The World According to Bipolar Girl: In Response to a Friend pt II

This weekend I took a break from people. I’ve just been still. I believe that God is giving me wisdom to begin to navigate my way out of this angry pit I’ve fallen into.  The mediation that I’ve been waiting for at work has yet to take place, but I am ok waiting. I also know that it will not be an overnight solution. It took months for things to get this bad, it’s going to take time to restore that which never was. You can’t call it “reconciliation” if there was never a relationship to start out with, can you?

But enough of that. I’ve carefully tried to distance myself from my work related triggers the past two days. Time enough to deal with them on Tuesday. I’m going to turn my thoughts and my words back to the response I was making to comments from a friend here. I’ve already responded to her first question. Her second comment wasn’t so much a question as it was a comment that spoke to me. Here is my response to her:

I thought I could b open n b honest but the more I told of me.. The depressed me.. The bipolar me.. It’s as if everyone wants me to shut up now….I feel that part of me isn’t accepted

Sad, but true… there will be people, loved  even ones who will not understand you or accept you because of your Bipolar. That is their loss not yours. My family does not accept me… but I know I am a funny, intelligent, creative, and interesting person. It is their loss that they do not get to be in relationship with me. Yes, it grieves me that I do not have a family. But I could not continue to wear the mask for them. I could not continue to pretend to be someone I wasn’t or to pretend that everything was ok when it wasn’t.

Sadly, I’ve lost friends who tried to fix and/or save me only to get bitter when I didn’t get fixed. They cut bait on our friendship and made me feel awful and broken in the process. If only they hadn’t tried to do something no human was ever going to be able to do… things might have turned out differently. I was not looking for a human savior. I’m still not. I tend not to miss those people so much. But, I’ve also lost good friends because they couldn’t cope with me and my illness. My darkness…the depressed me… the Bipolar me… overwhelmed them. Some of that was my fault. It took me a while to learn about appropriate sharing. I’ve had to learn the hard way not to overwhelm the people I love or to have unrealistic expectations of them. Most people do not understand mental illness and the church is still really ignorant.

If you have overwhelmed people, you can work on appropriate sharing with appropriate people. It’s a learned skill. I used to be an “emotional black hole” — I’d suck people into my drama and they’d have no idea where they went. When I was depressed and suicidal I didn’t always know when enough sharing became too much sharing. People kept trying to “save” me and couldn’t understand why their efforts failed. I’d get the standard schpeel — scriptures rammed down my throat, instructions to pray more, read my bible more, go to church… and all of it would piss me off. I’d tried all of that and couldn’t figure out why none of it was working. Last year I read a book where the Christian  counselor said that suggesting all of that stuff to a person with Bipolar Disorder is the very worst thing a person could do. I totally want to photocopy that entire section of that book and give it to my friends. Sort of a “Bipolar Handbook” so they don’t risk offending me when I’m in crisis and I don’t risk offending them when I get mad.

Now I give people outs. I do not share too much info with any one person at any given time and I also ask them if they’ve heard enough. I try not to put too much of a burden on any one person and I never try to make people feel like they are responsible for healing, fixing, or saving me. Even during my suicidal episodes of more recent years, I tried to make sure people realized that any negative life choices I might make were mine. If I ever really did decide to kill myself, there wasn’t going to be anything anybody could have told me that would have made a difference.

Most people will get burned out and frustrated if they feel like they have to continually play savior to somebody who doesn’t get “saved.” They are ignorant about how mental illness works. They also tend to get upset when you don’t get “better” fast enough. Part of appropriate sharing is not using  your friends and loved ones as free therapy. It’s easy to do that, so you have to find the line between appropriate and inappropriate sharing. In this, I still tend to lean towards extremes. Now I don’t overwhelm people… I “underwhelm” them. I tend to keep people in the dark and at a distance because I’m tired of talking things out, but God keeps reminding me that I’m not an island. I’d venture to guess that he doesn’t think you’re an island either.

Over the years I’ve made use of professional therapy and medication. Those people are paid to listen to me so they couldn’t run away or make me feel bad for feeling bad. It did begin to bother me that my therapists were not Christian, but in the early days of counseling, that was not an issue for me. I needed somebody to listen to me who wasn’t going to get overwhelmed and run away. I also needed somebody to prescribe meds. If you need therapy or meds make use of them. There is nothing un-Christian about this and it doesn’t show a lack of faith.

As long as both were helpful, I took advantage of them. When the meds stopped being beneficial, I stopped taking the antidepressants. When the doctors started telling me things that contradicted my Christian faith, I stopped going. Right now I asked my personal care physician to up my Lithium because I think I might be battling mania. Hard to tell since I haven’t had a true manic episode in over a decade. I don’t feel the need to go see my old therapist so I’m not.

My point? If the depressed part of you is creating stress or drama that actually can be addressed through therapy and meds use them. That might just make it easier for people to cope with you. My life was fairly out of control before I went on the meds. I also had to try different meds until I found something that worked. If you’re on meds and they’re not working look into other prescriptions. If you’re seeing a therapist and that’s not working pray about finding somebody who actually will help. And if you can’t find someone you like and trust… blog. It’s still the best free therapy around.

I’ve made no secret in this blog of the fact that I’m struggling right now. Oddly enough, people aren’t running away from me. I have a solid group of people who love me, support me, and are actually trying to run towards me. People from work and from church are affirming who I am, my value to them, and are attempting to understand me enough to give me the space I need as God walks me through this season. I believe that God has people like this for you. Until he reveals who those people are to you, do not give up hope. I cannot tell you when my own world is going to stop shaking, so I can’t predict when yours will. I won’t quote scripture at you and tell  you to do all this stuff that you are incapable of doing right now. I will continue responding to your comments and praying for you. I will also  remind you that Jesus loves you and knows exactly what you are feeling and where you are. He hears your thoughts, sees your depression, and will never tell you to shut up.

An Anniversary of Sorts

Two years ago today

I had my hysterectomy.

The pain and fear that led up to it

isn’t anything I ever want to repeat.

They removed my uterus

and a fibroid the size of  a football.

LONG story.

Two years in the making.

Since I’m still having health problems related to it,

One would think that I’d have regrets

or that I’m angry.

Two surgeries later

with few  positive results

I have no regrets.

None.

I haven’t had any significant depression

or any suicidal episodes

since my hysterectomy.

My entire adult life was plagued by mental illness

and somehow the surgery set me free

I give ALL glory and honor

for that to

GOD.

Lately, I’ve been displaying some signs

of possible mania

so we’ve upped my meds…

but I’ll take mania over depression

any day.

God changed my life for the better

two years ago today

And he’s going to keep changing it.

I probably would’ve let today pass

without a word…

but I got an email from

the site God led me to

that helped me get through the whole ordeal.

Hystersisters.com, reminded

me of the anniversary

and asked if I had some warm fuzzy

story to share.

I would LOVE it if I had such a story to share

of total healing and restoration...

But my physical pain is still rather  chronic

And limiting.

Sure, some days I’m whiny and mad about it,

but it is what is.

That email, however, reminded me

of just how far God has brought me…

so I’m taking some time to write this down,

Because, who knows...

maybe this time next year…

I might have even more to rejoice about….

 

 

Waiting on God?

I’ve heard it said that sometimes

it’s not so much that we are waiting on God…

as it is God waiting on us.

Yesterday’s meeting did not happen.

It had to be rescheduled for today.

It wasn’t until just now that I had even an inkling

of why he would have postponed it…

and now that I see it,

it makes perfect sense.

He’d moved on

but I was still clinging on to something

that he wanted me to let go of.

He also had something else he wanted to give me

that I wouldn’t have been able to receive…

had we rushed in before his time.

Waiting on him?

Him waiting on me?

Waiting?
Waiting.

Patiently.

When You Feel Like Giving UP

So many times in my life I’ve thought about committing suicide. There have been few times when I was so obsessed with it that I wasn’t even sure what the outcome would be.

No, I’m not suicidal now.  My head is still really full and I’m sleep deprived… but I am nowhere near that place. Lord willing, I will NEVER go back to that place ever again.

Into the mental storm that I am dealing with God has been trying to speak. The other night he didn’t let me sleep at all, but I only started trying to listen to him around 4am. I took notes because I didn’t want to forget what he said. This morning he decided that 2am would be a good time for a chat. I guess I’m too busy worrying and obsessing during daylight hours to hear him.

I want to continue my series responding to my friend’s questions… but this morning I have to take a break. I was feeling really tired and really weepy this morning. A song came to mind, “Can’t Give Up Now” by Mary Mary. It is the ultimate “Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds” song and I needed to hear it this morning because I needed to remember. I also needed to cry. When I hear it I cry. When I cry I feel a little bit better.

When I heard it this morning, I thought of another friend, Gerry. He was a Christian I knew who was battling sexual addiction, drug addiction, and mental illness. He struggled for a really long time and the struggle got to be too much. He killed himself. He tried once — he even emailed me his suicide note. We got help to him in time, but once he was released from the hospital he tried again and succeeded.

No matter how defeated I might feel…
Jesus is ALWAYS there.
He is always God.
He is always good
and I do NOT
believe he brought me
THIS far
to leave me…

 

What Color is YOUR Pony?

When I woke up this morning I was exhausted. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to go to work. I just lay there and prayed.

I expend way too much energy trying to deal with difficult people or change things that cannot be changed or trying to meet expectations that have been put on me that sound good in theory, but aren’t really realistic. Trying to find the pony in that kind of hailstorm of hooey gets hard even when I’m trying to be optimistic. I am, by nature, pessimistic. Yet into my  haze of stress, God spoke: Be still and know that I’m God.

I kept hearing that in my head yesterday , but completely ignored it  to my own peril because I was so busy. The pile of crap that I had to wade through was so big that I even if I’d found the pony I would not have been able to dig it out. Eventually, I decided that being still and letting God do what he does best was my only option. What he said did not sit well with me.

In recent weeks I mentioned that I was working through some of the issues surrounding my sexual addiction. I also think I said that I wasn’t too keen to be digging through all of that stuff again and I’d really rather be done with it. Well, last night I hit a wall. I made it to “Principle Seven” (the sit in a circle and sing “Kumbaya” principle) only to be told that I could not proceed! The workbook said that if you hadn’t had six weeks of “sobriety” you needed to go back and do Principles One and Four! WHAT??!! Were they kidding?? I felt like I was playing “Chutes and Ladders!” The past six weeks have not been easy as I worked through the other six principles. It didn’t help that life got really stressful either. I have had some monumental slips. The more stressed out my life seems to be the more I seek to “self-medicate.” Only thing is, the “medication” is worse than the problem.

Being a Christian woman with a mental illness was hard enough. The church is only just beginning to understand mental illness, but it’s a lot more accepting than it used to be. Lots of Christians are admitting to having mental health issues and Christian therapists are springing up all over the place. It’s pretty safe to say in church that you have a mental illness. Being a Christian woman with a sexual addiction sucks. Nobody talks about that. Guys do… but women don’t. If I was a drunk there wouldn’t be much shame in recovering from that. I could bop on over to the local church and attend a Celebrate Recovery meeting and connect with other Christians who also have drinking problems. I know a number of Christians who are recovering drug addicts and alcoholics.

I do not know a single other female on this entire island with a sexual addiction. As my stress has gotten greater I have acted out more. I recently crossed a line that I hadn’t ever thought I’d cross. All of this has only added to my stress and I haven’t had a single soul that I felt like I could tell. Don’t get me wrong. I have wonderful women in my life who love me. They know all about my issues — mental and sexual. I have been able to turn to them for accountability and prayer in the past… but none of them actually struggle with a sexual addiction. I need to connect with somebody who’s been there so they might show me which way to go. I feel so isolated in this addiction. Sex is still such a touchy subject in the church. Besides, church has been stressing me out lately and I’m back to wanting to retreat into my bubble… but my bubble spells death to my spiritual growth.

God is telling me that if I want to be well, I must be willing to change. The accountability that I had in my life has not expanded to cover what I’m dealing with now. The workbook says I need a sponsor. I am resisting this. I’ve been resisting this ever since Principle Four. I made a half-hearted attempt to find a sponsor and then gave up when I couldn’t find one. And nothing changed. Actually, it did. My stress got worse and life pressed in on me and I began to isolate myself from pretty much everybody. I put on a mask and acted like I was ok. As the walls of my bubble began to contract the loneliness began to press in on me, suffocating me. My chest hurt. My mind hurt. My life hurt. I started to feel like there wasn’t a single place in this world where I belonged. There was nowhere that I fit in. So I did what I do when I’m in pain. I self-medicated.

Eventually, I cried out to God. That’s when he pulled out the “Chutes and Ladders” game and told me that I wasn’t ready for Principle Seven! I needed to go back to Principle Four. I needed to ask myself did  I really want to get well? I had to face the sad truth that I didn’t. Not if “getting well” meant changing what I do to protect myself from outrageous people. Not if “getting well” meant surrendering my safety net or deflating the bubble. Shutting people out is what I do best. People at work pushing my buttons? Completely ignore ALL of them even the cool ones. People at church pushing my buttons? Don’t go to church! Stay in my little two room studio singing the Bipolar Girl Anthem.

Isolation, however, is not what God calls the Christian to do as a life-style. My life has become really unbalanced.Work and home. That’s it. I’ve backed off from pretty much everybody else.

I cannot control anything in my life right now. My sexual addiction is getting the worst of me. Admitting that is Principle One. I tried to do an online group to get support, but it fizzled out. Maybe I need to ask at church can I start a recovery group. Of course, that could backfire. I could put myself out there and NO other woman come forward to get help. Then I really would feel like a lone freak of nature. Of course, I could step out and try to start a group and one other woman could step forward because FINALLY somebody else was admitting to having a problem. The stats about Christian women struggling with porn and sexual addiction are growing, but evidently in Hawaii it’s in the “Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell” category of sin. Alls I know is God is telling me that I have to step outside my isolation. I need to seek out real accountability. I need to also find a sponsor.

Not that I want to do this… but Saturday I’m going to get in my car and drive to the other side of the island. There’s a meeting at a church for sex addicts. I have NEVER attended a meeting for this (12 step or otherwise). I always did my recovery work by myself or with a therapist. The idea of opening up face-to-face in a group of total strangers and talking about sex  weirds me out to no end… but the idea of staying like this the rest of my life weirds me out even more. I have been struggling with this addiction since I was eight years old. I have looked at the roots of my issues backwards and forwards. I’ve read books. I’ve watched ministry tapes. I’ve done workbooks and online courses. The one thing I have not ever done is actively sought out other people who struggle in a real time setting.

I can look for the positive in bad situations all that I want… but if I’m not willing to change, then no matter how many ponies I find, I am never going to be free. People equal stress and pain and more stress to me. I generally see them as threats to my mental health. Yet  avoiding them has not helped. It might lessen the stress… but if I end up isolated and acting out, that’s not healthy. My life has got to change. God wants me to be healthy. I want me to be healthy. The one fault I have with the Ronald Reagan joke is that the optimistic kid is looking fanatically for something that’s not there. I don’t want to spend my life  searching for something that’s not there. Maybe instead of obsessing about obtaining sexual purity I need to obsess about getting closer to God. Maybe as I do what he calls me to do (open up my life and love people), I will find that there is no need to self-medicate. As my life begins to be characterized by love of God and love of people… it will be so full of peace, joy, and all that other good stuff that I won’t have time to wallow in my addiction.

Of course, since I’ve put all of this out there, I now have to go to this meeting. People are going to ask me if I went or not. I could delete this post and nobody would be the wiser… but there’d be no growth or change in that and I need God to help me grow. I need God to change me. The only thing that’ll really mess with my head is if there are no women at this meeting. So if you’re reading this and you’re a praying person, pray that I go to the meeting and pray that there’s at least one other woman there. There may not be a pony in all this stuff that I’ve been dealing with, but if I follow God wherever he’s leading me, I’m bound to find something better.

Related articles

• Commercial Interruption: The Bipolar Girl Anthem (theadventuresofbipolargirl.wordpress.com)
• Return of “The Pony” (theadventuresofbipolargirl.wordpress.com)

Dumpster Diving: The Danger of Answered Prayer

Be VERY careful what you pray for…

It wasn’t until I was brushing my teeth last night that I realized that I couldn’t find my custom made mouth guard. My dentist made it for me. I have to sleep in it because at night when my subconscious takes over I handle my stress by grinding my teeth. The teeth grinding has made the inflammation around my root canal worse and it’s why I need the mouth guard. Since I’m already on my third course of antibiotics to control the inflammation until I can have the oral surgery… I NEEDED that mouth guard. Given the stress of the past week I was going to grind my teeth to powder without it. Where the heck was it??

Jesus knew where my mouth guard was... but he wasn't telling!

Y’know that parable about the woman who loses a coin and turns over the whole house looking for it?? Well… she didn’t have anything on me when it came to thoroughly tossing a place. I looked EVERYWHERE which isn’t hard since I only have two rooms. With a sinking feeling I remembered that I had wrapped it up in a paper towel… and that paper towel must have jumped into the rubbish before I took it out earlier when I got home from work! I would have gone out to look for it right then but it was dark and the idea of rooting through the communal garbage can at night was not at the top of my hit parade.

So I made my plan. The can was empty when I’d placed my kitchen bag in it. The other two households hadn’t put anything in it, so my goal was to get to it first thing in the morning before they had a chance to because once they did you couldn’t pay me to dig through it. You should’ve seen me. I had on my black t-shirt that says, “PERSEVERE” and I donned my handyman’s yard gloves that were too big for me. I taped a garbage bag around my metal grabber that I bought to help me post op so I wouldn’t actually have to touch anything… and I left my studio at daybreak praying that there was not a mound of garbage to sift through. PRAISE GOD the only thing on top of my bag was a small cardboard box!

I retrieved my garbage and took it back to my yard. Now, the unpleasant task of sifting through my own garbage. Ew. I’ve heard that one’s man garbage is another man’s gold… but this was pretty much gonna stay garbage. And to think that I actually planned to get up at 5am to sift through garbage. It’s not like the mouth guard was made out of gold or something. It COULD be replaced. It was the combination of virtually empty can and the certainty that I knew it was in there. Besides… most of my garbage is paper towels, but still. My mouth guard was somewhere in the garbage and had been in there overnight. Again, I say, “Ew.” Since I knew that it had to be in there I wasn’t going to stop looking and after a few minutes my persistence paid off: I found it in one of my small kitchen bags wrapped up in a paper towel. It hadn’t come in contact with any of the other garbage and I wasn’t likely to die of some bizarre garbage disease.

As I walked to the dumpster to return the bag a thought struck me about the connection to all the things of this past week and various prayers that I’ve lifted up to God leading up to these past few days. Last night I looked in one of my hard cover journals and found a prayer that I’d written to God back in February of last year. I blame that prayer and prayers like it for the events of the past week. I wrote the prayer after killing a giant centipede back when they still terrified me:

 As aggressive as I was killing that giant centipede last night and
the giant cane spider on Thursday, help me to confront my anger
despite my fear of it. Help me to master my fear. Help me to
completely decimate my anger.

Why do I pray stuff like that? When you ask God to help you “overcome” your fears he’s not just going to do an “I Dream of Jeanie” blink and make all your fears go away. He usually makes us face them so that we can give them to him. And anger?? Definitely something he wants us to work through with him. So is it any wonder that this past week and the last few months leading up to it have been one… big… long…slow button push?? It seemed like everything in my world was converging on me and my response to almost all of it was to get angry. The more I prayed about it the angrier I got.  The big difference? I was praying. I wasn’t wallowing in the anger or thinking that it was the end of the world as we know it. The anger and the things that cause it would pass. The people who were making me angry? I still don’t like them… but I was able to cut through all of the petty stuff they were doing to pray for them. I prayed and told God that I was going to forgive them even if I thought they were being jerks.

The week long snit that I was in passed last night. I think losing my night guard was the dynamite I needed to blast me out of the rut I’d fallen into. Funny, but I actually had fun dumpster diving this morning (even if I can’t quite make myself use my mouth guard tonight. I think another day of  sterilizing it should make me feel better). It did set the tone for the entire rest of my day and I had a good day taking care of things I haven’t been able to do unassisted for over a year now. My recovery is slow and I get frustrated with my circumstances and with God. Some of that frustration fuels my anger. I hate not being able to do things that I used to take for granted. At times, I’ve felt that the surgeries accomplished nothing. But seeing how he’s been answering that prayer that I forget I made back in February of last year… I know that God has heard all of my prayers (about the anger, the fear, and my healing) and is answering them in his timing and in his way.

My take home lesson: Sometimes you will have to dig through a lot of crap before you find what you’re looking for.

                                                                                   

Bipolar in the Workplace: Say What You Need to Say

It wasn’t my plan to out myself at work today. MY plan was to go to work, do my job, sit through three meetings, and then go home. Like I said, “MY PLAN.” Clearly, God had a different plan. I would like to point out that we had our regular staff meeting on Monday and I was shocked to see how unpushed my buttons were. Remember how I totally blew up at that co-worker back in January at a meeting??? If you’ve forgotten, I’m certain none of my co-workers have. Things that would have sent me over the top angry two weeks ago did not even warrant a raised eyebrow today. It was weird. Kinda creepy weird… like my doppelganger was sitting in on the meeting while my body was encased in jello back on the mother ship weird. Three meetings in one day?? Seriously? 

The first meeting was on my lunch hour. I did not schedule this meeting and had a REALLY snitty attitude about it and towards the person who had scheduled it without asking me. Turned out she never even bothered to show up. The meeting went ahead as planned and I actually enjoyed getting to talk to this other co-worker whom I never see during the course of the work day. I wasn’t even mad that it bit into my prep time or that my last two classes were a bit rushed because of it. The second meeting?? That’s where God changed my plans.

It was our monthly mental health meeting where we discuss students who might have special needs or who we’re concerned about. In the context of discussing one of the students it came up that he’s on medication. Due to confidentiality, the therapist cannot say why. I, however, am not bound by such confidentiality and the student disclosed his condition to me during a bible study. He has bipolar. I felt a connection that I hadn’t previously felt with him. Us mental cases have to look out for each other.

So much of what is mental illness manifests as “bad behavior” that if you didn’t know… you’d think the person was just being a jerk. This is not to say that you can’t have bipolar and be a jerk too... but there are things to be aware of that can make life heaven or hell for a person with bipolar disorder. In order to share this information that could help him, I had to disclose the context in which he shared it and then share about myself. Not what I’d planned to do today… but it opened up discussion about bipolar and the kinds of behaviors that are characteristic of the disorder and what it looks like. It gave people insights into how to work with him.

People have heard the term “bipolar,” but generally have no idea what bipolar is or what it looks like or how common it is in the population. I’m positive that there are other students on our campus with mental illnesses and I think we could do so much more in the classroom to help them if we knew. There is no shame in having a mental illness, but all too often were are made to feel ashamed because we can’t “snap out of it” as fast as other people would like or because we don’t act normal. What is “normal” anyway?? Of course, things are WAY better than when I first got diagnosed. Back then the idea of outing myself in a staff meeting would have triggered all kinds of mood swings because people were just so ignorant back then. Today? I didn’t even think about it and I don’t care what people thought about me. My disclosure wasn’t about me anyway. It was about helping a young man who has not yet learned how to manage his disorder and who does not know how to advocate for himself.

Directly after that meeting we had a third, all staff meeting, and PRAISE GOD I did not have any kind of meltdown. It would have been the outside of awkward to have a meltdown minutes after disclosing my disorder. The only thing I regret was not saying something when the therapist talked about all the things that help control bipolar disorder. I wanted to say that God, through prayer and the body of Christ, controlled my disorder until he finally delivered me from all major manifestations of it with my hysterectomy. …But that probably wouldn’t have gone over so well around the conference table…

STILL: GOD, not the meds, not the therapy, not anything else… is 100% responsible for controlling my disorder. Those things helped and I’m not knocking any of it… but God is the reason that my life is livable today.

Check out this video that Glenn Close made with her sister. I’m glad I said what needed to be said…

Commercial Interuption #825: The Reason

Once again, my head is filled with too many thoughts to process. Maybe I should just get a bigger head. Until I sort things out I digress from my “Comfort for the Neurotic in All” of Us series. It’s time for another Bipolar Girl interrupted moment.

Today I was driving in my car and “The Reason” came on the radio. It’s not a Christian song — I generally don’t listen to Christian radio… but the words brought vivid pictures of Christ to mind. I wish I knew how to make videos because I have a vision for what this one would look like if I were singing it to Jesus:

 

 

 

 

As Jumpy as a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

That would pretty much describe my first reaction when I walked into my kitchen this morning.I looked up at the light and saw this silhouette against the glass dome of the lighting fixture:

 

Yep. The return of the cane spider.

[Cue creepy music]

For those new to my blog over the past six years I’ve chronicled my experience with these eight-legged spawn of Satan many times. I still remember the day I saw my first cane spider. I darn near jumped on top of the table… at least until I realized that it could climb up there too. That day was the start of a raging arachnophobia that defies brief explanation. I would blog about every encounter… sometimes still trembling in fear and other times having regained my sense of humor enough to laugh at my own trauma. There was that time one trapped me in the bathroom at two in the morning. Or the time that one crawled out of the vent in my car WHILE I WAS DRIVING. Or that time I set off all those bug bombs in my classroom only to come back to a scene of carnage that rivaled a B-grade horror flick. There were spider corpses everywhere, even hanging from the ceiling! I literally froze in place and had to call for help on my cellphone.

So when I moved into my new place a year and a half ago, I was unpleasantly surprised to realize that having a sugar cane field as a backyard meant that every spider in a 50 mile radius thought my place was a timeshare. In all the other places I lived, there was always the convenient roommate to kill the critter and dispose of the carcass. I was so eager to live by myself that I totally overlooked the fact that if my home was infested with cane spider or centipedes or any other creature (it was)… that I would be the person responsible for doing any of the killing. My first month in this place was filled with terror and tears. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to piss God off that he would relegate me to critter hell. Let’s not forget the 8 inch centipede that I sprayed to death with RAID and then left under a bucket for 10 days until I was sure that it was dead. There has not been a day that has gone by that I have not been afraid living here. But in my fear something happened…

I learned that there are several ways to kill a centipede and that cane spiders aren’t as fearsome as they look. Gone were the tears and the trembling. Why just last week I happened to notice that there was a cane spider on the ceiling in my hallway. If I didn’t kill it, my Canadian bacon was going to burn. Since NOTHING stands between me and my bacon, I sussed up the situation and determined the best way to kill it. Before I could really even worry about it dropping down on me I’d knocked it down with the broom and gave it a swift smash into whatever afterlife cane spiders enjoy. In all these months God has had me confront my fears. I am, however, still very much afraid of the cane spiders and the centipedes, but I don’t let the fear stop me. I’d have to move out of my place if that were the case, and I’m not moving…. just short of hearing the audible voice of God.

Mark Twain once wrote that “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.  Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave. ” I have the first part of that quote in a frame on my shelf. I used to be a woman of many fears. God has been freeing me of many of them, but it has driven me crazy that I am still afraid of those blasted spiders. The one in the lamp this morning was directly over my laptop. The laptop that I turn on every morning before work and blog. How could I possibly sit in my chair knowing that, at any moment, that creepy critter could squeeze out of the light  and drop on me??? Such a horror doesn’t even bear considering because I’d have a heart attack on the spot and my last post would be submitted posthumously by a friend.

God?? Are you serious?? Is this REALLY how you want me to start my day??

I grabbed a broom thinking I could tap the glass and startle it back into the hole in the ceiling. Evidently, the glass gave it courage. I tried tapping the glass with the broom handle. No such luck. I had to continue getting ready for work, but I kept an eye on the glass just in case it made it’s move. I was planning to kill it and then tap dance on the corps out of spite. At some point, I stopped looking. I had things to do and it was time to sit in the “hot seat” under the light fixture and go about my cyber business. I kept craning my neck ever so often to make sure it hadn’t moved. I kept wondering WHY God wouldn’t just smite it or something. There was NO object lesson to be had. I could clearly see my fear and my fear was not budging.

At least not until the last time I happened to glance up and notice that the bold silhouette that had been spread eagle inside the light fixture had now taken on the pose of the Wicked Witch from the “Wizard of Oz.” Cane spiders shrivel up when they die. And that’s how I found Spot (I’ve decided to name him now). I looked up and Spot was dead. The heat of my light bulb  had cooked him like a McPaddy under  a heat lamp. He shriveled up into a tight little ball, hence “Spot.”

The first thought through my mind after I thanked God???

“What’s better than a cat on a hot tin roof??”
A dead cane spider under glass!!!

And that’s when the object lesson hit me. So often I work out strategies to confront with my fears. I feel good about myself for having overcome them. God’s put a verse in my head today: Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord who determines his step. All my plans to kill the spider came to naught. God wasn’t asking me to kill it (quite unlike the untold hordes he’s had me kill up to now). He wanted me to see my fear, confront it, acknowledge that I could do nothing about it, and then surrender it to him. Am I saying that God fried a cane spider on my light bulb to teach me a lesson? Yep. One that stayed with me all day. It had me asking myself what am I really afraid of at work or about church or any other thing that scares me?? What’s the worst possible thing that could happen. In the case of the spider, God took care of my fear. I didn’t have to do a thing. Couldn’t it be like that with other things?? If so, that could mean a whole lot less drama and striving on my part. Of course, I had to look up “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” since I’d never read or seen the play. That brought to mind a whole ‘nother line of thought… that’ll have to wait until next time because I’ve reached my word count limit. If I can’t get to my point in under 1300 words… I’ve said too much. *Whew! Only 1298!”*

Say What You Need to Say (the prequel)

God has really been challenging me these past six years since I moved back to Maui… that I need to take off the mask and,  “say what I need to say.” Remaining silent goes hand in glove with wearing a mask and both are dangerous. What’s the quote: Bad things happen when good men do nothing?? Ok... a bad paraphrase, but you get my point.

I’ve been burned by this “good men do nothing” syndrome on more than one occasion. As a person struggling with a mental illness, I often found myself playing the role of the “weakest link” in whatever chain I happen to find myself in. When you are trying to battle the ferocious inner impulses to kill yourself, coping with injustice is generally not high on your hit parade. If conditions around me were unjust or the leaders around me were wielding their authority appropriately, I generally caved under the pressure and fell into a depressed episode. I’ve found over the year that status quo and injustice weigh about the same when they are pressing down on your neck. I needed somebody to speak up on my behalf and nobody did, so I tried. Only thing is, I wasn’t stable enough to fight  those battles and depressed morphed into suicidal.

Although I’d trained in high school and college to be an orator and a writer, mental illness leveled that playing field. I couldn’t advocate for myself. It was humbling and humiliating that I couldn’t speak up for myself without completely falling to pieces. It was humiliating and hurtful that the very same Christian people who were supposed to be guiding me in the faith were often the ones ignorantly doing the greatest amount of harm. I’ve posted before about what happens when “good people do bad things.” I guess this next series of posts will round out the trilogy, because when I was unable to credibly speak up for myself, I believe with everything in me that other Christians had an obligation to speak up, but did not. They didn’t know what to say. They didn’t “feel called” to say anything. They didn’t want to get involved.

We, Christians, have some twisty interpretations of scripture that cause us to remain silent when we should speak up and speak up when we should remain silent. Whenever I see Christians doing protest rallies about abortion or gay marriage I cringe. Not that I support those things. My views on either topic are my own unless somebody specifically chooses to ask me. If anybody actually did they’d be surprised. On this I remain silent until I am asked to give a defense for what I believe.

The message that gets sent to the non-believing world, when confronted with all these sign waving believers, is that Christians are bigots. People dismiss God because his kids thought it’d be neat idea to go out and wave signs around. They tried that here to stop the civil union law from going through. My friends went to this rally. I didn’t. The church is not called to try to legislate the behavior of the unbelieving world. We’re not called to sit in judgment over the world and try to force our belief system down its throat. We are supposed to judge the church. God will judge the world. I trust his judgment better than mine.

When I read my bible I see that we are told to correct and rebuke other believers using the word of God as our guide. We are also told to love each other, so that the world will see that we are disciples of Jesus Christ. If we, the church, were doing what we were supposed to be doing, the world would see something phenomenal going on. The world would want to know what set us apart and THEN people would want what we’re always trying to shove down their throats. And none of the contradicts, or conflicts with, the mandate we have to preach the gospel. We keep trying to tell the world how to clean its house, but when the  non-believer looks at the church they often see the bickering, corruption, division, and other gnarly stuff. They see that we need to take care of our own housekeeping before we condemn theirs.

I am a say what you need to say kinda person… but I haven’t always been. There have been two notable periods in my life where God put me in situations where nobody was speaking up about problems that needed to be addressed. The average stable person could ignore the problems. Bipolar Girl could not. The spiritual temperature of the water that God had placed me in was set to boiling and both times it triggered severe mental episodes that quite possibly would have resulted in my suicide. Both times people stood by and watched. This isn’t to say that they didn’t do anything. People did. It’s because of the people who stepped in to help me in practical ways that I am still alive. But they shouldn’t have stopped there. They should have spoken up on my behalf to the powers that be, because when the status quo is squashing the life out of somebody it becomes an injustice. After that last episode I became afraid to say anything because it was in trying to say something that all the problems began. Or so I thought. The problems began when other, stable people who had gone before me had said nothing. If even one person who had gone before me had spoken up, things might not have been so bad for me. I ended up really emotionally, mentally, and spiritually scared from both experiences.

After all the “spiritual adhesion” removal of last year I find myself in an unusual place. I am mentally stable and I’m not at the center of any conflicts. The problems that exist around me were in place LONG before I came around and I now know enough not to take on burdens that aren’t mine. I find myself in the role of exhorter. I’m encouraging OTHER people to “say what they need to say” because some battles are not mine to fight. Some battles might even be avoided if people took off the masks and opened their mouths and said what they needed to say!!!

Something God has given to me to help me in this process (and speaking truth IS a process)… might seem unusual to many but it works for me. Since I’m a writer, writing factors heavily in how I process emotion. I put on a song, “Say What You Need to Say” by John Mayer and then I type. I type until the words cannot come anymore and I pour out everything in my heart into a letter to whomever might be at the center of the conflict du jour… and once I’m done writing I save it in my “SWYNTS” file on my desktop and leave it there. I don’t keep reading it and digging it up.

I’ll explain this process more later… but for now I’m wondering if ,as you read this, you thought of somebody you need to say something to? Is there somebody who has hurt or offended you, but you can’t or won’t say anything? Out of some misguided sense of  Christian “grace” you don’t say anything, but you feel a whole lot of many things: anger, bitterness, resentment, pain… you feel all of it, so you think you haven’t forgiven the person.

Then I invite you into my process. Here’s a link to that song (ignore the ridiculous commercial). Get a piece of paper, open a Microsoft Word document, do hieroglyphics on your kitchen wall… do whatever you need to do to help you “say what you need to say.” I do not encourage you to rush off and go confront the person with your letter. Remember that ex-friend who did that to me??? That’s evil and it’s wrong. There is a difference between what you need to say and what you actually should say. God might call you to confront that person later and he’ll tell you what to say, but first, you must take off the mask, get real before God,  and look at what you really feel… and say what you need to say…