You ARE the Weakest Link. Good-bye

Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far on the other side of the Pacific Ocean lived a Princess. Our Princess was a school teacher and was rather good at it even though she would rather have been doing something else. She had the unfortunate luck of working in a school for a tyrant. She had the further misfortune of having a mental illness, as if teaching elementary school isn’t enough to drive you crazy all by itself. One day, the tyrant comes to our Princess and says, “You ARE the weakest link. Goodbye.” Ok, so maybe the “tyrant” remembers it a little bit differently, but I did have a boss who actually looked me in the eye and told me that I was the weakest link.

That hurt.

I was trying my level best to do a job that had evolved under the worst possible circumstances and instead of acknowledging the things that I’d done right, she focused on the fact that I wasn’t able to meet impossible standards that she’d set.

The Reality Check at the time was that all of the other teachers (the ones without mental illnesses) were having a hard time carrying out her dictates and everybody was groaning under the weight of her unrealistic demands. She was firmly standing on my Bipolar buttons and implosion was imminent. Weakest link? That comment still hurts. It affected me every day that I worked there until the day I left to move to Maui… and, unfortunately,  it followed me across the ocean. My Bipolar always put me at a disadvantage as a teacher and because my disability is invisible, people don’t know to be cautious. If I was in a wheelchair, people would know not rush into my path. If I were blind, they’d have to come up with adaptive tools to help me teach. But because I have an illness that people cannot see… or don’t understand… they say and do things that hurt me and often have no idea of the lasting effects.

Consequently, I have always seen myself as the weakest link. Or at least I did once my Bipolar manifested. Before that? I was the Queen of the World (or at least a Princess in training). Post BP, I have always viewed myself as inferior to my colleagues because at the end of the day, I was always the one who was curled up in a ball crying and contemplating suicide. I was the one who had to take pills just to be able to function. I finally accepted that I was the weakest link when I walked away from my last job. Not fully knowing, or understanding, what mental illness is, my employers said and did things that hurt me. None of it was intentional, but it all reinforced the whole weakest link issue. It also made me mad at God. The Bible says that I’m “wonderfully and fearfully made.” Clearly, God had made a mistake and I was waiting for the recall. It came when Jesus told me to quit teaching last May and to pursue my writing.

As far as elementary school teaching went, I was a good teacher. M~ might even say that I was a great teacher. Others might actually agree with her, but compared to my colleagues, I was the weakest link. I cannot handle a lot of what teachers take as par the course. I couldn’t deal with elementary school politics. So instead of waiting to be told that I was the weakest link, I picked up my link,s said, “Goodbye” and made a dignified exit.

So you can imagine my surprise when I found myself teaching again. God led me to a trade school. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to blog about it by name yet, so for the sake of confidentiality… I’ll call it JCM. I did not expect to love teaching or to be able to teach this particular age group (16-24). I felt certain that they’d eat me alive and spit out the bones. An even bigger surprise is how well I’ve bonded with my colleagues. Maybe not much by other people’s standards… but I’ve stepped way outside of the bubble with this job. The staff like me. Most of the trainees like me. I have a good rapport with just about everybody.

The best part is my supervisor. Yesterday, we talked about the upcoming schedule changes my surgery is going to cause. I’ll be laid up for a month and a half. Would no work equal “out of sight, out of mind?” I told her not to forget about me in that time since I’m only an on-call employee. I have paid my dues on this job doing every grunty little assignment she’s given me, all in an attempt to be flexible and open to whatever God wanted. My employer, who is not Christian but knows that I am, saw my efforts and appreciated the fact that I was willing to work hard and not be bothered by schedule changes and grunt work.  Me. The woman whose middle name is “Anal.” I finally have a reputation of being really flexible and capable… and I love it. Would she forget about me when I was gone? Give my jobs to somebody else?

Evidently, my boss loves me. When I told her not to forget about me she actually came out and said, “Are you kidding? We love you here!” Me. The former weakest link now a valued employee. At my last job, they always said that they loved me and that they valued me, but so much of what I experienced there left me feeling just the opposite. People can hurt you through ignorance… but the bottom line is that you still got hurt. My wounds have still not healed. I felt certain after quitting my last job that I wasn’t fit to do anything and that I’d eventually fail to get work, fall into a deep depression, and kill myself. All of my best case scenarios ended with me killing myself. And I didn’t think God would do anything to stop it since he didn’t stop my friend Gerry from killing himself in 2006.

Suicide is so far from my thoughts now. Even with the pressure of this surgery and everything else going on in my world… I want to live. I have hope and my hope is in Jesus. Sure, I used to say that before because I desperately needed something to hope in even though I wasn’t seeing any tangible proof when I was at the bottom of the depression barrel. But it’s because of what I went through at my last job that my faith is finally stronger. It’s because of what happened that I’m able to appreciate my current job so much. One of these days I might get around to blogging about my last job… but for now I can’t. They were good people. They are good people.  They love God. They work hard to serve him by meeting the needs of children. But hurt is still hurt. I don’t want to hurt them with my words anymore than they wanted to hurt me with theirs.  I bring it up now because the whole resentment, bitterness, fear, self-pity, and doubt things keeps coming up and I’ve learned that denial accomplishes nothing.

I have other thoughts on my mind this morning that are percolating. They need to simmer a bit longer before I spit them out. I just got finished reading John 6 and it’s given me a lot of food for though. I sense a blogging weekend.

It’s official: I am the weakest link. Good-bye.

I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends…

Sometimes, listening to me, makes it sound like I don’t have a friend in the world and that I sit around all by myself eating worms. I lament about how I’ve had to eliminate so many dysfunctional and unhealthy relationships in my life… and while that’s true, I’m not about to recline in the bubble tonight and crack open a can o’ worms (a la “Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me…). Ever so often I need a reality check. I used to actually have people to do this for me back in the day when I was really irrational. My college roommates were on strict “Reality Check” detail because my reality wasn’t always the same as everybody else’s. My therapist back in college used to say that I was going to play on the edge of reality too long and get too close to the edge so that one day I was going to fall off. Our pleasant little way of referring to my inevitable suicide. Seeing a shrink who thinks your destined to commit suicide? Upon reflection, not the wisest thing. I should have gotten a second opinion or at least a reality check.

Jesus is the ultimate Reality Checker. Just when I get caught up in feeling sorry for myself he interjects a bit of reality to make me see that while, challenging, my life is hardly fatal.

I was taking a nap yesterday because I literally started to fall asleep at my keyboard at two in the afternoon. Toting around the uber-uterus is tiring when you add all the stairs I have to go up and down to tend to the needs of the dogs I’m caring for this week. It was out of a DEEP sleep that I heard my cellphone (which is generally never on) and I got a phone call from the one person for whom God always seems to insure an open cellphone line. My friend T~ and I have been friends since 1998. That’s a significant year for me because that’s the year I got diagnosed with my Bipolar. I actually only have one friend who knew me before my Bipolar manifested. That friendship goes back to junior high school and we don’t connect nearly as much as I’d like to, but it’s good. But my friendship with T~? She’s been there for me through all of the really rough stuff. She knew me when the walls of my bubble were as impenetrable as the Berlin Wall. T~ ? She’s more of a sister to me than any of my seven bio sisters. And that’s what she told me yesterday as I filled her in on the details on the impending removal of the uterus that ate Japan.

HS has suggested giving power of attorney to someone in the event that something screwy goes wrong with the surgery and I end up a giant stalk of broccoli. Of course, I thought of T~. If  ever I was a stalk of broccoli, she’d know what to do. I even planned to call her to ask if she’d do the p.o.a, but fell asleep at the keyboard before I could call. We talked for over an hour and it was a great conversation. Our relationship has always been one based on honesty and respect. We are both Christians and we’re both on the same page. The walls of the bubble were looking a bit skimpy by the time she and I got off the phone.

Reality Check #1: I do have friends. I shouldn’t take them for granted. I might not do well with large group functions, but I’m perfectly normal in a small group of friends.

As if that wasn’t enough to make me want to whip out my guitar and start singing Kumbaya, a couple of hours after I hung up the phone with T~… I got another phone call! Now, for most of the western world, this is not a big event… but 99.9999999999% of the time, my cellphone is not on. Nobody ever calls me. I am not a texter. I do not have anybody on speed dial. My phone is for car trouble and calling 911 if a serial killer attacks in the middle of the night. Chatting on the phone is just not me, so even when my phone is on, almost nobody calls me. So when I saw that M~ was on the phone calling, I was really happy. M~ is the mother of a former student. He was in my class back in 2003. I have a very special relationship with this family because they treat me like I am family. Their guest room is the proud resting place for my cedar wood chest that has all of my treasured mementos from childhood to 2005. It was too big to bring to Maui… so they agreed to store it for me until I could afford to bring it over. Five years later… they still have it for me. When I go to the mainland, that room is mine and they treat me like I am an honored family member.

Our talk was equally as affirming. M~ is so good to me. I was shocked and awed when she said that they were talking about getting a ticket for me to come over. Money is not lining the walls in their home. But they were thinking of doing this for me. Me. They dysfunctional one who has had to eliminate all sorts of relationships from her life. The common theme with both of them was that they always looked for, and saw, the good in me. Neither of them have ever really looked at my mental illness as a stigma. M~ was happy to have her son in my class because my disability helped me to understand his special needs.

By the time I got off the phone with her I felt like singing. My heart was really light… not the heaviness that has been my constant companion since this whole uterus thing became an issue. I have friends. There are people in the world who love me and accept me for all my idiosyncratic behaviors: the Bipolar, the Asperger’s Syndrome, the sexual addiction… my friends know about all of this and accept me anyway. Of course, it wasn’t always this way. I used to hide behind the walls of my bubble to afraid to let people see who I really was. Writing the book was what made the difference. Blogging helped, but it was trying to pull my thoughts together to make a coherent point in the book that really started poking holes in the bubble. I had five friends edit it. Once they knew all of that about me, telling other people got progressively easier. Now I have people who believe in my book more than I do. They think my story is one that the church needs to hear. Suzy-Q Christian Girl isn’t so squeaky clean anymore and the church and the world needs to hear that Jesus has room for people with messy pasts. I did end up singing last night. I sat on the lanai and sang Kenny Rogers songs to the dog. It was fun and I was happy.

Reality Check #2: My bubble only exists because I want it to. Fear, worry, doubt, bitterness, resentment, and self-pity have been helping to build the walls of the bubble all these years because I let them.

Reality Check #3: I really have gotten by with a little help from my friends… and if I want out of the bubble I’m going to need their help. I think Jesus plans to enlarge the walls of the bubble:

“Sing, O barren woman,
you who never bore a child;
burst into song, shout for joy,
you who were never in labor;
because more are the children of the desolate woman
than of her who has a husband,”
says the LORD.

² “Enlarge the place of your tent,
stretch your tent curtains wide,
do not hold back;
lengthen your cords,
strengthen your stakes.

Do You Want to Get Well?

Seems like a rather stupid question. And yet, I got it from two different sides this morning. Like yesterday, I woke up sick. The uterus. The headache. Argh. I’d like to see the rapid end of both of those two impostors. I opened my Celebrate Recovery book. It’s a  Christian 12-step program minus a few steps. I think there’s only nine and they’re not “steps,” this book calls them “principles.” You say potato… evidently Christians say “po-tah-to.” I brought it along on this house sitting gig because I feel like I’ve been in a holding pattern ever since the last step.

The fearless moral inventory step/principle is a thing of the past. I did it back in February with that therapist at the local not-free clinic. She was a Christian and I saw her as the answer to five years of prayer. I wanted a trained profession who would also understand my faith. It was nice to do all that fearless and moral inventorying with somebody I would never have to see again, but without the accountability, I think I just cruised through the next step since there was no writing involved. I process better when I write… so not having to write anything was the same as not processing it. I plugged on to the next step… the one where you have to make amends to people you’ve hurt and I hit a wall.

In CR we also have to forgive people who have hurt us, which caused me to run into another wall. I still firmly believe that forgiveness is an event and a process. Old wounds can be jostled by new events drawing fresh blood. The wound needs to be clean and bandaged again, not left alone to fester. Denial does not equal forgiveness. I also still firmly believe that forgiveness does not equal reconciliation. You can’t reconcile with someone who refuses to admit that they did anything wrong. And this is the biggest wall of all for me. I have a lot of broken relationships with people who cannot or will not acknowledge that they hurt me. To stay in these relationships was just too unhealthy, so I made choices to leave. With few exceptions, I still stand by those choices. I did leave the door open to reconciliation should the other party choose to seek me out, but I’m done with being kicked when I’m down.

Do I regret the end of the relationships? I regret what they could have been, should have been if the relationship was healthy. I do not regret the loss of relationships where I had to lie in order to keep the peace or where I had to listen to people verbally abuse other people that I love. I don’t miss the relationships where people put me down because of my faith or made me feel bad for believing what I believe. But since I was an unhealthy person, I was drawn to unhealthy relationships. When I started cleaning house, a lot of relationships (even family) had to go thus making the halls in the bubble echo with loneliness. I have been slow to fill my life with healthy relationships because I just don’t know how. People want to get close to me… but I just don’t let them get past the initial perimeter.

And into the void, Jesus’ voice echos: Do you want to get well?

He said that to me in the CR book. In order to be healed I have to be ready to be healed. I have to stop making excuses. I was reading John chapter 5 this morning and it so confused me that I had to do multiple google searches. I ran across this one site that literally opened my eye. Wide. Do you want to get well? I have bipolar, Asperger’s Syndrome, and I’m having a hysterectomy. What do you think? Do you want to get well?

If we do, we must be willing to stop living in Excusiopolis, near the river of De’ Nial. We must open ourselves up to a new life, one that includes the power of God over our weakness, sickness, and sin.

And no, he’s not talking about the river in Egypt either. When Jesus asked the guy if he wanted to get well, his first response wasn’t to say, “Heck yeah!” He said that he had nobody to help him. As this article points out, he then focused on other people. Me? I focus on other people a lot. I’ve made a science and an art form out of it. But dwelling on past hurts is just as bad as denying them. Hiding them from other people is wrong, but trying to hide them from Jesus makes no sense. The one person who can truly heal all those old wounds wants me to trust that he can make me well.

Now how this all connects to my hysterectomy is a mystery even to me… but somewhere between the CR, John 5, and that website explaining John 5… I just had a moment of clarity where I just knew that I should stop resisting this surgery. I need to move beyond “having to have it” and progress to “wanting to have it.” And in an instant this morning I was there. Do I think that this hysterectomy is going to heal me of my bipolar, clear up my acne, straighten my teeth, and improve all of my dysfunctional relationships? Not hardly. I’ve got Bipolar, not terminal stupidity. But for whatever reason, Jesus wants me to walk this path towards healing the broken things in my life.

Principle 5 in CR is about voluntarily letting God remove character defects. I think glossing over this step was why I hit those walls with Principle 6 (the amends step). I acknowledged my character defects, but I only gave a glancing nod at wanting God to remove them. To do so means that I’ll have to face them and facing them is scary. Yet, I can’t face other people until I’ve learned to face myself. The big five character defects that I want God to remove: fear, worry, doubt, bitterness, and resentment. If I had to shoot for six… self-pity would be in there too. So much of what is going on in my life right now is about facing the funky five and if this surgery is somehow going to get me to the other side of denial… then strap me to the gurney and give me a paddle.

Do I want to get well?

Yes, Jesus. I do.

Immediate Answered Prayer

I asked God for somebody who would understand…

I posted on HS an intro where I said I have Bipolar Disorder and my surgery is probably going to be on 5/27. I said a lot more… but that’s not the point.

A woman from HS sent me an email via the site with the following subject header:

I’m Bi-Polar with Hysterectomy on 5/27 also!

My first gut level response? “No sh–!”

Why do I doubt God?

Apples Don’t Do Jack!

Last night I dreamed that I had to miss an event because I was sick. This morning, I woke up late for work feeling like crap. I hope the word “crap” doesn’t offend people who read my blog… but I am who I am. And this morning I felt like crap. The weight around my abdomen felt heavier than normal. Wrong time of the month for fibroids. It always hurts more around the start and during my cycle. My headache was back and my sinuses were clogged. I could have gone in to work but by mid-day I would have felt worse than I did yesterday. Wisdom won out. I called in sick. They had to get a sub for the sub. Does that count as irony?

I decided to read chapters 3-4 in the book of John. I could have chosen to go back to sleep. As I read I felt led to do my usual google searches. People with Asperger’s all have their “thing.” That quirky tendency that sets them just a little bit out there. For some it’s math and numbers. I suck at math and numbers. I flunked math three times at Berkeley. One of my former students with AS had a thing for dinosaurs. I am a word person and an information junkie. I cannot read something or watch anything on my laptop without getting side tracked trying to check the facts or research something I didn’t know. It’s compulsive. I can’t help myself. So whether I wanted to or not, I now know a lot more about the history of the New Living Translation Bible. I also know that as of 2007 there were 712 Samaritans left in the world. And that I was supposed to stay home so I could register with HysterSister.com — a website for women experiencing hysterectomy.

I’ve been lurking on that site for a few days now trying to glean information without committing myself. I am not a joiner. I hate registering for things and I hate being asked to take surveys. The fact that the name for that site is so lame made me less likely to want to join. Worthy cause? Most definitely? But who thought up the name?? After reading in John I felt like I needed to register on the site because members have access to portions of the site that lurkers do not. What in John convinced me to register, I do not know… but when I did register this wave of grief slammed into me and I just started crying. It didn’t help that the first thing they ask new members to do is fill out a survey. As I cried, I prayed. Good thing Jesus looks past all the snot and the raccoon eyes.

They have a term on HS. From now on I will refer to the site as HS because that seems less ridiculous to me. On HS they have a term, “Grieving the loss of a womb.” That too sounds ridiculous until it happens to you. I don’t even want kids and I’m grieving. I realized that as the tears wouldn’t stop. The resulting coughing hasn’t helped my exertion headache. I researched those too. Evidently I’m not the only one who gets headaches when I sneeze or cough. Same place. Blinding headache. Sigh.

Feeling the way I did this morning, I decided to lay low as far as breakfast was concerned. Big meals don’t agree with my giant uterus. I end up feel really bad so I opted for an apple. Then the saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” crossed my mind and I thought how ridiculous that saying was. I could through a whole mountain of apples at my doctor and not make the fibroids or the GU (giant uterus) go away. At which point I started laughing because the visual was just too funny. I have to face this surgery and I need those doctors. I’m also going to need HS because most of my friends have never walked this path. The love me, but they don’t get it. I can’t expect them to get it. None of them have ever really understood the whole Bipolar thing or the Asperger’s thing. The hysterectomy thing is just one more thing for them not to understand. So praying helps and so does blogging. Getting my thoughts out of my head makes my head hurt just a little bit less. I feel better for having posted this even though it’s just a bunch of rambling thoughts. I wasn’t able to face my morning… but I’m ready to face my day.

UnManic Monday

The funk I was in followed me to work. The teacher who told me her job might open up in April told me today that she’d changed her mind. She wasn’t leaving so any hope I had of getting her job full time was gone. Oddly enough, I didn’t handle it badly. If that’s not the job God wants for me, I don’t want it. Still. That wasn’t the best news on which to start my day. The the useless sack of rocks I call a uterus seemed to weigh 10 extra pounds today making movement very slow and often painful. The good think is that nobody in the classroom knew.
That’s a different kind of mask that I think it’s ok to wear. Face it, we all have work to do and we can’t come to work with our personal lives hanging out all over the place. It took Bipolar Girl years to learn that particular truth. I used to go to work some mornings looking so fragile people were afraid to talk to me. There is a such thing as professionalism and I’d like to think that I was very professional today. But I wasn’t very faithful. Other than a hasty prayer at lunch time, I can’t honestly think of one time that I talked to Jesus today. No wonder I still felt lonely all day. Normally I keep up a running stream of conversation with him in my head if people are around and aloud if they aren’t.

Today I was just too content to wallow in all the things that were going wrong. I wasn’t quite the extreme pessimist in that joke I posted a while back… but I wasn’t looking for any ponies or busting out any prayers to Jesus either.

Now, I’m back at the house sitting homestead. The dogs have eaten and are quiet. I feel ill. It would be so easy to crawl up into a ball and lay on the bed and cry but I don’t intend to. My days of knowingly throwing myself down the spiral staircase that is depression are OVER. Things are pretty rough right now, but it could be worse. My friend was telling me about her uncle who has cancer in the brain. I didn’t even know you could get brain cancer. There is nothing going on with me that isn’t going to pass given enough time. I’m learning the secret of waiting: it’s unavoidable so just do it and do it with the best attitude you can manage.

On a positive note: one of my elder sisters responded to a message I sent her via facebook. She’d facebooked me out of the blue a few months ago. I haven’t spoken to her in years. We have yet to talk on the phone, but that’s one phone call I’ll accept in my bubble.

Girl in a Plastic Bubble

I often joke about being in my “Bipolar Bubble.” Y’know… the invisible bubble that keeps other people out and me safe inside. Only thing is — that leaves me inside the bubble alone. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE being alone most of the time. Being around people is often stressful and draining. Where my Bipolar leaves off, my Asperger’s kicks in leaving me trapped in the bubble because I don’t have the sustainable social skills to get out of it. And the people who know me? They don’t see the bubble. Because they’ve known me for a while or met me in small group situations, they see more of my real personality — the one I think I’d have if I didn’t have a mental illness and a social disorder. They think that I should just “get out there” or “go outside my comfort zone.” At 41 years old, I’ve tried doing that. Many times. And there have been the rare occasions when stepping out of my zone has been a good thing. But that can’t offset the fact that most times, going outside of my zone ends up badly. I step put of the bubble and life smacks me in the face. The resulting stress is more than I can handle and it seems like Bubble life is all I have to look forward to.

Last night, my church had a Ohana dinner. “Ohana” is Hawaiian for “family” and it’s not like more than a few people in my church are actually Hawaiian, but the whole notion of family getting together to have dinner is the motivating thought. I went to one of those dinners. I guess because I thought it was a one of. I didn’t want to miss it and it actually turned out ok. I got sick and my social skills didn’t stretch far enough for me to meet any new people, but as far as forays out of the bubble go — that was pretty good.

So how come I couldn’t force myself to go to the second Ohana dinner? My reasons will seem small and petty to anybody but me. But they are my reasons and were valid enough that I couldn’t even make myself go. Most times I’m not lonely. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely. Last night I was lonely. If I had it to do all over again though, I still wouldn’t go. There has to be a better way to deal with the Bipolar bubble. Large group events is not it. I might suffer through them but why suffer through something where everybody else is having a great time? The only thing worse than being in my plastic bubble by myself is going to some social event and realizing that I’ve taken my bubble with me. I can be in the middle of a crowded room and nobody notices that I’m in my plastic bubble or that it’s suffocating me.

Not the River in Egypt

And the list goes something like this: my mother, my stepfather, my brother, four of my seven sisters, my former employers, former house mates, ex-boyfriends, other Christians… If you think long enough you’ve got your own list to reflect on.

Bipolar Girl  spends so much time “reflecting” and gazing at the lint in her belly button that none of her thoughts should surprise me anymore. Because I’m so open about my struggles with Bipolar and my addiction issues, people say that I’m transparent and real — and I take a weird pleasure in that. No masks for me. I’m the real deal. I’ve thought so often about the masks that people wear, that I didn’t think I had anymore behind which to hide. In fact, I tend to get really belligerent when I feel like people are trying to force me to wear a mask, to be something I’m not… or to act like they think I should. So when I sat on the lanai last night looking out at the ocean and trees I was surprised to find that the man in the mirror was wearing a mask.

A few months back I did a “fearless” moral inventory for a twelve step program. That’s the step where you look at all your regrets, mistakes, and anything else you’ve got crammed into your baggage and you share it with another person and with God. This program is Christian based… so there’s no question who my Highest Power is. Considering that God already knows all of my garbage one would think that I didn’t have to worry about sending him the memo, so I took the step and thought I was done. No more regrets or aching wounds. Right? Hardly. Why do I think that doing things like this step are going to magically change my life? By now I have totally clued in to the fact that it’s a process and as long as I’m breathing I’m going to be going through said process. So why do I expect a timer to go off announcing that I’m done??

To hammer that home, I recently started watching a show called “Being Erica.” It’s about a woman who meets up with this “therapist” who is able to help her travel back through time to correct various regrets that she listed on a steno pad on the first episode. Being recently fired and dumped by her boyfriend in the same day, Erica had A LOT of regrets. “Regrets” is just a code word for “Baggage.” This woman has about as much baggage as I do, so I totally appreciated the desire to go back to a specific regret and to somehow make it better by making better choices. I’ve watched both seasons on hulu.com in just under a week. It seemed like so many of her regrets were my regrets and while I know I can’t go back and fix anything, I could live vicariously through her in each 45 minute episode.

Of course, this sparked a lot of conversations with Jesus, who does not seem to want to oblige me by sending me back in time. He doesn’t work that way. He wants me to bring all of my problems, regrets, and broken toys to him and trust that he can repair all of it and me in the process. This is where wearing masks can stall the repairing process. You see, Jesus wants me to come to him transparent and real. He knows I’m broken. I know I’m broken. The problems come when I try to hide from other people so that they don’t see my brokenness or when I run from people because I’m afraid they will break something else. This all boils down to a case of denial. When it becomes easier for me to skim over the surface of life than actually live it, I’m existing in denial.

Of course, the hysterectomy was ground zero for the explosion of thoughts that ending up ripping my mask off last night. Explaining the actual connection to anybody outside of my own mind will be hard. Let’s just say I went from talking to the Lord about my hysterectomy to various situations that I regretted and people who I resented. Just when I think I’ve let go of all of my resentment and bitterness something hits another vein. This time that “something” was my uterus. What good little Christian girl has that much resentment and bitterness inside of her? How did all those completely unrelated people and situations all seem connected to my surgery? I realized that none of the situations or people involved were news to me. It’s all old baggage really. And while I do believe that I’ve forgiven them, there hasn’t been reconciliation because I feel forced to wear a mask. In all of the instances, I have extended my hand to that person even though some of them hurt me badly. I was willing to let by-gones be by-gones, but the other person won’t even acknowledge the hurt that they caused.

So if I want to be in relationship with them I have to grin and fake like nothing is wrong. Somehow, this does not jive with anything I know about Jesus. Lying in order to maintain a dysfunctional relationship doesn’t seem very godly to me. Pretending to be ok when I’m wounded and emotionally bleeding  isn’t inherently Christian.  It’s wearing a mask. And wearing a mask is lying. In one way or another the people on my list have tried to make me wear a mask and I can’t do it anymore. I won’t do it anymore. So they get to label me the bad guy for not wanting to wear the mask and play by their rules.

When I used to blog anonymously I said whatever I wanted to say and thought that I was coming out from behind the mask. Actually, I was still hiding behind the mask of anonymity. It’s easy to say what you want when nobody knows who you are. Of course, some of the things I used to blog about back in the day weren’t very nice. When wounded, I can sling my words like venom. Now, I have an accountability. People I know read this blog. And I’ve identified myself to people who don’t know me personally, as a Christian. What I say will reflect on what people think of Jesus. No pressure. Right? So where does that leave me?

How do you deal… how do I deal with septic old wounds without shoving them under a mask and still be true to Jesus and to myself? Jesus would say to speak the truth in love. Sounds easy… but there are some people on my list that I don’t love. Most of the people on that list I don’t even like. All contact with most of those people on my list has been severed… but just because I’m done with them doesn’t mean that  Jesus is. And that’s what we talked about on the lanai last night. In order to deal with all the aching emotional scabs tucked away in my baggage,  I had to admit, at least to Jesus, how I felt about the people on that list. When I did my step four I told the other person that I was ok with those people because I thought I was. All it took was the notion of a life changing surgery to have me singing a different tune.

Ok… friends just stopped by unannounced. Have to log off. I might continue this train of thought later.

Ch-ch-ch–ch-changes

Making even the simplest changes is hard for me. My difficulties with change almost seem to occur at the cellular level. Something deep inside of me wells up to resist change and the resulting stress is never pretty. What stress ever is? I’ve long since realized that change is not a bad thing and usually, all the drama comes from my resistance to said change… but I can’t seem to help it. The minute my well ordered way of doing things is interrupted I start that inward stutter that nobody else sees, but I feel spiraling out from the pit of my stomach outwards. Since God is all about change/transformation it’s not like he’s going to remove all avenues for change in my life just to make me feel better. No, he’s going to keep sending people and situations my way that require me to bend or break. Submit to change and grow or resist change and stay in my isolated little bubble for the rest of my life. I might hate change. I might even resist it initially… but eventually, I accept change in my life because it’s necessary.

Today I made a small change. Small for most people reading this– but major to me. I changed the background for this blog. You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to decide or how I felt about making the change. Personally, I give it a week… a month tops, before I switch back. But the way I see things today, there are going to be a lot of changes coming my way in the next few months and if the small changes stress me out now, the big changes are really going to push my Bipolar button. That’s a big concern for me. I’m not actually worried about the surgery. If, for some freakish reason, I end up being in that ridiculously small percentage of people who die under anesthesia… then I go to sleep with fibroids and wake up in heaven. Win win for me. So, I’m not really freaking out over that.

The recovery period is bothering me. I can see me being laid up with nothing to do other than think about how my life has not turned out the way I want it to and how I’ll never be able to have children. Never mind the fact that I stopped wanting kids years ago… it’ll be the fact that after the surgery I won’t have a choice.  In this moment, I’m not overly disturbed about my life. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been and I much prefer dogs to children. But a month from now when I’m laid out on my back minus my uterus I might be singing a different tune. If I’m going to avoid taking a nosedive into the land of depression I have to start changing the way I do things and the way I think.

Today the small step was the background for this blog. Tomorrow it’ll be taking a step out of my bubble to let people I know that I’m worried about falling into depression after the surgery and that I need their help and their presence. Spending time with people is hard for me. Asking people for help is even harder but it’s a change I have to make no matter how bad the stutter in my gut is. Nobody can hear it besides me anyway. Except for maybe God, and he’s not holding it against me.

Gimme a Break

Answers come in the strangest places. With all the chaos swirling around me regarding this surgery I was really starting to feel the need for a break. Since I was going to be house sitting until May 1, I thought that alone would be my break. I had it all planned: I would have these long, deep conversations with God and he would explain how my life had come to this crossroads. As if God gives me any answers when I demand them.

My morning started slow because I had more dreams. That translated into me be a few steps shy of incoherent when I woke up. I read who knows what in my Bible this morning and them tried to get myself up and out of bed. One thing I won’t miss after the hysterectomy are all my nightly trips to the bathroom. There have been times I’ve had to go so often I should have given serious though to sleeping in the tub or adult diapers.

Once I got up I had a rare sit-down breakfast. For the last few weeks breakfast for me has been a bag of almonds. This morning, it was egg on toast. My first chore of the day was to take care of the dogs and that how my day unfolded… walking the dogs periodically throughout the day in the beautiful sunshine and fresh air that can only be found here on Maui. I felt peaceful and calm. My giant uterus seemed to enjoy all the walking and I felt mentally balanced. Did it matter that my quiet time with God had been less than riveting? It did, but the time I spent out in his creation was awesome and put me closer to my happy place.

My break came unexpectedly. I had my housemate and her daughter over for dinner. After a very tasty meal my housemate left to got to a class she was taking. Her daughter stayed with me and over the next two hours we had the most engaging discussion about our faith. This kid (she’s 13) is a thinker. She ponders things. As she toss out questions and things about our beliefs that bothered her we looked in our Bibles to find answers. And as I sought to help her find some of the answers to her questions I was reminded of what I believe and why I believe it. I might not be the Christian I want to be… I still struggle with sexual sin. I’m cranky, sarcastic, and oftentimes foul tempered. I curse when I stub my toe, get cut off in traffic, or surprised by giant cane spiders. But as I pointed out to her during our discussion… if my salvation depended on my actions I’m screwed.

I needed to have this conversation more than I needed anything else today. I am never going to be an evangelist where I bang non-believers over the head with my bible in an effort to get them to believe. As far as I’m concerned they already believe something. That the non-evangelist in me. But put me in a room with a believer with doubts and questions and something comes alive in me. I guess it’s because of all these years that I’ve struggled with my own questions and doubts. It would be nice to have someone who I could just go to with all my questions and get pointed in the right direction.

I needed a break and was tempted to get bent out of shape when it didn’t come in the form that I expected it to come. When will I learn that I can’t keep God in a box. As I move closer towards my surgery I have issues and questions for God and I have to accept that some things he might answer and others he might not. Some answers might come after the surgery or six months from now or not until I’m a gap-toothed old woman. The answers won’t all come wrapped up all neatly but when they do come, like tonight, they will be great and I will be grateful. I needed a break and God sent me a 13 year old girl that I live with and see every day.