Return from the Valley of the Damned

This weekend I felt like I fell into an emotional pit and didn’t know how to climb out. I didn’t clean my room. I didn’t do my laundry. I didn’t even get out of my pajamas yesterday. I was emotionally and physically wiped out. I felt like the only thing I could do was spin out. Once the button pushing started I was down for the count… but I wasn’t out. I also wasn’t alone. There were at least ten people that I know of who were praying for me. And as I’ve said more than once… I will take a ton of prayer over an ounce of advice.

I will be honest and say that I did take some Vicodin this weekend, but not enough to hurt myself or to get addicted. I have been so tense for so long that my neck hurt so bad that I couldn’t take it anymore. The phantom uterus was also giving me grief and that whole side of my body hurt. My thumb even hurt because the doctor had manipulated the hell out of it when I went to see the specialist. I had about 12 Vicodin left from when I had my root canal and I felt like taking one every four hours would take the edge off of my life. It made me loopy enough to sleep a dreamless sleep and my neck doesn’t hurt as much as it did. As wired as I was, I needed to sleep or my reality wasn’t going to look pretty.

After I woke up from one Vicodin induced nap I wrote that email that I might have mentioned in the last post. To be honest, I rarely remember what I write about when I post after I’ve posted it. I’m very “in the moment/stream of consciousness” with my writing. I offload whatever thoughts du jour are cluttering up my mind and then I move on. So if I didn’t mention the email before… I’m mentioning it now. What started as one of my “Say What You Need to Say” letters that I saved months ago on my desktop became a reality. I wrote the email and said what I needed to say as lovingly as I knew how. And then I let it go. I hit “send.” And then I waited. Part of me thought that I’d get a nasty response. The last time I wrote to tell somebody that I forgave them I got a rude shock: the person refused to believe that their actions had hurt me. She pretty much said that her conscience was clear before God and that she didn’t need my forgiveness because she hadn’t done anything wrong. Let’s just say that response didn’t go down well with me. It created a whole new vein of bitterness and resentment that I am still working through. But it did teach me not to “cast my pearls before pigs” like the bible warns.

I’ve only just realized recently that this woman’s response is like most of the people in my family — they hurt you and then want to act like nothing happened. Or, if the hurt was clearly unintentional, they want to make you feel crazy for being hurt in the first place. I’ve had to set a boundary with my family. They are not healthy and relationship with them is not healthy for me. I don’t see them but I’m open to reconciliation if they ever want to have real relationship based on honesty and accountability. I’ve had to set the same boundary with this woman even though this boundary cost me greatly this weekend. This boundary really effected me and I lost something that I can’t ever get back. It further added to the drama and the stress of this weekend, but it also had the same effect of pushing a reluctant skydiver out of a plane — once I was out of the plane there was only one thing to do: trust God.

This was part of the reason I sent that email. Forgiveness and reconciliation hadn’t worked with this woman, but I cannot ditch God’s directions on how to handle conflict in a godly way just because it didn’t work with one woman. I got the reply to my email yesterday and it was more gracious than I had ever expected. I have been carrying this bitterness and resentment around for months because I have weak boundaries and was too afraid of speaking up. Lithium was not going to help that. “Speaking the truth in love” helped that. The guy in question received my email in the spirit that it was meant and we are on the road to reconciliation. I might have mentioned that I felt like a weight had been lifted? I do feel emotionally lighter. Silence only added to the weight. That closure was definitely the highlight of the past 48 hours.

Surprisingly, today went well. I thought because of my long weekend spent in the Valley of the Damned that today was going to be a nightmare. This is the week that I’ve got the larger classes and unfortunately, two of those classes have a bunch of slackers in them. I felt sure that I was going to lose it at some point today. Shows what I know. God was so present in my heart, my words, and my attitude today. Without the added burden of this now resolved conflict, I didn’t have to struggle with bitterness, resentment, or anger today. It just wasn’t there.

I also set some boundaries in my immediate environment. My students like to turn the radio up loud when they think I’m not listening. Loud music works my nerves and shatters my concentration. Today I removed the radio. When they asked where it went I told them it was gone. Nobody argued. People actually got work done in a nice, quiet room. I also locked the door on the break and didn’t let students come hang out. They like to use my room as the hangout joint. That means I’m always on duty. I don’t get a break. Seriously? I need my break and I need to respect that need so I can do what I being paid to do to the best of my ability. I even set a boundary at home: I made the decision not to read the counseling books tonight. I feel calm and stable for the first time in a week. The book will keep.

And I almost forgot, another highlight of today is that I got my final test score from the Praxis test! They had to score all three sections before they told me if I passed or not. You needed a 516 to pass — I got a 547!  One one section out of a possible 190 I got 184! And the math section that had me so worried? I needed a 170. I got 181! That right there was an act of God my friends! I passed the test!!!!  And given how I feel now after this emotionally grueling weekend, I believe I passed that test as well. If I could do my “Snoopy Dance,” I’d be doing it right about now.

 

More Than I Meant to Say

Having my hysterectomy was the best thing I’ve ever did. Ok. Maybe not. Accepting the Lord was the best thing I’ve ever done, closely followed by backpacking through Europe when I was in college, going to Disney World for spring break in 2003, and moving back to Maui in 2005. But as far as my health goes… the hysterectomy was right up there near the top of the list. The landscape of my mental health completely changed because of that surgery. Where there used to be really low trenches surrounded by plains dotted with volcanoes, there is now one long field of green. Even though I’m in an ambiguous emotional place right now, the stressors in my life are not causing any major fluctuations in my mental terrain.

That being said, I have to go get a CT scan today because I am still in daily physical pain. Feels like all of my guts are going to just fall out and that is not normal. My surgery was nearly a year ago and some days I’m in so much pain I hobble around like a woman twice my age. 42 should not be the new 84.

This is not how I see my life for the rest of my life.

This is, however, one of the reasons I’ve isolated myself recently. It’s hard for me to physically keep up with people. And since I was never very active to begin with, there’s no reason why I’d start trying to do the things my friends like doing (hike, camp, dance) now, when I never did those things before. And since just about everybody I know has children, the whole hysterectomy thing is lost on them. I’m not particularly maternal and I stopped wanting children a long time ago… but being surrounded by happy little families can be hard for me. Makes my glaring singleness that much more glaring. It makes me feel that much more alone.

Ok. That was more than I’d intended to share this morning. I could delete it and continue the isolation… but I think I’m going to leave it and see what God does next. One mistaken belief I used to have was that Christians weren’t supposed to have problems. I actually believed that when I first met Jesus. I thought he’d do a mojo and make all my problems go away. It’s taken me years to understand and accept that he, not only doesn’t make all my problems go away, he sometimes allows really even more problems to come my way to show me what my faith is made of.  He knows what my faith is like and what I can handle. There are no surprises for him. If , however, I keep my eyes on him and stop trying to stuff things down or deny how I feel I might just be surprised.

Some people would have me think that my feelings are bad or wrong. I’m more inclined to think that they are like the idiot lights in your car. They are there to signal problems that you should have taken care of a before they actually became problems. The oil light only comes on when I have neglected to put oil in my car for too long.  And I only get caught up in feeling overwhelmed by my feelings when there is something I haven’t completely surrendered to God or when he’s told me what to do about it and I haven’t done it. There’s a lot of that in my life right now which is why I find myself back in THE BUBBLE. Mind you, the operative word used to be ” The BIPOLAR  Bubble” … and since the whole mental component is just not there, I have to concede that I’ve come a long (emotional) way since my surgery.

I’m changing. God has changed me. He has used challenges, trials, and problems as his tool of change. Maybe I’m not where I want to be… but if he wanted me in a different life dealing with different circumstances, he’d make it happen. Today I’ve got to drink a yummy medical “smoothie” so that they can look at my insides to see what’s wrong. Too bad you can’t do that on a spiritual level: Drink a “smoothie” and see what your heart looks like on the inside. Find out the true contents of your soul. Wait. That’s what the bible is for! That’s what going to church or meeting with other Christians is for. And maybe that’s part of my problem. Things got hot in a couple of areas and instead of drawing closer to the church and other believers I’ve pulled back. I voluntarily put on a mask and I swore I’d never do that anymore.

Y’know, the mask where you tell people that everything is ok even even when it’s not. Ok. Again, that’s more than I’d planned to say this morning. Some people would have me think that if  I have conflict with other people that it has to be all my fault. Something is wrong with my heart or my relationship with God. That I just have to “die to myself” and throw the big blanket of “forgiveness” over it and it won’t hurt anymore. I am more inclined to believe that the bible give lots of examples on how to handle conflict in a godly way for a reason.  And that just because I’ve been wounded by the thoughtless acts of other people doesn’t mean that I’m somehow less of a Christian for wanting to address the conflict openly instead of faking  like nothing happened.

My problem is that anger is a huge reservoir in my life and I rarely want to handle conflicts in godly ways initially. My anger erupts internally and I withdraw because I don’t want to spew a bunch of rage all over somebody no matter what they did…because then I would be in the wrong. So I wait and I pray. I keep asking God to give me the wisdom to know what to say… and while I wait I say nothing to anybody else and the isolation continues.

Clearly my problems are not going to be resolved this morning in this one post… but I figure it has to count for something that I’m not remaining silent anymore. People that actually know me are going to see this post and at least one brave soul is going to call me up and ask how I’m doing. This rambling excuse for a blog post is better than the cavernous silence I’ve been sitting in where my words just keep echoing in my own mind. I’m praying that God will do a CT scan on my heart and fix whatever is wrong.  Trying to resolve conflicts is essential within the body of Christ. Phony or forced forgiveness is bad. I believe that.

If I’d dealt with my fibroids when they started to become a noticeable problem, they wouldn’t have had to remove a mass the size of a football from my body last year. I am known for just ignoring problems. Much of what I’m dealing with now is rooted in me not wanting to say something to people who have hurt or offended me. Maybe God is allowing me to have so many internal conflicts over it now, so that I will stop sitting on my but and actually do something godly about the problems. Maybe I’m supposed to go to other people and get counsel on what to do. Not is a gossipy way… but in a “go ask a more mature believer what scripture says I should do” way.  Or maybe I need to actually make arrangements to go talk to the offending people. If I wait until it doesn’t hurt anymore or until I’m not mad or offended anymore or until I have the perfect words to say — I might still be waiting in isolation this time next year. Maybe God is saying I need to stop waiting for “perfect” conditions. They don’t exist. I’m not perfect. The people who hurt me aren’t perfect. But God is. I have to trust him on this. Without a CT scan he sees my heart and knows that I want to pursue peace and unity. And isolation isn’t peace or unity. It’s a bubble shielded by a mask.

Into the Tiger’s Den

Never in a million years could I have imagined the outcome.

Today I was determined to face my tiger.
I was determined to look it in the eye,
Nerve myself up,
And speak my truth.

My mother made me afraid of speaking my truth.
It was not ok to talk about your feelings in my home
Because feelings were somehow
bad.

My mother made me cry when I tried to express how I felt…
And when I cried,
She called me “stupid” for crying.
So feelings were bad -
but tears were worse.

But bottling up either of them
Makes for mental imbalance.
So bad and worse, joined together to form horrible.
In my mind, conflicts were horrors to be avoided.

I have run from conflict like I ran from my mother.
Yet I’ve found that running only takes you to the next conflict faster.
The tiger joins up with the lions and the bears
And they all chase you until there’s nowhere else to run.

God told me stop running.
If he can shut the mouths of hungry lions…
He can silence one measly tiger.
So armed with the two sheets of paper containing my truth,
I went into the tiger’s den.
Eyes averted to the papers
I read my truth
Too afraid to look the tiger in the eyes.
Pouring my emotions into my words
I tried to get my tiger to see
Truth.
My truth.
The truth.

And when I was done
I put the papers on the table and
Looked into the eye of the tiger.
And saw a woman,
just like me
With character flaws
that are often hard to control.

She apologized.
My tiger — no longer a tiger
Heard my words and actually
APOLOGIZED for EVERYTHING.

I was expecting to get mauled
Because I didn’t hold anything back…
And the attack never came.

That in itself would have been good.
It would have been enough.
But then God did the completely unexpected.
He told her to mention the Apostle Paul.
And like any servant of his,
She obeyed.

She had no way of knowing if I was a believer.
My response could have been hostile.
Turns out my tiger is a Christian.
She’s been going through a rough time –
Dealing with her own tigers.
No excuse, but an explanation.
It helped me have grace for her.

Funny.
Pastor talked about grace in church yesterday.
I think I passed the “tiger test.”
We talked about God
And his business…
and then our meeting
Ended with a prayer.
If we’d met with her supervisor
Like I’D planned…
That wouldn’t have happened.
Good thing God’s plan prevailed.
I prayed
then she prayed.

And it was all good.
My God, our God who had closed the mouths
Of hungry lions…
Had gone into the tiger’s den with me
and did the same thing.

Facing the Tigers

Today I face the tiger.

 

Conflict is SO hard for me. When I was actively struggling with Bipolar

Conflict could be a trigger for depression -

Conflict could be a trigger for suicidal thoughts -

Conflict could make me wall myself off from other people.

 

I never knew how to talk to people in a conflict.

I’d cry.

Crying made me feel weak

and stupid

and vulnerable

and wrong.

Surely if I was right…

I’d be able to stand my ground

dry eyed.

 

Letter writing became my way of dealing with conflict.

I wrote my first conflict letter to my mother.

It didn’t go well.

None of my conflicts letters ever really seemed to go well.

But I don’t regret writing any of them.

Conflict has been a tiger that has followed me

nipping at my Bipolarized heels.

Now it’s time to tame the tiger.

The conflict at work?

I tried going to a supervisor.

Didn’t really help much.

The situation got worse.

I went to my supervisor

Who went to the OTHER supervisor.

That didn’t really work either.

Today…

I’m writing my conflict letter

and I’m going to go knock on a door.

Instead of emailing my conflict  letter

I’m going to read it.

I’m going to sit directly in front of my tiger

and read it.

My hands my shake.

They did as I typed it.

Lord willing I won’t cry.

But I am determined.

Conflict does not honor God

and if I do not handle conflict in a way that WILL

honor God… then

I’m essentially becoming a tiger myself.

Guilty as Charged

My ex-boyfriend used to say that there were two sides to every story: your side, their side, and the truth.

With every conflict that I’ve ever found myself in, I’ve never been blind to the fact that there is another side of the story and it’s not mine. I’ve always wondered if my perception of events has been accurate or a bit fuzzy because of my mental illness. I’ve tried to keep my hands and heart clean…but the reality is that nobody is completely innocent.

I got the third response to my forgiveness email. I sent a different one to the leader abroad, but basically the same point: forgiving a leader who had wronged me. She hadn’t known that I had a mental illness and her response was to think I was in rebellion and unwilling to submit to her leadership. This lead to all kinds of words and actions that hurt me… but her intent was never to be cruel. It just sort of happened.  Hers was the “non-response” that I’d gotten. I thought it was a non-response because I’d emailed her back in 2007 explaining about my bipolar and hadn’t heard anything from her, so I wrote it off. Writing to her now seemed like a waste of time, but God prompted me to do it and he kept prodding me until I gave in.

Her response was simple and to the point, “Thank you Lori and we forgive you too.“

Not once did I ever think I was the complete innocent who had been done wrong by the evil missions leaders. Ok, for a few years, I did think that, but God showed me the truth. I know that my behavior, because of my bipolar, had been less than stellar. Both experiences have taught me that I cannot expect other believers to understand what crisis looks like for me and that if they handle things badly… God is still God. He’s able to fix whatever  they broke.

The final scene in this drama? I need to email her back and receive her forgiveness. It has taken years — since 1997 — for this moment to happen, but it has. Back then I thought God had completely abandoned me. I was alone in a third world country with next to no money. I felt like the bottom had dropped out of my world and that I was done with God and his people. I hurt so badly I couldn’t see my part in the conflict. Over a decade later I can. It doesn’t matter that the leader didn’t write some long flowery response saying how she understands mental illness and is sorry. She didn’t apologize and, oddly enough, I don’t need her to. She accepted my forgiveness and extended hers. As far as closure goes it works for me. It also blows me away. The leader I thought least likely to respond in a positive way did and in her own way acknowledged her fault in the conflict as well as my own. She didn’t spell out my sins… but I accept that I’m guilty as charged just as I would have done with the leader here on Maui if she’d accepted my apology. I know I am not innocent  in that conflict either. Bipolar Girl doesn’t have automatic immunity because of her mental illness. I’m guilty. The only thing is… I’m also forgiven. I doubt this missions leader and I will ever get together and sing Kumbaya while  roasting marshmallows, but with forgiveness extended and received we have allowed the Lord to heal a longstanding breach in the family of God. Forgiveness must happen before there can be real reconciliation.

You cannot, however,  receive forgiveness if you don’t think you did anything wrong. Getting this positive response today makes the final step of cutting bait easier. I don’t have to say anything to this local leader. It took over a decade but God changed the heart of the leader from the mission field. It might take longer than a decade with this local leader to ever soften enough to be able to see that there’s another side to the story… but God can and will bring about reconciliation in his time.

The Rock. A Cage. A White Flag

The strangest movies make me cry. Personally, I think God gives me movies as an emotional outlet for Asperger’s Girl because I generally don’t know what to feel or when to feel it. I’m talking real life events. I end up not feeling anything until it all gets bottled up so much that Bipolar Girl takes over and the resulting drama is spectacular.

Today’s Cry Fest is courtesy of “The Rock” with Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery. I’m at the scene where the rebel marines have just massacred the Navy SEALS in the defunct shower area. I just started crying… for what that scene said to me… not for the lose of movie lives. People on the same side — or should be on the same side — using their words ( and really big guns) to hurt each other. Both sides thinking that they are right and both sides doing irreparable damage.

It made me think of that email I got from that leader the other day. My biggest issue is that we’re CHRISTIANS. We’re supposed to be on the same side. That leader thinks that her stand is right before God and man. I think my stand was right between God and man. And yet is has ended with us taking our separate corners and missing the point of reconciliation all together. One can only praise God that our battle was waged with words because big guns would have sucked.

Conflict within the church is nothing new. It wasn’t even new in Jesus’ day. The bible is FULL of scriptures about how to navigate conflicts in godly ways. It’s even got verses on how to let go when the conflicts cannot be resolved. But failure to resolve is never the goal. You do what you can to bring about true peace. I emailed her because I wanted to be obedient to God… but if I’m honest, I didn’t really want reconciliation. I don’t like her and haven’t liked her for years. It’s hard enough for me to be in relationship with people I like. Relating to this woman who has no concept of mental illness or how her words and actions trigger fear, anger, rage, depression, and suicidal ideation in me is not on my list of  “Top Ten Things to Do.” I would have preferred a non-response from her because then I could be all self-righteous about her lack of response.

As is… I have to try to get her words out of my head and I have to obey God’s guidelines for dealing with conflicts that cannot be resolved. I could let this depress me OR I could trust Jesus, the Rock upon whom I stand. As I watched the movie I prayed (I do that a lot when movies make me feel something). I prayed that my own words and actions would never be used to massacre another believer. I prayed that I would never be so certain of my own standing before God that I am ignorant to the effect that said words and actions might have on others. This came into play a lot when I taught elementary school.. but now that I’ve been let out of that particular cage I need to learn how to relate to adults. This leader could also stand to learn a bit about dealing with other adults… particularly ones with mental illness. I’ve tried to get her to understand, but like a lot of people in the church — mental illness is a blind spot for her.

To say anything else to this leader… even though I am dying to say something would not be what Jesus would have me do. To drag this out would be to open the door to all manner of thoughts that I do not need to entertain. There’s a verse in the the New Testament in the book of 1 Corinthians that talks about conflicts among believers and how sometimes it’s better to be wronged. I know. That’s a hard bone to swallow. I could try to vindicate myself, but to what end? Trying to do so would only open me up to more emotional stress and I have no immediate plans of morphing into Bipolar Girl over this woman. Cutting bait has been a bit harder than I thought because the emotional and mental ties are thicker than I thought… but it’s time to surrender. Wave the white flag and let Jesus, my Rock, sort it out in his timing. In the mean time… I’m going to go finish watching the movie.

Cut Bait

One aspect of having a mental illness that I really have not liked (besides feeling crazy) is that I stay in unhealthy situations way past the expiration date. Sometimes, it has been fear that has keep me in an unhealthy place — the fear that Bipolar Girl won’t be able to hack it out in the real world with real people. Other times, I have tried to prove to myself that I could persevere under trial just like a “normal” person would. Fortunately for me, in the past two years I’ve been learning the beauty of cutting bait. Some situations aren’t worth staying in and some people are better when left alone. To try to stay in that place or in that relationship has proven to be the trigger of many a really bad head trip for me. Learning when to “let go and let God” has become vital to me.

A few weeks ago I wrote an email extending  forgiveness to some people in leadership who had hurt me. I felt like God was prompting me to do it. He never said how it was going to turn out. I was expecting the worst. I was bracing myself for verbal abuse via cyberspace, but it was necessary. One of those things I needed to do in order to “move forward” in my life. It’s one thing to tell myself that I forgive them. It’s another thing to actually tell them. People who don’t think they did anything wrong don’t take too kindly to being forgiven. Well…one person responded back and her response was so gracious I cried. It made me feel free… but in reality, I was already free. The minute I became willing to forgive her, God began letting me off the hook from which I’d been dangling. Her response only sealed the deal. The road to reconciliation is wide open.

The second leader never wrote back. This did not surprise me and it says more about her character than my own. I held my hand out in forgiveness, but it was not grasps. I’m ok with that. It took a long time to heal from what she did to me, but the point is… I am healed. I am free. Like the massive fibroid that I recently had removed, unforgiveness had grown in my heart for years and it needed to be removed. This relationship is dead because it never lived. Relationship with this woman was never going to be healthy. By extending my hand in forgiveness I was also giving it to God, the Divine Physician to heal. This relationship is in my past never to be revisited.

The third person emailed me today and for the life of me I wish she’d ignored my email. Essentially? She said that she hadn’t done anything wrong and that she has a clear conscience about everything she did. Clearly, we see things differently. But does her self-righteous response negate the forgiveness I extended to her? Makes me think of how the entire world stands forgiven by Jesus… but how everybody will not receive his forgiveness because they don’t think that they did anything wrong. Jesus does not get mad at the people who won’t receive his forgiveness… so I shouldn’t get mad that this woman has denied any wrong doing. Uh… I guess she’s right…Bipolar Girl is just being crazy imagining the hurt.

Not hardly. Just because she won’t admit it doesn’t mean that I didn’t get hurt by her actions. In the past I might have second guessed myself because I’m the one with a mental illness and she’s the respected Christian leader. But I’m not doing that now. Ours was a crazy relationship and she helped make me crazier. I do not expect to be treated with kid gloves because I have a mental illness… but I’m not going to let anybody make me question how their actions made me feel. My feelings are my own and are valid for that reason alone. I found her response offensive. She peppered it with scriptures to make her case that she’d done nothing wrong all the while missing the point: her actions hurt a sister in the Lord and she doesn’t seem to care. It’s more important to give the appearance of being right than actually being right. And if that’s what she wants… then it is well and truly time to cut bait! I feel no obligation to ever connect with this person ever again. Her email made me tense and I wanted to cry… but it hasn’t triggered fear or depression like it would have in the past. I refuse to give her that power over me ever again.

Most Christians don’t think that cutting bait is an option, but there are plenty of scriptural references that explain why, when, and how you should cut bait if bait is needing to be cut. So many of my depressed episodes were caused because I didn’t know when or how to let go. I stayed when I should have cut. This woman is directly responsible for innumerable depressed and suicidal episodes… but she doesn’t have a clue. She doesn’t want to have a clue. And that’s her right. I still forgive her. For everything she did before I emailed…and for her self-righteous little email tonight. I forgive her. Only this time… I won’t be telling her that I forgive her. What would be the point? Do you hear that?

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

That is what cutting bait sounds like.

Who’s Sorry Now?

After my last post I made a “To Do” list. I find that those are helpful when I’m being hunted by anxiety and paralyzed by worry. Having a concrete list of things to do means I’m not just sitting there getting my spiritual butt kicked. This list was different, though. I made a short list of all the things I believe that God has asked me to do or was leading me towards doing that I had not yet done. When I was a teacher my students always wanted to know what we were doing next or what the next step was. I’d always ask them if they’d finished whatever I’d previously asked them to do. When they responded that they had not, I always told them that I would not give them any more directions until the followed the ones I’d already given.

When I look in the bible I see a lot of evidence to support that God works pretty much the same way. Why give me directions for tomorrow when I haven’t followed his directions for today??

So the first thing I did was edit my “forgiveness” emails one last time. I felt really tense and afraid. Hitting the “send” button was unbelievably hard. Then I cut and pasted the draft of the second email into a message on facebook to the other leader. I was so afraid that I was opening a door to more mental abuse. Surely, they’d read my letter and then start spewing all kinds of religious condemnation at me. By the time I was done I’d only accomplished two of the things on my list, but I was emotionally wiped out. I physically felt like I’d run a race and lost. My body ached and my mind was tired. My antidote for that: watch a movie. Dashing off to grab my bible and pray and meditate is just not where I’m at right now. Maybe some day I’ll get to that higher spiritual plane… but for now, I was content to zone out watching “Drop Dead Diva” on my laptop.

You gotta’ love Gmail notifier. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. It lets you know when new emails come in by way of a little chime. Mid-movie, I heard the chime. When I checked my mailbox and saw that it was one of those leaders responding to my email my blood stopped pumping. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do as fear like I have never known before grabbed me around the neck and began to squeeze. I read her email through a bipolarized haze. I don’t know if I even understood what I read. Then I was rereading it through a haze of tears. My Father said to write a letter of forgiveness. Even though I didn’t immediately obey him… my Father was gracious: the leader apologized. Her sincerity was evident. I waited five years for that apology and now I had it. I know it sounds stupid, contrived even… but I felt released. “Free” is what went through my mind.

I have no idea what the other three leaders are going to say because they were, by far, the harder ones to deal with, but I have to say that I’m sorry I was too afraid to obey God sooner. He’s been teaching me much about forgiveness and reconciliation and I was just too afraid to see:

1. Denial is not forgiveness.
2. Denial does not mean that it never happened
3. Forgiveness is an event and a process.
4. Being hurt does not mean you haven’t forgiven.
5. Communication helps forgiveness happen.
6. Forgiveness does not equal reconciliation.
7. You can’t reconcile with somebody who won’t admit their wrongs.
8. Forgiveness takes one.
9. Reconciliation takes two.

The “Victim Label”

This morning I woke up around 2am. Not unusual. I’ve been doing that since I was in the hospital. The nurse’s aid would come in to check my vitals and sleep was pretty much a pipe dream after that. Trying to sleep nearly sitting up doesn’t make for deep sleep either. So I try to get creative when I wake up. I read. I post online. I sing worship songs to the Lord while I walk around in circles in the dark. This I only do because I know there’s nothing in the room that will trip me. This morning I had a lot on my mind. It has been on my mind for weeks now.

God’s been challenging me in the area of reconciliation. This is an area that I deal with in great detail in my manuscript. Being the brunt end of so many conflicts gone wrong, it shouldn’t be surprising that I have slapped on the “victim label” many times in my life. Now don’t get me wrong. I do not think the “victim label” is always a bad thing. People who experience violent crimes are victims. People who lose everything in a natural disaster are also victims. Many things make people victims. The question is are they going to stay that way and be victimized by whatever it was for the rest of their lives. Once you slap on the “victim label” it’s really hard to peel it off. Trust me. I know.

I have been a victim. A victim of a lot of things that really happened and some that I only think happened. I’ve spent years gazing at the lint in my belly button trying to figure out how to scrape off the “victim label” with varying degrees of success.

What if you are the victim of somebody who didn’t mean to hurt you? Hurt is hurt. It doesn’t matter if they meant to land that golf ball through your front windshield. The reality is… they did. This actually happened to me this year. I lived across the street from a golf course in a glass house no less. That none of the windows of the house were ever shattered still amazes me. What amazes me even more is what happened the day a stray golf ball hit the house, then the ground, and ricocheted to hit my front windshield causing it to crack all the way down from the initial point of impact. Hairline cracks feathered out from the point where the ball hit and it was not pretty.

Me? I was in shock. Too shocked to even speak, so my housemate went out to talk to the offending golfer after she had assessed the damages. I was a victim of a crummy golfer. Luckily, the guy was a Christian. He took full responsibility for the damage and made restitution. He paid to have my window fixed and I have no animosity towards him. Conflict resolved. He knew he’d hurt me and wanted to make things right. Since he was also a golf instructor… nobody assumed that it was anything other than an accident. I mean, what golf instructor would deliberately trash my windshield?? He apologized, made things right, and it was over. I wasn’t even upset that I had to wait a rather long time for the right type of glass to be shipped over from the mainland. He had apologized. All was right with my world…with the exception of the actual broken window that would eventually be fixed over time.

I think of that today because I wrote two separate letters to two different Christian leaders telling them that I forgive them. They hurt me badly. So badly I nearly walked away from my faith and even seriously considered taking my life. People in Christian leadership carry a lot of responsibility… but they act on behalf of God. That doesn’t mean that they are God. Like that unfortunate golf instructor, they make mistakes and people, instead of things, get broken. In so many ways I felt like my busted windshield. All these hairline cracks shooting out in so many different directions. I did not know which crack to try to fix first. All I knew was that I was broken and I didn’t think God was going to fix me.

In the first instance, over a decade has passed since I even saw those leaders but it took seven years to come to grips with what they did. That’s a long time to be broken. In the second case, only a few years have passed… but I’m learning that God doesn’t want me to be broken any longer that I have to be. In the case of the golf instructor, we pointed out his wrong and he apologized. He made the appropriate amends and no rifts in the body of Christ occurred. With those leaders? I tried to communicate with them, but they would hear nothing of it. They didn’t think that they’d done anything wrong. Nobody is going to apologize if they don’t think they did anything wrong. Unless of course you’re a kid and your parents make you apologize. A practice I strongly disagree with because all it really does is turn the kid into a liar and a hypocrite.

Today I wrote the letter God’s been telling me to write. The one where I tell them that I forgive them. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” They owe me an apology, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for one. I’ve been walking out the process of forgiveness so long that I thought I’d never get to the point where the memory of what they did would no longer hurt. I think I got to that point today. If I was unwillingly wearing the “victim label” I think they were unknowingly wearing the “victimizer label” and I think it’s about time that I stop trying to heal myself and let God do it. I can’t make them apologize. Only God can do that. And he won’t force them. He’ll only lay out choices and trust them.

If they reject my letters it won’t matter. I will have obeyed God and done my part. Forgiveness? It only takes one. I don’t need them to acknowledge my letter in order for me to forgive them and in doing so, I’m going to be free of them. Bitterness and resentment bind you to people like Crazy Glue. Reconciliation? Now that takes two. You can’t reconcile with someone who won’t admit to doing anything wrong. And if that’s what happens, that’s ok too. They might continue to unwittingly wear the “victimizer label” but me..? I won’t be their victim anymore. No more victim label for me.

We Are a Family

I make such a big deal about my “church family” because they are awesome and they rock. I have never been this close to any of the other people at any of the other churches I’ve attended over the years… but a lot of that comes, not from their ignorance over mental health issues… but because I just wasn’t at a place where I was mentally or emotionally ready to engage in a family-like relationship with them. In my earlier blogs I touched on how my bio family relationship was not a good one. And I tend to leave it at that. I see no point in family bashing especially since my family is not peopled with monsters. Had I gone through a monsterous childhood with hideous levels of abuse… maybe that would be a story that needed to be told. My family, however, was just dysfunctional and tearing them down serves no purpose at all. The hurt that they caused me, while intentional much of the time, fell into the category of “Forgive the Father for they know not what they do.” They had no idea what the consequences of their words and actions would have on my life. It took me years of therapy and prayer to get to the point where I could forgive them and not see them are evil people… but now I see them for what they are: human.

Of the lot of them (I have seven sisters and two brothers), there was one, an older sister who made my childhood bearable. She loved me as if I were her own child, which I could have been since her own kid was only two years younger than I. She was the mother to me that I wish my bio mom had been and we enjoyed a close relationship until a few years ago when I told her about my book and told her that I wanted to tell my brother and stepfather that they’d been mentioned in relationship to my incest issues and porn addiction. To say that she didn’t think I should bring it up to them was an understatement. My request for her help in contacting them blew the underpinnings of our relationship away like that flying cow in the movie, “Twister.” At the time, it seemed like I could only look on helplessly as the poor old cow flew away. Upon reflection… sounds like I’m calling my sister a cow. She’s not. It’s just before 3am in the morning. I like the visual of that analogy and I’m not going to change it. Maybe I will at 9am, but at 3am it’s sounding kinda cool.

So this morning I find myself awake taking pain meds and going to the bathroom. Now that my uber-uterus is no longer smashing my bladder I don’t have to pee every hour… but it’s still pretty painful to have to get up and go. My incision hurts when my bladder is full and getting up without hurting myself is a challenge… so going back to sleep is not always easy. I started reading a book about strengthening your faith and though the author was talking about a long dead biblical figure, he could have been talking about my sister. And as I read what he wrote, I found myself crying. I stopped praying for my family a long time ago. Some of them object to me being a Christian. Some of them were just plain mean and I had to set a boundary. Others think I’m a liar and my book is just a bunch of lies (they’ve never read it… but they are certain it’s full of lies). Then there are some who just don’t care about me and never have. But that’s no excuse not to pray for them and their eternal destiny. When I was in the hospital that tech who was able to get the IV started in my hand after praying for me looked me in the eyes and told me not to give up praying for my family. It was freaky but I know a message from God when I hear one.

I’ve been praying kind of haphazardly for them but this morning I prayed in earnest. And after I finished praying, I emailed Older Sister #2 and told her how much I’d missed her. I pointed out that it would have been stupid to have someone notify her in the event that there were complications during surgery because what good would it be to know (past tense) that I loved her if I were dead. Love not expressed in deeds is not love. So I emailed her and then came here to post. Yes, I make much over how great my church family is. I’m always going to rejoice over the fact that Jesus was true to his word. He said that if we left home, family, and field to pursue him and his kingdom he’d give us many more homes, families, and fields. Right now I can’t believe how many sisters and brothers in the Lord have come up to love, help, pray for, and encourage me. But I have a chance to reconcile with one of my bio sisters. And my prayers changed today about the rest of my siblings. Instead of a hard-hearted, self-righteous prayer, this book brought me to tears for them.

I do not know what God is going to do with my prayer, but after all that I’ve been through I don’t want to limit him. He is a huge God and he’s able to repair the damage done in my family.