Grieving is a Ninja

Grieving is a ninja, for me it is, well nowadays anyway. It hasn't always been a ninja, for a long time it was more like one of those Italian mob lackeys who stays in the room with you while you're tied to a chair and taunts you constantly. Then a couple times a day the lackey just comes over and beats the living tar out of you. Yep, for a long time I was in the mob lackey stage of grieving. But now i am in ninja stage where grief sometimes comes in stealthily and roundhouse kicks me in the face. The chances of getting ninja-ed increase steadily the closer I get to march every year. And would you look at that, today is Feb 9, getting awful close to March. Five years ago on March 19, 2005 my Dad died very suddenly. And so every March I feel that in a deep way. When I hear a song that he loved or that we played at a funeral I get the grief ninja kicking me in my head.

Today I got doubly kicked as I attended a funeral, a friend of mine lost his Mom last week and today they said goodbye to her. This was my first good friend to lose a parent since I lost my Dad. Five years and no one in my circle of friends lost a parent. Thank God for sparing them that pain. And I don't want to talk about it much because I want to support my friends as the grieve this loss and not have any of their support taken away. But here in this space I can't deny that helping them through this has put me back in the grieving mindset. Remembering all the things I went through five years ago next month. Five years, it's such a neat even number, but it is bigger than all the other numbers I have faced in March. It's one of the milestone numbers. Something in me scream that there is no way that five years can have passed since the last time I talked to my Dad, or hugged him, or saw his face on this earth. And grief unlike anything else is so steadfastly permanent. I don't get him back because I went five years without him. If I grieve extra well I don't get a prize. The years march on and Noelle won't meet her grandpa, not on this earth anyway. And you have to understand that so many days this is completely okay. And that if you were to ask me about my Dad about 80% of the time I can tell you about what happened and not have a tear well up.

I don't know how I am going to do this March, maybe the rawness that has resurfaced will subside, calm down and go back to whatever box I keep it in. I have thought about making a soundtrack of these last five years, of my journey away from Dad. This was so much easier when I still lived around the people who held me up as it happened, how do I re-explain it to new friends, trust them with this part of me?

Maybe I don't. I don't know. For now I Am going to get in the tub and just let my mind do what it needs to do, let God into the mess of grief instead of keeping him out of it as I am more prone to do.

2010. I acknowledge you but I still don't like you.

I think I know why I hate new years. It is concrete proof that time has passed, a year in fact, and I am still not happy with myself. My organizational levels are at an all time low and I don't care to talk about how often i vacuum the carpet and all that is irritating enough I assure you. But my real shame comes from this: Another year has passed and I spent more days ignoring my relationship with God than nurturing it, immersing myself in his love. And I hate myself for it, yes I do need to use the word hate. Now I know that I struggle with grace, but I really can't bend on the need to improve in this area. I love the view out our dining room window. It's beautiful, and there are these rare moments when i can enjoy it as it is rather than think about the work I need to do to improve it. Right now is one of these moments. And not just because the imperfections are blocked with window panes and drywall. I feel like this woman right now instead of feeling like myself.

Someone told me some time ago about the concept of wallpaper in your mind. I know that sounds funny, but imagine your mind, your thinking place, as a room. Now imagine it has wallpaper in it. This wallpaper affects the way that you live your life. I really believe that our culture is trying to hog all the wall space in the room of our minds with what I Imagine to be bright neon 80's hair band type posters. The kind that glow when you turn a black light on them. And then there is the deep truth underneath all the TV shows, Billboards and Social Networking. The ones that are infallible and have invaded ever speck of dirt on this planet and can not be denied. And they line up with every word from the mouth of God. To me they look like smiling babies, mountain sunsets, peaceful oceans and seeds sprouting up from deep brown soil. And they feel like peace, and they feel safe, and you don't need to say the right thing for them to be there for you. They can be your validation instead of status comments, but they don't scream for you like the 80's hair band posters do. You scream if you ignore them too long. Well I like most of us have put up plenty of 80s hairband posters in 2009 and all the years inbetween 1982 and 2009 and not near enough mountains and sprouts. And my heart is dried up today. I wonder if that is why I take so many soaking baths, I don't even wash my hair when I bath I just lay there and stare, I bring a book but never get to it. I just lay and soak, maybe I am trying to rehydrate something dry in my heart. Probaby not, but it's a great thought. So anyways all this to say that I want to actively tear down a gaudy unsatisfying poster today and put a beautiful little sprout picture in its place. Ready. Set. Go.

Still Here

Hey friends, I am still here. Overwhelmed by Christmas but trying so hard to move past that overwhelmed with Christmas feeling and into that real Christmas feeling where you are immersed in the Jesus that it is all about? Has anyone ever had a Christmas like that? Please share your secrets.

Fall

I love the fall. This is no big secret to anyone who knows me and today is the perfect fall day. Well it may be a bit on the warm side for perfect but I'm letting it go. So Noelle and I picnicked in the park today and then went for a 2 mile walk around the lake. The colors were lovely and I saw at least a million and a half turtles sunning themselves on logs. Also I was charged by a goose! That, I must admit, was not my favorite part.

On our picnic we were joined by some lovely ladies form our lifegroup and their kids. I am so extremely blessed by our life group and incredibly thankful in my heart of hearts that God put them into our life. For thanksgiving I have put up a thankfulness line across our bar area. I often like to hang things there for holidays because it catches the eye and adds to the decor. So anyway I (hopefully Kel too!) am going to use clothespins to put up pictures of things that we are thankful for. I will be putting them up there in some form for sure. Right now the sad thanksgiving line is empty, not because I am not thankful but because it's been one heck of a week.

Alright, well it's not much but it's a post.

If I have...

For lack of a better way to put it I can be a negative nancy. I am a pessimist. My glass is so often half empty. This seeps into all areas of my life. Home, family, friends, work, self, all of it is tainted by this gray lens through which I usually see my life. I focus not on the amazing things I am but all that I am not. When I eat a meal it's so often not an appreciation of where I am and what I have been given to eat as where I am not and what my grub isn't. When I am UCM I think of all the students I wish were there and the improvements we haven't yet made to the building. This list goes on and on and well... on. And needless to say I am becoming increasingly aware of it, even so much so that I am writing about it for your digestion. This brings me to my next point. I'm sorry. I am sorry for any time when I have cast a judgmental eye in your direction. When I surveyed your life and saw your flaws instead of the beauty weaved into you by our mutual creator. I am sorry whenI have vomited my own troubles onto you instead of hearing about the joys and struggles of your life. God is still cleansing the imperfections from my heart. And I am sorry (and happy) to say that he always will be. I will never be 24 karat Christian. Jesus will always shine through me like light through a dirty window. But this is what I have to offer today. A hope that the next student I meet will feel love because of our interaction and I will today and always look at you with all the beauty God put into you, and encourage you and love you just as you are. Thanks for loving me in spite of my judgey occasional bitchy-ness. Love, me.

Sunday Evening Thoughts

This weekend has taken me for quite a ride. I got in touch with a lot about myself, a lot that needs to grow. Parts of me that have shriveled up, parts that I realized I need strong and juicy in order to live life to the fullest, or live it at any level deeper than mere surface living. And who wants to live on the surface alone, I ask you? I heard an amazing teacher today at Lifechurch and one of the things she said that struck me was that our generation is lost because perhaps they were just preoccupied. She used the example of the lost sheep and talked about how that wasn't an evil sheep, or an especially naughty sheep, it just got caught up in sheeply things and didn't hear the shepherd's call. I feel like I have been overly caught up in sheeply things. Necessary sheeply things, but I put far too much emphasis in excelling in the basics. So yesterday I felt the shepherds crook around my neck yanking, but my little hooves seemed grounded in no mans land. The pulling and not moving action hurts, as you can imagine it would. It's this incompatibility, this fear that comes from realizing that you are here but knowing your heart you were called to be over there. So here I am moving a nervous hoof at a time toward where the shepherd wants me to go.

In the nonsheeply realm of life I am pretty happy, I love being a Mom. My heart for this little girl just gets bigger every day, to the point I am worried I will wake up one morning and see her grinning at me and it will explode completely. I suppose this is a risk that all Mothers take. In the exciting news bulletin side of things I am going home to Michigan on Thursday for a visit. I can't wait. I am leaving Kel behind which I don't love. I simply don't enjoy experiencing life without him. I like segments of life lived on my own so I have something to tell him about, I think we all need this if nothing else for dinner conversation, but large chunks of separation aren't my fav. But it's a good thing, all put together.

I am about blogged out but am on my way to read what you have been writing. Also I started a food blog, surely it's linked somehow to this one... you'll figure it out.
With Love
Leanne Rae

Spiritual Milk Drinkers....

Well this post includes some references to breastfeeding so if you're not down go web someplace else.

I have been breastfeeding my daughter Noelle for about 10 weeks now. That's not that much time, in the grand scheme of life it's like a sneeze. But it has been the most amazing ten weeks of life I have known. Every time she is hungry and starts to exhibit those sure fire "mom feed me soon or I will go ballistic" signs I take the necessary steps and make sure she gets the milk she needs. Sometime not fast enough for her liking, but usually in two minutes or less . Sometimes, however, I need to burp her in the middle of the feeding or stop and switch her to the other side. When I do this, she has the tendency to cry and fuss and generally express extreme unhappiness that she is not currently chugging milk. The other day I was feeding her, and switching her to the other side and I told her (yes I talk to her all the live long day) "Noelle! For your entire life there has been food when you needed it, what makes you think today would be any different?"

THEN
GOD
SPOKE

I myself had spent my very own week freaking out about money. Worrying that perhaps someday very soon we would default on a payment, OR not be able to buy diapers, OR the car would break down and the repairs would be more than our emergency fund plus the savings we have to sustain us until I start getting a paycheck again.

"Leanne, you've been alive for 27 years. Have you ever gone hungry, without transportation, or had your household poop needs unmet?

Scripture tells us

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. ~Hebrews 5:11-14

To which I responded: "Wow God, please teach me more through Motherhood"

You see like my daughter freaks out when she stops eating for a nanosecond and is still hungry, so I when I see a potential problem in the distance or spill a drop of faith because of some small bump in the road act out like chicken little. It's NOT GOING TO BE OKAY! The sky is FALLING! The ROOF is caving in, The bottom has fallen out and this will end me!

But I am NOT an infant
I am 27 years of sustained healthy well-loved adult woman.
Who still freaks out with a "It's not going to be okay" mentality

This my friends is a value I do not want to pass on.

Dear Lord please be with me in this... help me to rise above it and show my children that you are the giver and sustainer, you are the LORD our God, and it will forever and always be more than just okay. Help me becomer a spiritual steak and taffy eater (you see these things take time to chew) so that my daugther sees it and follows in my footsteps.

And all Gods people, or at least this one said: AMEN.