I find it really interesting how music coupled with visuals can have a completely different effect on me than just the words alone. When I listen to this song my my headset, I can’t help but wanting to dance because it’s so upbeat. The other day I was on campus near Crawford Hall… and since there was nobody around I did dance.
This morning… it was the last song that I listened to before I started editing… and it had me standing on my feet and dancing. That was the kind of energy that I needed. Now? I’m tired… and really hungry. I’ve also got a toothache in the making… I do not have the bandwidth to dance right now. So THIS lyric video with the ocean and the sky? It reminded me of Maui. I felt peaceful just looking at the water.
Oahu is nothing like Maui. During the last school year I was too busy to find time to get to the ocean more than once or twice. Then COVID hit and the beach seems a million miles away as I dodge cars to catch the bus to campus and cry over the many homeless people in this city.
Moving to Oahu caused me a lot of anxiety and depression. It’s called “acculturative stress” and it’s actually a thing that can really mess with your mental health. I thought I’d be able to go to the beach every day like I did on Maui. The beach was a huge mood regulator for me… when that didn’t happen, I struggled. I’m claustrophobic. Being cooped up in my studio made it seem like my problems were bigger than God.
Now I’m reminded of what Jesus told the Samaritan woman about how God didn’t need to be worshiped on any sacred mountain. True worshipers would worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:19-24). It didn’t matter where I worship. It matters who I worship. Worship is also not all about emotional hype. It’s good when you feel that… but in the absence of any warm fuzzy emotion, my love and devotion to God are still rock solid.
If I’ve learned anything during this pandemic it’s that God is where I am. He’s not confined in church buildings, so I haven’t been all traumatized that we cannot meet in person. He’s also not only the God of the Outdoors. I miss not being able to pray and have quiet time at the beach… or at the Maui Tropical Plantation… or at the Maui Ocean Center… or at the Queen Ka’ahumanu Mall at 6am when it’s empty… but all that shows me is that I can worship God ANYWHERE. Even on Oahu in a tiny studio surrounded by buildings and people who mash my buttons.
Yes, I do get a bit stir-crazy living in community with a bunch of strangers who like to slam doors. Sometimes I need to get away so I go to campus to just to be. But the reality is… if I couldn’t go out, God would find a way to get my eyes focused on him. If Corrie ten Boom could worship God in a Nazi concentration camp, then surely I can find ways to worship and praise him in my little studio. And I learned after my hysterectomy in 2010 that true worship is not confined to singing. I don’t always have to be singing to worship God. Corrie couldn’t sing in the concentration camp. There are so many different expressions of worship. All God asks is that we mean it with our hearts.
Today is Day 16. My writing was my true act of worship today. At a secular university, I wrote a thesis proposal openly proclaiming faith in God in my search for truth and mental wellness. I couldn’t have finished this thesis proposal without all the people God put in my life. I am thankful for them and thankful to him. So I end this post with a really loud AMEN!!
After that last post… I had no idea what I was going to find as I look for a video for this song. It feels a might like Christmas. Can wait to see what I find…
Ok. That was sweet. At first I wasn’t sure because all those shiny faced Christians in the video were all white. The racial divide in the church is also a big source of emotional distress… but that’s best left for another post. As faces of color were included I was able to be still and focus on the message which is powerful because of what it tells us not to do.
I know so many Christians who are dealing with heavy stress because they are convinced that they have to do everything in order to be a “good Christian.” We sometimes think we have to be perfect… that we have to say “yes” to everything and that we always have to do more. God did not say, “Go Big or Go Home.” He’s not really all that interested in us doing great things for him. He’s great without us.
It has caused me a lot of emotional distress over the years believing that I had to achieve great things. Growing up smart isn’t as easy as it sounds. People have always had really high expectations of me. I’ve always had high expectations of myself. When all that greatness never happened I hit an emotional wall because I had what’s called a “fixed mindset.” Essentially it explains why I began to struggle with depression and suicidal ideation in college. I didn’t know how to handle failure.
When I got to Berkeley, I wasn’t prepared. I had the grades to get in, but that was about it. I did not have grit. I cracked under the pressure and had nobody to turn to for help. I let my family know when I left for college that I wasn’t likely to come back. I had reasons for burning that bridge, but it meant that life would be that much harder as I tried and failed because there was nobody to help me get back up.
Even after I became a Christian I kept thinking that I had to do really big things in order to prove myself worthy. When I failed at those things, I believed that I was failing at the Christian walk. Now I understand that God doesn’t ask us to prove ourselves. He wants us to BE ourselves. He’s not expecting me or anybody else to do “big things” for him. He’s capable of doing big things without us.
Now? I’m content to do my little part in his bigger picture. Would I like my thesis to help change the world for some people? Yes. I would. Do I expect it to change the entire world? No. Not really… but if God has plans for it that he hasn’t told me about… I’m down with that!
Dreaming small today helped me stop obsessing about minutia with my thesis proposal draft. Editing is never done. You can always change a word or move a sentence. If I hadn’t remembered what God can do with our small offerings, I might still be working on it because it’s not technically due until midnight tonight. I submitted my draft to my thesis committee at 5:55pm!!! I’d MUCH rather be done and doing this now. And in one more post, I’m going to eat. I’m starving!
Today is Day 16… and I will keep giving my small dreams to God and see what he does with them!
I wanted to find a video that had lyrics for “Famous For (I Believe)” by Tauren Wells. It’s one of the songs on my Amazon Prime playlist that get played A LOT.
Instead of a lyric video I found THIS!!! It’s going to become one of my frequently played YouTube videos!!
One thing that has always caused me acute emotional distress is when other Christians make it seem like you haven’t received the Holy Spirit if you don’t speak in tongues. God has gifted me in a many ways, but tongues is not one of my gifts.
It saddens me that the body of Christ can be so divided over something that God meant to build up the church. I do not speak in tongues nor do I want to. My prayer language is dance. When I dance I got to a place in the spirit where I feel like I’m flying. When I pray, I pray in English because as a writer and a “word person” there are so many nuances to the English language that are lost on the average person. As a kid I used to read the dictionary like it was a novel. Words were the only real friends that I had growing up. I am thankful for the gift of English.
But if I had to speak an actual tongue, I’d want it to be Spanish. I think Spanish is a beautiful language and I’ve studied it for years. Unfortunately, I was never fluent and once I went into the Bipolar Bubble what I did know got swallowed up by memory deficits. But I’ve still find peace listening to worship songs in Spanish. And since I retained the accent (I’ve got a really good accent) I read 1 Corinthians 13 and other familiar passages in Spanish because it sounds so pretty and because I know what they means in English.
When I watched this video and they busted out in SPANISH!
Oh my Sweet Jesus! The atmosphere in this room shifted! I would’ve LOVED to have been there with them feeling all the emotion that they poured into that song because that was some SERIOUS worship of the Most High happening! I’m excited just writing about it.
Music is a powerful mood regulator. Today was going to be an emotional day and I needed to mindful of my moods. First semester as I worked on one of my final papers I got so stressed out my mind took me to a really dark place. I didn’t realize how powerful my emotions would be or just how vulnerable you are after a major academic accomplishment.
When I submitted my first draft of this proposal, I went through a weird emotional place afterwards. Not dark, just weird…like something was missing. God showed me that I hadn’t properly celebrated the milestone. I ended up sending the entire 32-page draft to friends and loved ones as if it were a baby and I was the proud mother.
What surprised and honored me most is that people actually read it! I got so many beautiful well wishes and supportive comments that the tears, when they came, weren’t a sign of sadness or depression. I realized that I cry when I’m overwhelmingly happy. Celebrating that milestone with people who love me made me realize that my baby steps matter to people because I matter to people.
That experience taught me that I need to cultivate a healthy mindset before, during, and after I write. The resulting emotional highs are “mountain top experiences” and I didn’t want to fall into the wilderness or valley experiences that often seem to follow those emotional highs.
This morning as I prepared to finish my final thesis proposal… I wanted to position my heart and my mind before the Lord. I created a worship soundtrack to begin my work. Three songs were on my mind and I wanted to have them before me. Listening to them changed the atmosphere this morning. I wasn’t focusing on any of the usual distractions or triggers.
Posting about them now? I need to hear them again because I just submitted my final draft to my thesis committee!!! At first I was anxious. Then I was afraid to hit “Send.” I could’ve kept that up for hours. I was reminded of when I took swimming lessons two years ago. I hated getting into the pool because I was afraid of the water. I just had to take a deep breath and get it.
SO… taking a deep breath, I hit “Send.”
Once I did it… I didn’t know what I felt. It was rather anticlimactic. That’s not a good place for me either so I came here in the middle of the ambiguous emotion because I want to remember this moment. And writing will help me process so that my day ends with me honoring God.
My thesis defense is on December 3 and there are “miles to go before I sleep.” I have no idea how to navigate all the challenges that will be facing me between now and then. Praise God I’ve got people to turn to for wisdom, guidance, direction, prayer, support… I am blessed no matter whatever this is that I’m feeling.
I’m going to give each of the songs its own post and reflect on them until I’ve reframed this moment into the joyous celebration that it is. Then I’m going to eat because I haven’t eaten since yesterday.
Today is Day 16… and I reached another milestone because The Good Shepherd did what he is famous for! He guided me through the emotional final editing process by reminding me that I didn’t have to get everything just right today and that it was ok to “dream small.” Yes, I’m “finished,” but there is so much more to do as God continues to lead me on this journey… so all I can say right now is, “Amen!!”
I am having abdominal surgery at 9:30… pray that there are no complications; that they find what they are looking for; and that this is the kick off to a whole new level of health and wellness.
Sitting on the rock wall reading that… I cried. All thoughts of editing those pages flew out the window. The song flowing through my earphones (Different by Micah Tyler) couldn’t have been more appropriate to that moment in time given what I was reading. I needed to respond to that old memory from the vantage point of now.
This is what I would’ve told Younger-Me as she faced that surgery:
From the Annals of Facebook: November 1, 2020
Sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we’d like. That surgery 9 years ago? The doctors found what was wrong. I needed to have a third surgery. I was SO hopeful that my physical pain would end with that surgery…even though the previous two hadn’t healed me. That last surgery was supposed to fix everything.
It did not.
The five years that followed were some of the worst years of my life. But God did not stop being God. He did not leave or forsake me… and PRAISE GOD that he held me close so that I would leave or forsake HIM.
Today… the message in church was on thankfulness in difficult times. I felt like the pastor pulled out every single scripture that I clung to over the years to keep my hope set on God whether or not physical healing ever came.
Nine years later… I still have chronic physical and mental health problems… yet I have not given up hope of healing.
I continue to thank God for the healing and restoration he’s already done in my life. God is God.
Period.
I keep praying that God would make me different. If I hadn’t struggled through all my mental and physical health challenges, I wouldn’t have the empathy or the compassion that I have for Keri… or anybody else with chronic pain and suffering. I might even walk right past him and keep on going as I’ve done for the past year.
I’m not saying I’m better than anybody else because I notice this one homeless guy’s feet. I’m just saying that I’m different from who I was nine years ago because of what God walked me by not answering my prayers the way I wanted and expected him to. I could’ve gotten mad and walked away from him. People do.
After posting on Facebook, I came home refreshed. I got in another few hours worth of work on my thesis proposal. Then I came here to my blog to post because in sharing my story of what I saw God do today, I find rest. I didn’t find this video until tonight as I typed this. It’s different from the version on Amazon music. The song is even more beautiful because of the message and visuals in the video…and is was the perfect way to end this day.
It couldn’t have ended better if I had planned it myself!
Today is Day 34… I’m not finished with my thesis proposal draft…but I am different.
Today is Day 35. I just got back from Hamilton Library. I spent five hours editing my thesis proposal. I’m tired. Novel thoughts are not gonna happen tonight. I picked out something this morning that I wanted to share, but on the bus home, Facebook offered up a memory. A milestone. It’s one of those “Ebenezer stones” type moments mentioned in 1 Samuel 7:12. It is a vivid reminder that the Lord has brought me safe thus far.
From the Annals of Facebook: October 29, 2019
God has been teaching me the importance of community… and how each part of that community has a role to play. That had mostly been in the context of the church, but I think the same applies to any organized group.
Well… today I got to see what that looked like in a college class project that I was a part for my Information Communication Technologies class. At first I freaked out when I found out how big the task was. I didn’t think I would be able to contribute anything. I’m a technophobe. What do I know? I thought that I would be dead weight. I figured I’d just follow whatever the leader wanted to do.
I’m really far behind and it is looking like I may not pass my classes this semester. For the longest time I was wondering why God would bring me here if all I was going to do was struggle and then not pass… but THAT’S not the point. God is growing my faith and showing me things that I couldn’t learn unless I lived it… unless I confronted my fear of failure.
I had a vision of what I wanted the team to do but I wouldn’t have volunteered it because I have been feeling SO self-conscious here. A few weeks went by and NOBODY on my team stepped up to lead. They are ALL feeling the pressure of being a first semester grad student too. I just assumed that I had nothing to offer.
Yet God kept prompting me to remember that after 20 years of teaching, I do have something that I bring to the table: I’m a strategic thinker. I know how to build lessons for class engagement. I am a planner. I can lead even if I prefer not to.
When it looked like nobody was going to take the lead, I did. I had to. It’s a large chunk of our grade. I put my vision out there and did the groundwork to organize our team.
I am SO glad that I did!
This project has been THE ONE thing all semester that I’ve been assigned here that I could actually do!!! I really poured myself into this project. I coordinated with everybody even though we never had full team meetings because of class schedule conflicts. We had our first team meeting an hour before we had to present. I wasn’t even worried.
Tonight we did the 2.5 hour presentation and we CRUSHED IT!!!
There is absolutely NO WAY that I could’ve pulled this off by myself. Each member of the team that had something to contribute helped flesh out my vision so that it was WAY better than anything I could’ve EVER imagined. The presentation looked incredible.
We feared we might finish early and have too much time left at the end… but we had everybody so engaged in what we were presenting (INCLUDING the professor) that we finished with only ONE MINUTE to spare.
No matter how this semester turns out for me…today was awesome!
ALL GLORY TO JESUS!
I never would’ve stepped up to lead had he not prompted me and I am SO glad that I did.
That was a year ago. God got me through the that and the last two grueling semesters. He’s carried me through these past months of COVID. He continues to heal me physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Jehovah Rohi, the Lord is my Shepherd and brought me to grad school so he could restore my soul. He never said the road would be problem–free. He just promised to walk with me. As I continue to follow him, He will get me through my thesis proposal and my defense in December. Please keep praying.
Today is Day 35. I invested five hours in the library as my act of worship. God has brought me safe thus far – he will lead me where he needs me to be.
The past few days I’ve succeeded in clearing a lot of mental real-estate, but I’m still not there yet. Today I met with one of my thesis committee members on Zoom. It was a hard conversation because I haven’t made any written progress on my thesis. All the behind the scenes work that had to be done this past week matters in the larger scope of things… but when it comes to having any actual new work completed on paper, I didn’t have anything to report to her.
My committee members are great. They are awesome people and good professors. They hear me when I talk about my faith because it’s central to what I’m researching… but they are not Christians. As much as I might want them to understand the victories I felt I’ve accomplished this week… the spiritual aspects of why God has me here don’t register with them. Why should it? I’m not at a Christian college. My relationship to God isn’t their primary concern no matter what I write my thesis about.
At once point when I was looking into going to college I actually considered going to a Christian college. I got as far as looking into one college and then made a conscious decision not to because I didn’t think God was calling me to a Christian school.
Now that I reflect on that decision, I don’t regret it. Writing a thesis about how God walked me through my struggles with depression, anxiety, and misdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder wouldn’t raise any eyebrows at a Christian college. I could walk into my professor’s office and ask for prayer (pre-COVID) and nobody would’ve questioned that.
Every time I meet with my professors I am giving testimony to the power of God. I don’t do this because I’m trying to evangelize or convert them. It is my humble opinion that people have a right to believe whatever they want to believe. I’m not trying to cram my religion down their throats but I can’t talk about my life without talking about God. Would it be cool if any one of my professors accepted Jesus as a result of any of these conversations? Heck yeah.
But God didn’t send me to UH to evangelize the campus. He sent me to acquire the tools necessary to become a storyteller. He led me to autoethnography. That the path hasn’t been easy is par for the course. God never promised us that the Christian walk would be easy.
I cried during the conversation with my professor. Not long and not hard. I was able to collect myself, but it is an indicator that I’m not there yet. In scripture we’re told to have a “ready/logical defense” for why we believe what we believe. If I cannot talk about my story with a professor who has been in my corner since day one… I’m not ready… yet.
Two hours later I talked to my disability counselor with the Kokua Program. I had time to reflect on and reframe what I’d said to my professor. I also took time to reflect back over what had actually happened during the week causing me to “fall behind” on my thesis. It’s that whole “90% attitude, 10% reality” thing because when I spoke to my Kokua Counselor, my attitude about last week had changed.
When we are hit by extreme emotion, it is human nature to focus on, and thus, magnify whatever is wrong. I needed to take those thoughts captive. Once I got off Zoom with my professor, I spent 20 minutes writing out an outline of all the positive things that had happened the past week that had helped move me closer to my goal of completing this thesis. There was actually quite a lot of stuff on the positive side. That conversation went much better than the first.
I felt good about it until an hour later when I tried to start on my draft. I’d forgotten one important reason why I hadn’t worked on it since October 14th: Microsoft Word keeps freezing. I literally cannot access the changes my thesis chair wants me to make because of technological problems. Each time I’ve tried, I’ve hit a wall… I’ve become angry and emotionally upset going from zero to livid in seconds. Technophobia, ignorance and learned helplessness was a root cause of my “productive procrastination” as my professor had called it.
As I tried to figure out why it wasn’t working today… I could feel myself getting angry and frantic. I started crying and asking God why does everything have to be such an uphill climb? Just once I’d like for something to be easy. In a weird moment of clarity I became aware of just where anger was situating itself in my body. I literally could feel anger and tension in my feet! It was the weirdest thing. I could also feel anger in a space in my mind like I was locked in a room wanting to scream and throw things.
Clearly… this was not good. Closing and restarting Word wasn’t helping. Trying to troubleshoot by googling stuff wasn’t helping either. I got to that place where I’m so angry I can’t understand what I read. My shoulders were hunched up just below my ears and tension was radiating from me.
Prayer hadn’t worked. It was time to use another strategy to “take my thoughts captive.” I emailed my Kokua Counselor and told her what was happening. Writing activates a part in your brain different from the emotional center that was taking over. As I tried to concisely tell her what was going on, I began to calm down. I told her that I didn’t know how to fix it but I’d eventually find somebody who could.
Minutes after hitting “Send” a thought occurred to me. Word wouldn’t cooperate because my professor had made her corrections in Google Docs. My new laptop does not like Google Docs. Evidently it doesn’t play well with Microsoft Word. I figured out a way to work around this. Word will continue to freeze up on me, but God isn’t going to let technology stop me.
My neck hurts. My joints hurt. My abdomen hurts. I’m tired. Trying to work on it tonight isn’t going to happen. Despite what my professor said about productive procrastination… I need to decompress so I came here.
How do I defend this thesis and not get emotional? The professors are not going to go easy on me because they like me. On December 3rd I’m scheduled to for a two hour defense. That it’s going to be over Zoom and not in person is also going to be hard. If I lose internet like I did last week, the resulting meltdown will be inevitable.
IF I am going to write this thesis about how I ended up in the emergency room and how God has changed my life using growth mindset and design thinking principles, I will need to defend it. God’s not on trial… but it sure seems like it. I could try to tell the story and not mention God… but then I wouldn’t be telling the truth.
Today is Day 38... that I cried talking to my professor proves that my defense is not there yet, “ready” or otherwise. But I believe that if I keep pressing forward no matter how many obstacles and barriers I face… if I keep seeking God, his kingdom and his righteousness, he will guide me to where he needs me to be. Please pray. Let the adventure continue…
Today was the first day in nearly two weeks that I felt normal. My normal, not the world’s new normal. The last few nights I’ve altered my sleep routine so that I am awake when most of the other people in the building are asleep.
The door slamming, the loud talking, the guy hanging out in the bike room (which is only separated from my bedroom by a window) that were fraying my nerves cannot intrude into this new space that I’m carving out for myself. For the most part, I don’t have to deal with those things after midnight. The solitude that can only come when everybody else is asleep has been a blessing. The stillness of the night has become a sacred space for me to be still with God… and it’s starting to take the edge off my nerves.
When I went to the market the other day I bought a lot of fruit and healthier food. All day today I nourished my body giving it a chance to reset from all that toxic emotion of the past two weeks. It felt as if the storm was passing. My research today felt productive and unhurried. I stayed home because of the rain, but I didn’t resent it.
For my thesis, I’ve been researching something called “Highly Sensitive People” or HSP in popular literature. The scientific name for it is Sensory Processing Sensitivity or (SPS). The more I learn about this… the more I realize that I am an HSP. I score extremely high on the HSP scale which puts my struggles with mental illness into a new light.
I’m hot-wired to be a highly sensitive person. HSP is my natural temperament which is probably why medication never worked for me. You can’t medicate personality. I mean people try, but you really shouldn’t. HSP an innate trait that some might think is shyness, but it’s not shyness. Besides, I’m a lot of things, but I’m not shy.
HSP/SPS is also not a mental illness. The trait of sensitivity, however, when filtered through a difficult childhood, or “Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES), can result in excessive depression and anxiety in highly sensitive people which I’m also researching because I need answers. Moreover, I need healing.
This morning as I lay in my bed talking to God, scenes from my life just began filling my mind. I began to see those events differently. I’ve always struggled with the fact that God has allowed so many trials, pain, and suffering into my life. I get that “we live in a fallen world” and that “bad things happen to good people.” I accept that “trials develop perseverance...” but I’d be lying if I said that I “delight in suffering” like the Apostle Paul.
If I’m honest? That sounds kinda masochistic.
I’ve also always had a problem with people guaranteeing that God will deliver people because there’s plenty of evidence to the fact that he doesn’t always. Don’t believe me? Read Hebrews 11-12. This is why I always say that my faith isn’t dependent on my feelings; that I follow Jesus “even when the healing doesn’t come;” and that God doesn’t generally deliver me from anything inasmuch as he delivers me through a lot of stuff.
God has walked me through the waters and the fires with my eyes wide open. Eventually my faith is strengthened by the experience, but I’ve never had any miraculous stories of instantaneous deliverance. I’ve never gotten a “Get Outta Jail Free” card where I could avoid suffering.
This morning, God caused my paradigm to shift. He reframed events in my past from the perspective of me being an HSP. Knowing what I know about HSPs and ACES, I have a greater appreciation for God’s deliverance.
I became very aware of just how much God has delivered me from that I started crying. After two week of crying about things I cannot change, this morning I cried because God allowed me to see that he has delivered me from more I will ever know. I believe that it is an act of God that I am as stable as I am given all that I’ve experienced in my life.
And as I continued my studies, I was fascinated by the reading for Educational Psychology today. At one point, I paused to thank God for allowing me this time to learn how to worship him with all of my mind instead of fractured pieces of it. I was so grateful just to here today learning what I’m learning… hence the long post: today is a day that I want to remember.
Yesterday I read Romans 5-8. It helped me reframe the last two weeks: I’d been camping around Romans 7. The struggle wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary. I can’t be an overcomer if I don’t confront the things God wants me to overcome. Everybody likes to talk about how “we’re more than conquerors,” but neglect to realize that there’s implied conflict in that scripture.
Romans 8 is great. People quote it and pastors teach on it all the times… but I’ve heard very few pastors teach on Romans 7. I think if they did it’d help people understand and accept that internal struggle is part of the Christian walk and that there is hope. Not all our struggles are because of spiritual warfare. We have a sin nature. Last week my sin nature was driving the bus and Jesus was trying to take the wheel.
Romans 8 means so much more to me today because it follows Romans 7. God saw my struggles and wasn’t content to leave me there. He took me to a higher level of confession and repentance, but also to a greater level of accountability. Yesterday I emailed two friends of mine who are pastors. They have agreed to be accountability partners with me in this liminal space that I’m in. Having two such committed women of God standing with me is an incredible blessing. Growth is gonna happen. It’s already happening.
SO… Today is Day 39… I’m still nowhere near where I need to be with my thesis proposal, but I am exactly where God intends me to be today. As I continue to seek him and his kingdom, he will continue to direct my path.
Ok…. I’m cheating. I spent all day working on a class paper and I’m tired. Digging deep into my soul at 9pm? Ain’t gonna happen. In years to come I’ll look back on today and remember this paper:
Looking in the Mirror: Mid-Semester Self-Assessment
Michael Jackson’s song, “Man in the Mirror” resonated in my mind as I conducted this self-assessment. His idea of making the world a better place by examining and changing, yourself first is simple yet elegant. I became a teacher to make a difference in the world. I quit teaching because I was suffering from disaffection or burnout (Skinner and Pitzer, 2012). After decades of battling the system, I felt like I’d failed to make a difference. The System seemed intent on looking at students as numbers rather than as individuals with needs, wounds, hopes, and dreams. I quit teaching knowing that I couldn’t change The System, but I still believed that I could make a change.
Learning is change (Alexander, Schallert, & Reynolds, 2009). Assessment is the evaluation of change in order to make necessary course-corrections. This class has been cathartic because it’s validated things I knew to be true about learning but couldn’t prove to administrators and supervisors. This class is catalyzing deep, internal changes (mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual) causing me to course-correct daily.
Assessing my course participation/professionalism using the rubric was easy. My nuanced perspective as a teacher turned researcher makes me an asset in online and class discussions. External factors (unstable internet, housing drama, and competing deadlines with my thesis proposal) have impacted my ability to complete all of the course readings, but I haven’t missed a PDP; I consistently give balanced and timely feedback to my peers; and despite challenges I participate during Zoom.
The rest of the assessment hasn’t been so easy. Despite being both a good writer and reflective by nature, I struggled to assess what I’d learned in this class. Initially, I couldn’t remember specifics and that caused anxiety to set in! There is a huge difference between what I’ve been exposed to in this class and what I’ve actually internalized.
My ability to read, process, engage, and synthesize is compromised under stress. Information and experiences coexist in my mind as disconnected puzzles pieces pointing to a general impression of transformation and growth. My memory deficits create barriers/functional limitations making assessment difficult. My anxiety about this was quieted by a simple truth: We are “scholars before researchers (Boote & Beile, 2005).”
Moreover, I am human before scholar. What I’ve internalized from this class has changed what I see in my mirror and that is priceless. My former supervisors completely eroded my confidence and self-worth, so that when I looked in the mirror all I saw was fear, anger, anxiety, and depression. COM department first year didn’t help with that.
Now I see myself as a highly productive scholar (Patterson-Hazley and Kiewra, 2000) with the tools, strategies, habits, and personal characteristics to back up that assertion. Moreover, I have the potential to be a highly productive contributor to the educational psychology community because I’m a dualist with overcomer’s story.
My functional limitations may slow me down, making it harder for me to engage with life and learning, but they don’t stop me. My love of learning must never be overshadowed by the need to communicate what I have learned to others. As slow-going and as messy as grad school is for me, the process has been transformative. The reflection in my mirror is changing because EDEP 611 is exposing me to concepts that are informing my research and my healing. I’m developing greater resilience and am emerging as a more stable human and an autonomous learner (Skinner and Pitzer, 2012).
This makes me think about the nature of learning (Ormrod, 2012). Metacognition is one of my superpowers. I am always thinking about learning; how I learn; and how to communicate what I’ve learned to others. As an autoethnographer, I weave together stories of my lived experiences to extend knowledge. The reading in EDEP has helped me connect a number of my puzzle pieces by providing me with theories from existing literature thereby helping me construct and extend learning.
One notable puzzle piece is that assessment relies heavily on context. Indigenous people aren’t the only ones who struggle with western forms of assessment (LaFrance & Nichols 2010). As one who is both marginalized and privileged, I offer up my narrative self-assessment as an alternate, yet equally valid, way of knowing. To assess what I’ve learned in this class, context is critical (LaFrance, Nichols &Kirkhart, 2012).
What I’m learning must be situated in the context of when I’m learning it. Since I’m not embarking on a career in teaching, memory is less important to me than reflection and sense-making. Educational psychology is helping me put my schooling—my years as a highly sensitive student; two decades as a conscientious teacher; and now these turbulent and ambiguous years as a graduate student—into greater perspective. I want to know more about trauma-based learning, engagement, and appropriate educational interventions particularly as it relates to growth mindset. I wish I’d been exposed to educational psychology sooner and regret not being able to fully engage now.
My thesis proposal is all consuming. None of my committee members know enough about autoethnography to guide me. Being exposed to the EDEP readings about reporting my research (AERA, 2006), as well as the standards to assess rigor (Trainor & Graue, 2014) have been helpful. I emphasize “exposed to” because the information in those articles was too densely packed for me to process most of it. I haven’t internalized any of it. I still don’t know how to assess an article for rigor. I still don’t understand how to conduct an in-depth review of the extant literature for my thesis. But because of my experiences in EDEP and our projects, I now know more than I did, and I’ll build on that.
Prior to this class, the mere thought of being a researcher triggered anxiety. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to be a researcher. I’d been exposed to instruction about conducting research, but that information got filtered through a traumatic first year. Though I was highly motivated to learn, I didn’t retain any of that information making this semester incredibly stressful. The EDEP readings have helped decreased my stress.
Being exposed to the library lesson conducted by the librarian helped connect puzzle pieces that I’d picked up first semester. I’d previously attended a workshop on Zotero, done a library tour, and struggled through an in-person library presentation first semester. Since I hadn’t done research as an undergrad, that information didn’t build on any prior knowledge, so I didn’t retain any of it.
Now I have relevant prior knowledge, new information, and tools. Although I can’t process all of that now, I plan to reflect on what you’ve exposed me to over Christmas vacation so I can process it as I move forward with my thesis. This leads me to the most important puzzles pieces of all: the Synthesis Table and the Personal Exploration project.
My progress has been really slow going and I’m not where I want to be on either project, but I’m getting closer every day. Both assignments are helping me grow as a scholar and as a person by helping me make sense of “what’s in my backpack.” These assignments are helping me reframe and replace maladaptive ways of learning and coping with healthier, more adaptive, ways of being, knowing, living, and learning.
A friend shared this painting and a lovely poem. I’m fairly sure she’s both poet and painter. I needed to experience this through her art this morning because I KNOW she’s been through A LOT yet continues to press into God.
Yesterday? I didn’t even change out of my pajamas. After the week I’ve had… I was a hot mess because I was focusing on my circumstances which seemed so VERY big… which always makes God seem really small.
This morning God asked me would I worship him in the middle of my storm. So there I lay in my bed at 5am angry and on the verge of tears… softly singing worship songs to the Lord.
The atmosphere shifted and so did the rain clouds that kept me at home all week.
Staying in my room is not healthy for me. I’m claustrophobic. I start to feel like I can’t breathe and that the walls are closing in on me.
That’s why I camp at the library despite COVID19 concerns. Not being able to go this past week caused some emotional unraveling.
On Wednesday I cracked so God sent a friend to my rescue. Thursday and Friday were rough but not because I was under spiritual attack. I wasn’t so I didn’t start rebuking Satan. God and I have been wrestling all week. Good thing God always wins.
It gets down to what I believe about God. He sees my fears and my worries and my doubts. He sees my anger and everything else… and he loves me.
I believe in a God who loves me even when everything in the world suggests otherwise. And it was that belief that helped me get out of bed, get dressed, and take one step and then another towards the future because God’s made promises about that and I believe him. I do not see what lies ahead in my immediate future…but I know the God who does.
“Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.” Luke 1:45
Comfort for the Neurotic in ALL of Us: 