down and put his face just an inch or two from mine and was threatening me, telling me that I needed to say that nothing happened.  I started screaming again, begging someone to make him get away from me.  Someone finally pulled him away.

I begged anyone to get my neighbor.  She came.  I begged her to get Amos home, so worried he would bite someone and end up being taken away.  Once she left with him, I let go and fainted.


Male officers pulling at my clothing and photographing my injuries.
Male EMTs who kept telling me not to play games after I fainted and threatened to "shove a tube up your nose if you don't cooperate and stay awake."
Male nurse.
Male doctor.


I found that so difficult.  Words cannot describe my terror.  I keep trying to explain how vicious this attack was, but it seems to me that as I have done, there has been sympathy and such, but no real clear understanding.

Last night, in being interviewed and photographed again by the Animal Control officer, I was given the words:  pit bull.

Amos and I were attacked by a pit bull.

The attack was around 4-5 minutes.  Stop.  Stare at a clock for 5 minutes. As you do, imagine a pit bull trying to kill a dog in your arms and attacking you to get to the dog.  Then imagine afterward having to face a hostile, threatening member of the gender who has wounded you deeply as you cower in terror, covered with your blood and the blood of your beloved puppy.


By the mercy of God, someone reached my new pastor and he came to the hospital to pray with me.  By the mercy of God, a female technician was found who could at least serve as a chaperone.  By the mercy of God, Amos was still alive when I got home.  By the mercy of God, my old boss was awake to talk when I called her at 4:00 AM because she is a early morning bird.


My beloved puppy dog has puncture wounds, gouges, an injury to his eye, and was running a fever yesterday, which I hope is gone now.  He has black bruises all over his body.  He trembles even in his sleep.  I haven't been able to hold him or snuggle with him.  He cannot really walk about, so I have to carry him outside to do his business.  Whenever I pick him up, he squeals in pain.  I cannot figure out a way to carry him that does not hurt him.

The owners took the dog away as the police were close and have been keeping him away.  As of a few weeks ago, he still was an un-vaccinated dog ordered to compliance (there have been several calls about the dog already).  Amos is to be quarantined for 10 days until it is clear he does not have rabies.

I have deep scrapes, bites, and bruises all over my body.  I am in great pain and have trouble moving.  I have not yet slept because I cannot calm down; medication has not helped.  I am still traumatized.  I am still terrified.

Amos is alive.
I am alive.


Somewhere in all of this is a moment in time that will pass and be no more.  Then, I shall want my damn t-shirt.  A pair of them actually.  One in a tiny size.  Emblazoned across the front:  I survived a pit bull attack and all I got was this dumb t-shirt.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Handle with care...

A while ago, I mentioned that I was advised to note for others in my path: "I am a bit fragile right now and need you to be gentle with me."  Again, the irony of that struck me because when I said that myself, it was not well-received.  Primarily with the response that I didn't know what I needed.  I think that my stance came from reading Walther and how he is quite firm that those who have been crushed by the Law need not a mote more of Law, but rather heaped upon them the sweet, sweet Gospel.  I certainly, in my opinion, fit that category.

I have been thinking about what exactly being fragile means.  How do you explain it?  How do you live in such a state.  Of course, I took myself off to the dictionary.

Fragile:  easily broken, shattered, or damaged; delicate; brittle; frail

Hmm, Bettina, does that sound like your best friend?  SIGH.  The answer is yes.  This I know.  I must say, it is rather uncomfortable to be standing on the inside of a life--heart, mind, and body--that is fragile.

I wish that I could put this into words, but I am not sure that I can find a way to shape this life that I am living in such a way that it would make sense.  Nor am I sure that I am brave enough to do so.  Even so, I have been thinking about being fragile.


The advice was to ask for people to be gentle.  That, too, was a bit ironic, for I had someone insist he was always gentle when his words and actions oft truly were not.  In a way, I kept making excuses, I kept swallowing the hurt, because I thought I had to, I thought that I was supposed to do so.  Yet God has placed in my path of late a few people who have shown me exactly what being gentle means.  


One, in particular, is a new friend.  Were it in my power, I would get her and Bettina in a room together.  Besides being a moment of pure joy for me, I just know that the two of them would fit...and not just because they both seem to be born wearing kid gloves.  Both have a quirkiness I admire and both have very fine minds.  Both understand the sweet, sweet Gospel.


I would not presume to say that it is another convenant type friendship, but I will say that she has shown me that she has chosen to walk beside me.  Another wife and mother, as with Bettina, her plate is full.  But she has chosen to walk beside her struggling sister in Christ.


How do I come up with a name for her?  Since I like old-fashioned names, I have been thinking about Rosalaine, a name that reminds me of my beloved roses.  After all, the two Adams in her means that she has the capacity to offer thorns or blooms.  How amazing is it that she has chosen to offers blooms?  Sometimes it is a large bouquet fragrant with the wondrous aroma of Christ and sometimes a single bud she knows will eventually open, that I will eventually see its beauty.


Rosalaine has been both sacrificially listening and sacrificially speaking the sweet, sweet Gospel.  Moreover, she has been teaching me things that I need to learn in the most gentle of ways.  I like how her mind works--quite fascinating--but I also like that she is a writer and can fashion a fair pen.  

It is my hope that her skill with gentle words can be captured in such a way as to share this stance with others who are facing wounded people.  To give the sweet, sweet Gospel is to give them hope and healing.  But, much if the time, in order than they might best receive it, the giving needs to be gentle.  In a way, the giving itself personifies the sweet, sweet Gospel. 

The Living Word is active.  The Gospel is active.  The active form of gentle is to mollify, calm, pacify.  It is the awesome power of the sweet, sweet Gospel that can mollify, calm, and pacify our foe, can break through his wily, pernicious assaults that obscure Christ crucified in our weak and sinful hearts and minds and bodies.  The Gospel makes peace, is peace.  The Gospel heals, is healing.  The Gospel forgives, is forgiveness.


For the wounded person, a fragility can exist that calls for the hands and voice of Christ to be gentle, calls for the giving of the Good Message of the cross to be in the most gentlest of manners.  What this looks like, sounds like, feels like is as elusive to some as is the sweet, sweet Gospel to me.  


God has gifted Rosalaine with an understanding of how to be gentle in pouring the sweet, sweet Gospel over my wounds--a gentleness God has used to bring Light to my darkness and a gentleness I pray will one day be shared with both others who are weak and weary and with those in their lives who long to help the wounded brothers and sisters before them.


A trifecta of hope I have had from my Good Shepherd, even as I still struggle in body and mind and spirit.  Someone who sees beyond the wound to the person and who is helping me gather back together the shards of my life.  A covenant friendship.  A gentle giver of the sweet, sweet Gospel.  All three are willing to let me borrow their hope.  All three do not mind that I oft lose sight of my baptism.  All three are, in different ways, a beginning and an ending that is for me.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief! 

What lies between us...

A while ago, Bettina gave me the greatest gift of my life aside from the salvation of the Savior we both share.  In a very dark moment, with tears streaming down my face as I trembled in fear, she spoke some words that shifted my world to a new axis. I have wanted to write about it.  Actually, I have wanted to ask her to write about it for me.  Alas, I have not.  So, again, my fumbling will have to do, knowing that in doing so I will paint the poorer portrait of this gift. Oh, how I wish I had captured the moment right away!

Part of what made me think of her gift was discovering a box in the attic that took me by surprise.  It was with a conflicted heart that I looked upon the contents.  What were they, pray tell?  My hats.  I did not remember that I had them.  I did not remember that I kept them.  In the attic were two boxes that I did not pack in the move, that I had not unpacked in my last move nearly nine years ago.

For all my confusion over the wearing of hats on Easter, I actually do not eschew hats.  I used to wear them all the time.  I had forgotten about these hats.  I wonder if Bettina remembers.  Somewhere is a photo of me at my Master's graduation.  I should scan it and give you all a laugh.  There I was in a Victorian ivory dress and a straw hat with a wide brim and a scarlet bow trailing long ribbons.  About my throat was a smaller ribbon with a tiny rose in the center.  I thought I was the most beautiful graduate that day, dressed in a manner that fit not with the style of the time but with the style of my heart.

I wore hats all the time then and I wore vests.  I had nearly two dozen vests, almost all embroidered.  Over the years, I have let them all go but one.  I wore vests and long skirts and boots and hats.  That is who I was.  That is who I was when I met Bettina.  Finding the hats reminded me that I have not always been as I am now.  Before that morning when she gifted me so, I would have taken comfort in the discovery, thinking that is why she could be a friend to one like me.

That wretched morning when I called her in fear and trembling, Bettina fetched her bible and started reading to me. She started reading to me of Jonathan and David.  She started reading to me of Jonathan and David to share with me that she thought of me, of us, as covenant friends.

Between Jonathan and David was this choice, this commitment, to be friends, this choice to put another's life before one's own.  Between Jonathan and David was safety, trust, vulnerability, steadfastness, honesty, and accountability.  But not merely those words, not merely the shadow of them, but the depth, the fullness of them. 

Until she said that, I had never really put two and two together to see that this was the why of the wonder of her friendship.  Suddenly, it made sense to me.  If she sees us as covenant friends, then the struggle that has shadowed my life would merely be what passes between us as we walk this life together, rather than a final straw I feared would fall.

In this wild and wonderful way, I believed her immediately.  All the doubt and fear I had about the strain I thought my struggle was putting on our friendship was washed away in the Word she read to me.  I could believe her because this was a thing that God had done before.  What He has done He most certainly can do again!  It was not David or Jonathan who were these great people who made their friendship great.  They were flawed, wretched sinners.  It was God who made their friendship great.  Original Sin plagued them just as it plagues us.  But the Holy Spirit rests in us all, working His Word, forgiving us, healing us, restoring us to God through the blood of Christ.

A stillness swept over me then that has remained in a small corner of my mind.  Bettina sees me as her convenant friend!  That explains her utter willingness to walk beside me even when she is afraid herself, overwhelmed with hurt and frustration that she does not know what to do or say.  It explains her love.

My dear friend has worked so very hard in the past year to help me.  More and more, she has relied on the sweet, sweet Gospel, to remind me of my baptism and that which is true.  More and more, she has worked to make small things easier because there are so very many large and difficult things in my life.  More and more, she has shouted, whispered, sung, texted, emailed, chatted, and photographed her love to me.  More and more, she has remained as honest as possible with me, willing to speak even if she knows her words might hurt or distress me.  More and more, she has striven to help me feel safe, even if only in her figurative arms.  My goodness, she should get some sort of award for what she has done even, as she has worked to better serve her husband and her children in the vocations our Lord has given her.  Maybe that's why when she visited the poor woman practically spent the entire visit ensconced in the GREEN chair!

Some time ago, Bettina wrote the most beautiful blog entry about me.  I feel sort of strange linking to it.  Perhaps it is better to simply say that she wrote how being my friend is not a hard thing to do. And she wrote that I am wounded and then asked who wouldn't offer to help.  Such love is in that entry.  What I did not understand then, that I do now, is how much faith was in there, too.

What mercy our Good Shepherd has wrought in the friendship He's crafted between us!  What love!  What forgiveness!  What hope!


Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!

Stop and think before rushing in...

I shall surely bungle this, but here goes...

I think, perhaps, one of the greatest errors in being around wounded people is those who take on the task of binding up those wounds, of healing or even "fixing" the person, as if they are in need of repair.  Few actually have that vocation.  To try and heal when that is not your calling, not your gift, can end up hurting the wounded person more.

So often, we want to do something...anything...and in the longing to be doing something great or grand or sweeping, we lose sight of that which we are called to do to our wounded brothers and sisters.  Speak the Gospel to them.

There is a woman who is not well mentally and physically.  She is not really capable of independence right now, much less caring for her children, one of whom has been hurt.  A number of folk are trying so hard to fight a process by which she is losing her home and her children.  But this quote from Jurassic Park keeps popping into my mind: "They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."  It is a movie line that has stayed with me ever since I first heard it.  How often do we rush in?  And, in so doing, how often do we miss what is important?  

In this situation, what stands out to me is that no one is trying to help the hurt child.  She is secondary.  Yet, to me, her mother clearly cannot care for her right now, and as horrible as that might be, it is best that she and her siblings live in a place where they are nurtured.  They are not adults.  They should not be caring for their mother and scrambling to keep from being evicted.

Of course, I have very mixed feelings about children I have seen who are put in positions of caring for siblings and for the household.  What is a child's vocation?  I believe it is one thing for a child to learn responsibility by caring for her room and his things and by helping with chores.  But, to me, it is altogether a different thing for a child to be responsible for the care and upkeep of a home or the well-being of a sibling while parents are otherwise engaged.  Not merely brief times, but where that care and upkeep are a large part of the child's day, the child's life.  But...that is my conflicted heart.

Here, in this situation, the hurt child needs physical and mental care that the mother cannot and has not provided.  The mother's actions have put herself, and by extension, her children in danger.  So, why is everyone so concerned about doing whatever it takes to convince the authorities to not intervene in this family?


A few years ago, there was a case of a foster child who assaulted a child in the home where he was staying.  Because he was from a troubled home and was troubled himself, the social workers and parents spent all their focus on him.  A week later, when I learned of what happened, I asked the social worker to the foster family how the assaulted child was doing.  The social worker replied, "I do not know.  I have not talked to her."  A miopic response if ever there was one.


That little girl needed help, immediate help and long-term help.  Yet all the adults in her life were focusing their energy on trying to keep her foster brother from getting into further trouble with the choice he made.  And some were professionals!  Staggers the mind. 

In truth, the professionals were so busy trying to sweep what happened under the rug, they did not stop to ask why the mother was not fighting for her daughter.  In the end, we learned the mother was abusing the foster son and didn't want him removed from the home lest his plight come to light.  In all the visits to the home, no one helped the boy and so he hurt the girl.  No excuse.  He made a terrible choice and has to face the consequences of his actions.  But he was doing what he was taught to do in a place that was supposed to be safe for him.  No one saw anything.  No one was really looking.  And when they were forced to look they still did not see clearly because of the fear of the impact the situation would have on their license.


In this recent situation, well-meaning Christian folk are so busy trying to solve the problem that they have not stopped to understand what exactly is the problem and to question if they should be trying to solve the problem in the first place.  The battle cry is to keep the family together.  But I keep wondering why no one is stopping to measure the cost of doing on on the lives of the children.


Instead of trying to solve a problem, I believe those well-meaning people should focus their energies on sharing the sweet, sweet Gospel.  That is, after all, what they are given to do.  It is not a difficult task in and of itself.  The Gospel is clearly laid out for us.  We have rich and varied language with which to speak it.  But speaking the sweet, sweet Gospel to those who are wounded does have its own challenges.  Perhaps that is why others seem so intent on fixing the person, on solving the problem, instead of working to share that which can heal, can bind up wounds, can give strength and sustenance to the wounded person  and do so in greater and more profound ways than any of our "fixing" can ever accomplish.


For the wounded person, the sweet, sweet Gospel can be painful to hear, its dissonance with her own experience reverberating against his wound and obscuring sight and hearing.  No matter.  Keep speaking.  For the wounded person, the sweet, sweet Gospel can be quite elusive to grasp.  No matter.  Keep speaking.  For the wounded person, the sweet, sweet Gospel can be rather frightening, unfamiliar and utterly foreign to that which she knows and understands.  No matter.  Keep speaking.


Dr. Yahnke teaches about the need for sacrificial listening when addressing pastoral care for those who are suicidal.  That need fits all wounded people.  I think, however, she should add the need for sacrificial speaking of the sweet, sweet Gospel and broadened this task to include the mercy Christian brothers and sisters can show the wounded.  We are called to speak the sweet, sweet Gospel to each other, to share the message of Christ crucified.  When asked how many times we should forgive someone, wondering if it should be even as many as seven times, Christ answers we should forgive them seventy times seven, a number seemingly so large as if to say there is no end to forgiving.  If someone had asked Him how many times we should speak the sweet, sweet Gospel to others, I imagine the answer would be the same.  Seventy times seven.  No matter.  Keep speaking.

Why?  Because we underestimate and oft lose sight of the awesome power of the Living Word.  This is because of the Word, which is a heavenly, holy Word, which no one can praise enough.  For it has, and is able to do, all that God is and can do. [BOC, LC, IV, 17-18]  For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth, and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth it shall not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. [Isaiah 55:10-11]  

It is Jesus who heals the broken hearted and bind up wounds, to free the captive and to heal the sick (Psalm 147:3; Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18; and Matthew 9:12).  It is Jesus who will bring rest to the weary, break through our fears and despair and give them true peace (Matthew 11:28 and John 14:27).  It is Jesus, not us.  It is Jesus, so speak the sweet, sweet Gospel so that the Holy Spirit can sow that Living Word into the hearer and accomplish the work He is given to do.  

We do not have to worry if our speaking is enough or will be enough.  We do not have to heal or fix or save the wounded person.  All we really have to do is trust that God will work through those whose vocations it is to bind up wounds and to heal and focus on that which we are given to do:  pray for our wounded brothers and sisters and to speak the sweet, sweet Gospel to them.


Whether the woman and her children remain together is in God's hands, as played out through those whose vocations places them in a position to be the hands and voice of Christ to the mother and her children.  It is not, in my opinion, the call of her Christian brothers and sisters to do so.  They can pray for her and with her.  They can listen to her.  They can speak the sweet, sweet Gospel to her.  They can visit her.  They can visit her children, if removed from the home.  They can speak the sweet, sweet Gospel to her children for her. And they can help her find an advocate whose vocation it is to walk her through the processes and choices she faced.  They can also serve her in body as occasion arises, such as cooking for her, driving her to an appointment, cleaning her home, washing her clothing.  Those are the things that are good and right and salutary for them to be doing.  They should not, even in the best intentions, stand as an obstacle to the processes that are designed to protect children and families.  They should not presume to know what is best medically and mentally for this woman and for her children.
 

I ache for the mother in her illness and depression and fear and hopelessness.  But I also ache for the daughter in the confusion and hurt she faces with a wound, that if left untended, can fester and breed shame and despair for a lifetime.  My prayer is that God, in His infinite wisdom, provides for the well-being of the mother and her children in a manner that is pleasing to Him, to His intended good of all involved, and that the Christians in her life will walk beside her and share with her the sweet, sweet Gospel that she might be comforted and healed, if not in this life, then when she is restored in glory.




Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

Why I like Doctor Who...

1.  The Doctor ALWAYS offers forgiveness before death and destruction, no matter what the person/alien has done, if he repents and ceases the behavior.

2.  He is a fierce protector of life.

3.  He is a study in the hidden and subtle companion grief can be.

4.  His life shows how man is not meant to live alone.

5.  Awesome quotes:

• "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually—from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint—it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly...timey-wimey...stuff." Blink, Doctor Who
• "The way I see it, life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant." Vincent and the Doctor, Doctor Who
• "You are a perfect example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain." Pyramids of Mars, Doctor Who
• "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering." The Face of Evil, Doctor Who
• "One solid hope's worth a cartload of certainties." Warrior's Gate, Doctor Who

Please go to bed...

For twelve years I lived in a county where fireworks were illegal.  Until this afternoon, I failed to appreciate that haven.  I wish the good folk of Fort Wayne would take themselves off to bed!

The fireworks began early this afternoon.  From then on, there has been this steady barrage of pops, crackles, and booms.  Booms loud enough to rattle my windows.  Booms that leave me startled in fear, trembling and shaking.  I have been trying to keep calm, but the unpredictability of my neighbor's enthusiasm for this holiday makes that quite difficult to achieve.  Especially since I am small and weak.

Amos cares not for the celebration either.  For hours, I could not get him to venture outside.  I would drag him there, place him in the yard, and he would immediately dart back inside.  A short while ago, I finally got him to take care of business, but he did so hiding in the tall ground cover I have not yet identified.  I couldn't even see him, he crawled so deep within the greenery.  I wanted to join him.  We both will be glad when the morrow has come and gone.

I wonder why it is that I have found fireworks to be so disconcerting.  In my mind, I tell myself that the noise is not a bomb, is not an attack, is not a sign of imminent danger.  This does not matter.  My body keeps reacting as if none of those things are true...or all of them are...whichever is the better way to describe it.

I have read aloud from my beloved Book of Concord and the Bible.  I have watched Stargate SG1 and Doctor Who.  I have spent time on Facebook. I have listened to rather loud music.  I have played Words with Friends with my dear friend Bettina.  Nevertheless, the booms come and I jump and start and shake and tremble. 

I have been at the mercy of my body for a long while now.  I hate that.  I hate that my body seems more intent on betraying me than serving me.  Silly, I know.  Still, I struggle with the months of nausea, roiling innards, diarrhea, vomiting, and fainting.  I struggle with the weeping and trembling and startle responses.  I struggle with the pain and fatigue.  I struggle with the weakness.  And, in the past two weeks, I struggle with the return of plummeting blood sugar.  I even struggle with the fact that my face breaks out with each new moment of great stress.  I cannot hide my turmoil from anyone...it is literally written across my face.  I am weary of it all.

Here, I sit, at the mercy of my body because of fireworks.  That seems so silly.  That seems so weak.  That seems so stupid.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Be careful what you wish for...

What is real? You stand inside a thing, taste it, touch it, experience it. You hold to it despite denials of its existence in this world. Was it real? Did it happen? Finally a denial denied. The thing becomes more real than you imagined it could be. Was it real before or now? Or both? What is real?

My whole life I have waited to hear something that I thought would be good, that I thought would make things better.  It was a moment I dreamed of, a thousand different ways, really.  But when it came it did not feel good, did not seem good at all.

An extreme example would be a Holocaust survivor living amongst those who deny the Holocaust.  As wild a thought as that is for those who lived in those countries where humans were treated like trash, it is still easier to believe than the fact that humans can be so evil, so cruel, so heartless toward one another.  That we can be so egregious in our perfidy against our brothers and sisters who live and walk beside us on this earth so that over six million would end up dead in a very, very short period simply because one man declared them to be worthless.  The reality of the Holocaust is unfathomable.  Yet it happened.  We have a generation of mass murderers.  Those who did the killing.  And those who did nothing to stop it...those who looked the other way, who went on with their lives despite the evil being committed all around them, those near and far who knew and yet who pretended that nothing was happening.


You would think that finally having someone admit the horror was real would be a good thing.  Only in hearing that admission, it is as if the horror is more real, more present.  It is not the moment one thought it would be.  


Yes, this thing happened to you.  Yes, we pretended it did not.  But it did.  The touch. The smell.  The fear.  The shame.  The terror.  It is all real.


We humans are good at pretending.  We are good at glossing over the evil we commit against each other.  We are good at rewriting history to soften our sin, to assuage what consciences we might have that burden us.  It is easier to pretend.  In many ways, for both the perpetrator and the victim, it is easier to pretend.


But if you are the one who carries this burden, who has this wound deep within, to have it wrapped in silence deepens the pain, enlarges the wound.  Even if you are also the one pretending.  To stand in the face of silence, it is hard not to doubt, not to think perhaps it was not so.  Perhaps....


I thought hearing the admission of what happened, finally, in a small way from one person, would be this moment of victory for me.  But it was not.  I am weak.  And I am small.  That confirmation was not what I thought it would be.  It made the experience more real, more terrifying, more shameful.  Be careful what you ask for.


What is real?  This thing.  This terrible thing is real.  What is also real is that I am baptized.  I am washed clean in the waters of holy Baptism.  I am forgiven then, today, and always.  Both are real.  I need help remembering that.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

Too much...

The yard has been an utterly amazing discovery.  Humbling in a very real sense, for I mourned the loss of my rose bushes when I sold my home.  The stone crop, too.  I had those plants with me since Minnesota, having finally put them in the ground in my first home.  But in many ways that was a house not a home.

The jury is out, still, if this will be a home.  However, it is a place that has become an absolute refuge to me.  All about me is beauty.  [Especially now that those wretched blue walls are covered.]  All about me is a home I have dreamed about since I was a little girl.  And I step outdoors and cannot help but be reminded that my Good Shepherd loves me.  The ferns alone declares this to be so.  But, to date, I have identified: three varieties each of lilies and tulips, crocus, two each of daffodils, yarrow, columbine, bleeding heart, rhododendron, forsythia, five varieties of roses, lilac, lavender, hyacinth, hydrangea, hostas, ferns, moss, alum, an ornamental pear tree, an ornamental magnolia tree, a red bud tree, two evergreen trees, grape vine, honeysuckle, holly bush, two evergreen bushes, verbena, two more unidentified flowering bushes, four more unidentified flowers.

The day I arrived at this house, I walked about the yard, completely oblivious of the wonder I would behold in the months to come.

I dare say I have joined the Lutheran Confession completely oblivious of the wonder I would behold...though...the elusiveness of the sweet, sweet Gospel for me has been a trial of its own.

One of the beds in the yard, the one directly across from the back steps, was an herb garden.  Long neglected, it was full of spearmint that was also growing into the yard.  One day, after torrential rains, I dug up the spearmint, gave some away, and threw out the rest.  It is exceedingly invasive.  The empty bed has bothered me ever since.

The hostas came up in this tiny narrow strip of a flower bed along the side of the house.  They were crowded and constantly being sat upon by my puppy dog.  Yesterday, I took my frustration over my innards out upon the soil and dug up those hostas, with the aim of filling up the empty bed.  I have no funds for the yard, but I could dig, separate, and replant.

I ended up setting the hostas into 17 new locations, as well as dividing the lavender bush into five sections, moving a dozen ferns (three that were growing in sidewalk cracks), and spreading the six bags of mulch I bought.  In part, this meant addressing the side of the house I never see, but knew was there...a lonely, empty bed full of weeds.  I removed the weeds, double dug the bed, and planted three of the lavender sections and set eight of the hostas there.  Now, the side of the house I do not see is as beautiful as the rest of the yard.  Now, the back bed I stare at as I await Amos as he tends to his business is not longer this problem waiting to be addressed.  Now, the ferns that were languishing beneath the wretched (no longer there) trumpet vine have been re-set, fertilized, and mulched.

Actually, the labor lasted but four hours.  However, I was stumbling about the last hour and was barely standing once I finished.  I also was already hurting so much I downed copious amounts of ibuprophen the moment I came back inside.  It was too much work for me, even though, in doing it, the yard is essentially done.  All the overgrown, long neglected items have been addressed (okay...one more bush needs pruning, but since I can live with it being a tad overgrown, I am waiting until next spring).  I have closure on one more thing in my life.  One more thing has been wrestled and tamed.  I am the one in control and in achieving that control I can sit back and savor this gift of my Good Shepherd.

Still, it was too much work.  Some how, some way, I should have garnered help.  Only, well, that is not really an option with my friends, new and old, who all live out of town.  The two I have made here are not really ones who would roll up their sleeves and get dirty with me.  Besides, I would never ask.  Ever.  I would not even, truly, hope.  I would--and do--simply tend to my own problems. [Now, if Bettina were here, I would hint profusely!]

So much of what I have done is almost like readying the house to sell again.  You would be impressed, I believe, in the difference between the day I walked into this place and how it is today (except for the vacuum cleaner that has been sitting on the living room floor for a week).  I have spent entire weeks on the couch.  I have spewed more food in the past six months than in the past six years, the past twenty.  I have barely been able to walk.  I have been curled up in a ball in grief.  But, in between those moments, I have cleaned, scraped, sanded, painted, organized, pruned, raked, transplanted, and worked to reveal the potential of this absolutely beautiful home.

It has been too much.  Too much work and too much joy.  Strange, eh?


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Help for those who battle nightmares or night terrors or who simply struggle with bad dreams...

Sometimes nighttime is a battle unto itself.  I often have terrible dreams.  Most would be your garden variety bad dream.  Many are nightmares.  Some are true night terrors.   I wake up from one, and when I finally manage to fall back asleep, I find myself facing another.  Most nights, much of the time I should be sleeping is spent in a seemingly endless cycle of sleeping, dreaming, waking in terror, shaking, sleeping, dreaming, waking in tears, trembling, sleeping, dreaming.... 

I mentioned this to a pastor once.  Now, this pastor has a rather admirable stance of refraining from talking about his personal life so as to not displace his task of offering his parishioners Jesus with talk of the man in His office.  However, in mercy, he broke with his normal practice and shared with me that he had struggled with nightmares, too.  I was so surprised.  A pastor?? 


I quickly asked him how he dealt with them, since waking in fear and struggling to go back to sleep because I am weeping or frightened or ashamed sure doesn't make me feel all that faithful.  I thought he might have THE ANSWER for which I have been looking.  His answer, of course, was Jesus.

Now, Jesus is the answer, of course.  But how does that really help me?  The ex-evangelical in me wanted the life application!  So, I asked him how he clung to Jesus in those times.  He shared several examples with me.


He would sing the hymn Before the Ending of the Day, which he sang for me and let me make a digital recording so I could learn it:

Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world we pray!
Thy grace and peace to us allow
And be our guard and keeper now.

From all the terrors of the night,
From evil dreams defend our sight;
Drive far away our wicked foe
That stain of sin we may not know.

O Father, this we ask be done
Through Jesus Christ, Thine only Son,
Who with the Holy Ghost and Thee
Both lives and reigns eternally.
Amen.
                        ~LSB (889)

He also would repeat the Lutheran version of the Jesus Prayer over and over and over again:  Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  And he would gaze upon his crucifix.  Those are the things that helped him through his battle.


For me, he also suggested that I get a CD he thought I would find comforting: Lighten Our Darkness. The a capella music is astoundingly beautiful, even the songs in Latin, which I cannot understand.  It is a great compliment to the CD Evening and Morning:  The Music of Lutheran Prayer, which I had started listening to at night in order to learn Lutheran Liturgy.


So, each night, I looked upon my crucifix and prayed the Jesus prayer.  I also prayed Psalm 6 and then Psalm 4. 


O LORD, do not rebuke me in Thine anger,
Nor chasten me in Thy wrath.
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am pining away;
Heal me, O LORD, for my bones are dismayed.
And my soul is greatly dismayed;
But Thou, O LORD--how long?


Return, O LORD, rescue my soul;
Save me because of Thy lovingkindness.
For there is no mention of Thee in death;
In Sheol who will give Thee thanks?


I am weary with my sighing;
Every night I make my bed swim,
I dissolve my couch with my tears.
My eye has wasted away with grief;
It has become old because of all my adversaries.


Depart from me, all you who do iniquity,
For the LORD has heard the voice of my weeping.
The LORD has heard my supplication,
The LORD receives my prayer.
All my enemies will be ashamed and greatly dismayed;
They shall turn back, they will suddenly be ashamed.

                               ~Psalm 6 (NASB 1977)


Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!
Thou hast relieved me in my distress;
Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.

O sons of men, how long will my honor become a reproach?
How long will you love what is worthless and aim at deception?
But know that the Lord has set apart the godly man for Himself;
The Lord hears when I call to Him.

Tremble, and do not sin;
Meditate in your heart upon your bed and be still.
Offer the sacrifices of righteousness,
And trust in the Lord.

Many are saying, “Who will show us any good?”
Lift up the light of Thy countenance upon us, O Lord!
Thou hast put gladness in my heart,
More than when their grain and new wine abound.
In peace I will both lie down and sleep,
For Thou alone, O Lord, dost make me dwell in safety.
                         ~Psalm 4 (NASB 1977)



And I fell asleep while listening to either to Lighten Our Darkness or  Evening and Morning. 

Yet I still battled my terrible dreams.


A couple of months ago, a counselor gave me an aid that I believe is the perfect compliment to these above, one that has made my nights better, one that has given me, with greater and greater frequency, the victory over this "stain of sin" Christ won for me on the cross.

Her suggestion:  Rewrite the ending of the bad dreams.  Just a few lines.  Nothing elaborate is needed.  Just change the ending. 

Frankly, I scoffed at the suggestion.  How could that possibly help?  However, I did put pen and pad next to be bed, ran through my nightly routine, and fell asleep.  When I awoke from a nightmare, I scrawled out a different ending.  I will admit that I did so still in near derision that such a simple thing could help.  However, I did fall back asleep more easily thinking about the ending I wrote  instead of the one I experience in my dream. I awoke to two more dreams that night and did the same thing.

As the months have passed, I no longer actually write the endings down.  I simply speak them aloud, letting my ears hear how the dream should have been.  I now can go several nights without battling my dreams.  Once, it was even an amazing 12 days!

Tuesday night, I had a bad dream about my best friend and the ending of our friendship.  I awoke in tears and wept again late Wednesday morning when I told her about it.  She asked me if I rewrote the ending.  I had not.  She promptly suggested that we rewrite the ending then.  A part of me wanted to protest that it was too late.  However, much to my surprise, it was not.  She proffered a small suggestion as to direction and then let me finish with mine.  I felt better and can even laugh about part of the dream now. 

So, in short, rewriting bad dreams can be an immense help.  The rewrite can be written or spoken, and while immediacy is key to helping the one struggling with the bad dream fall back asleep, a delay does not diminish the efficacy in helping destroy the power the bad dream has over the dreamer.

But why is this helpful and what does it have to do with Jesus?

The why is that the dreamer is training his or her mind to think differently, to erase the negative thoughts and feelings that lead to bad dreams, to help diminish the worries, the fears, the failures, the things that our foe uses to assail us.  The what is that which Luther teaches us in the 2nd Article of the Large Catechism and elsewhere.

Now therefore follows the Creed, which sets forth to us everything we must expect and receive from God.  (1).  For here we see that the Father has given Himself to us, together with all creatures, and has most richly provided for us in this life.  We see that He has overwhelmed us with unspeakable, eternal treasures by His Son, and the Holy Spirit as we shall hear. (24)  We see how He [Jesus] has completely poured forth Himself and withheld nothing from us. (26)  "In this, He has redeemed me from sin, from the devil, from death, and from all evil.  For before I did not have a Lord or King, but was captive under the devil's power, condemned to death, stuck in sin and blindness." (27)  But all the points that follow in this article serve no other purpose than to explain and to express this redemption.  They explain how much it cost Him and what He spent and risked that he might win us and bring us under His dominion...And he did all this in order to become my Lord.  He did not of these things for Himself, nor did He have any need for redemption (31).  I believe that the Holy Spirit makes me holy, as His name implies.  For in the first place, the Spirit has His own congregation in the world, which is the mother that conceives and bears every Christian through God's Word. Through the Word He reveals and preaches, He illumines and enkindles hearts, so that they understand, accept, cling to, and preserve in the Word." (42)  By the Word He works and promotes sanctification, causing this congregation daily to grow and to become strong in the faith and its fruit, which He produces. (53) God's grace is secured through Christ, and sanctification is wrought by the Holy Spirit through God's Word in the unity of the Christian Church. (54)  The Father gives all creatures.  The Son gives His entire Work.  And the Holy Spirit bestows all His gifts. (69)

But how does that fit with rewriting the ending of terrible dreams?  Because God rewrote the ending of the first nightmare that destroyed the first good things of this world and plagues this world still with the stain of sin. He gave us the Word by which all evil, all sin, is rewritten so that the end to that nightmare is no longer death but life eternal.


We are to expect to receive good things because good is what He first intended and intends for us still.  The evil in which we now live is not what He intended.  That evil is what spawns those terrible dreams, but even there the evil is defeated by Christ's victory on the cross.  By rewriting the ending to my terrible dreams, I am saying to my foe anew that I am child of God, beloved in Christ, and wrapped in the presence of the Holy Spirit, fiercely loved and fully forgiven.  Even in my dreams I am to expect to receive the good things our Triune God has for me.  By the power of the Word, I can rewrite them, knowing that my good endings are what God has for me. 

I believe rewriting the ending of terrible dreams can be a way of clinging to Christ crucified.  Doing so has helped me.  I hope in sharing this it might help others.