The state of the soul...

Dear Friends:

I have been journaling more lately. I go through times like this, especially when I'm trying to work something out in my own life. I hope you read this and think about what is being said..

September 11, 2011

It is the ten year anniversary of the darkest day the Earth has ever known. Hard to believe that it’s been ten years, but it has. 

And how the world has changed. Life seems harder and people seem angrier. Innocence is lost.

As I sit, contemplating my life to this point, I realize that I must change. I have been held captive by fear, fear of the unknown, fear of the future. Fear of anything unknown. 

You see, I’ve made a realization that I must find my voice. I’m constantly feeling bullied, victimized. I guess that when you were raised in a family where you were suppressed, you start realizing that you have lots to say. 

But is it too late for me? I’ve always thought that I was a successful person, a college graduate. Married. Home owner. Teacher. Yet, I feel so unfulfilled. I feel that I have so much to say and do yet.

But it seems no one cares.

I’ve prayed for a way to find my voice. At this point in my life, I feel like I’m on permanent hold, that I am in that waiting place. I have a job. I work hard to be a good wife, a good employee, a good person. I should be thankful that things are at peace.

But I don’t feel at peace.

As I look out at the coming night sky, brooding, angry dark clouds remind me that another day in my life is done. Tomorrow will be here soon and it will soon be another day. Have I lived my life the way God intended me too? What is it that I desire to do, to change people’s lives for the better? 

Dear Lord, please let me find my voice.

These are the words I utter deep in my spirit. Only God knows my heart, my frame, so says his Word. I feel like David, someone who failed many times in his life but understood that God still loved him despite himself. Do you love me despite myself, Lord? 

Kevin Geoffrey writes about the state of the soul so eloquently. “Here is the key to releasing the sinner from captivity to his own flesh the shock of shame that comes upon him when he finally realizes that God has been watching-and waiting-all along...waiting, to show him mercy and grace, to love him, and separate him from his sin.” 

God waits. Some people understand and run into his arms. Some of us, myself included, don’t think we’re worthy of that kind of love. Yet, God does think we are worthy, no matter how ugly or black our souls, no matter that we think ourselves failures. 

God waits patiently. He loves completely. He forgives, He cleanses, He opens His arms wide to accept us. 

Why can’t we see ourselves like God sees us? Better yet, why don’t we accept each other, listen to each other, love each other?

Dear Lord, let me find my voice. Change me, change my life for the better. Help me to realize that my days are in your hands, that my life has purpose and meaning. 

Help me find my voice....

The eyes are a window....

I’m feeling very frustrated right now. 

I’ve been sick all day with some sort of virus which makes everything come out like water (sorry to be so gross). To add insult to injury, my left eye has been red since Saturday for no apparent reason.

Or so I thought.

I went to the doctor on Saturday, just the usual monthly tune-up. My doctor is a naturopath. She can usually tell when I'm getting a cold days before I start sneezing. On this bright, early Saturday morning, other than my eye, I'm feeling good.  

"Your joints are achy, lately, aren't they?"

I smile. "You're right, as usual. So, since we're on the topic, what's wrong with my eye?"

"Liver," she says quickly.

"Okay," I say, wanting to know more. "What has the liver and the eye have in common? I'm eating better, watching the sugar."

“True, but as you work things out, other things come up. You're fighting a battle, aren't you?"

"I guess. Writing has been difficult lately."

Then she says something that sticks with me. Your eyes are the window of your soul."

"Hmm," I say, saying nothing more. Life has been a battle for the last three years. Marital difficulties. Work difficulties. Physical difficulties. 

It's been a journey.

The battle has been always there, though lately, it's been easier. Maybe it's having a different perspective, knowing that I can't change a whole lot. Things at work have been better. This summer has been an especially wonderful one. The children I've been working with are a joy and a pleasure. We've shared many days at the playground, reading stories, playing at the splash park. They even understand when I can’t sit on the floor at the end of the day because my joints hurt so much from bending all day. 

But the battle I fight these days is with my writing. I've always loved to write since I was a kid. I always kind of imagined myself as a teacher (which I am) and a writer. To that end, I began working on a novel. I’ve been working on the same novel for almost three years. 

It’s not done yet.

A few months ago, I started a blog, called "A work in progress." 

I don’t think anyone has read it yet.

And yet, I sit here, writing a blog that no one reads, wondering why I do this. It should be easy, writing a book or a blog. Snooki from the Jersey Shore did it, though why anyone would buy a book written by someone with a mile-high bee hive is beyond me. Or that Luann from the Real Housewives wrote an etiquette book, though why anyone would want to read an etiquette book by someone who calls everyone "darling" and talks down to the whole world mystifies me. 

Nope. Not downloading either one of these books to my Kindle anytime soon. 

So again, I ask the question. Why do I write.

Because I love it. There is something about putting your thoughts down on paper or telling a story that is so satisfying. 

It's part of me, the something I want to share with the world.

So, while Luann and Snooki are off doing their new "thang," I'll still be writing. My battle will be finishing my first novel in the next six months. My goal is to be published. My dream? To write full time, to tell stories of real people that battle and win...

Until next time.

Weeds

I've been doing a lot of gardening lately.

It's not unusual. The garden was one of the reasons we bought this house. Gardens require care and nurturing. Part of that care is pulling up weeds.

Pulling up weeds can be a therapeutic exercise. When you've had a lousy day (or week), it gets your mind off your troubles. If you're really imaginative, you can think about that person who is rubbing you the wrong way and well, I don't have to tell you.

If you've already concluded that I've been pulling up my share of weeds lately, you're right. It got me to thinking about life.

I recently had the opportunity to take a break from my adventures in gardening to get together with approximately ten other women in our synagogue. It was called "Tea and Tefillah," a word that I think means fellowship. A little bagel, a little schmooze, a little prayer and then you're on your merry way, ready to face the world.

Only it was hardly like that.

Sometimes, we pre-judge people. Admit it. I do. I'm always walking into places, thinking how other people are prettier or envying the fact that their hair doesn't curl up when it's humid outside. I can tell you  that when I walked into my friend Madeline's house, I only knew two people.

And then I got scared.

Back to my garden for a second.

In the last four weeks, the only work I've done in my garden is pulling weeds. When we moved in, I looked over the garden. The previous owner didn't bother with taking care of it this spring. She was selling the house and probably thought why bother. If I was in her shoes, I might have done the same thing (though I wouldn't have. I value people's opinion too high sometimes, but that's another blog). So what awaited me were weeds of various shapes and sizes. Most of them were small, easy to remove. However; there was one that stuck out. A tall, prickly pear that was as tall as I was (I'm about 5'10) with purple flowers all over it. It looked pretty, sitting amongst the Queen Anne's lace and the delicate white daisies I loved.

But as pretty as it was, it had to come out, root and all.

I was thinking about all of this as I was sitting with these women, listening to their stories, thinking about how much time we truly waste judging each other. Or, better yet, trying to hide all our imperfections. We may look like we have it made, but get a little bit closer and oops, well, our secret is out.

Any gardener, whether new or experienced, will tell you with every assurance that you need to get the weed out by the root. If you don't, it will come back with a vengeance.

It's like that with the different issues we deal with in our lives. There's the offense that we thought we forgave years ago or the anger that we have toward someone close to us. Almost everyone knows someone close to them that is dealing with addiction. There are emotional attachments and husbands that don't seem to understand or love us the way we want to be loved and cherished. There are parents that deal with children that have special needs. We all think that we have nothing in common.

But we do.

We all have something. We can choose to ignore it and go through life angry, bitter and resentful. Or we can be honest with ourselves and deal with it. It sometimes comes with pain and tears and anger, but when it's done, we're better for it.

It's what, as some wise person once said, makes us stronger.

Settling in

We've been in our house for a couple of weeks now and settling in just fine. However; they never tell you when you buy the house that you always have to expect the unexpected.

Welcome to home buying 101.

Not that it hasn't been too bad. Let me see. There was the small crack in the ceiling over the patio door that we swear wasn't there at the final walk-through, the fifteen foot corroded dryer hose or the paneling that is starting to buckle in the basement.

With visions of being an episode of Holmes Inspection (if you watch HGTV, you'll know what I'm talking about) dancing in my head, my husband and I set out to find someone to fix them. Thankfully, we found him through a friend.

Thank God for Vern (and yes, that is his name). He explained the buckling paneling (cheap paneling with no vapor barrier) and offered to fix it (for about fifteen hundred dollars). He assured us he could fix the dryer hose (which he did) and the crack in the ceiling? He'll do it when he does the paneling. Just a little mud and it's gone.

Okay, so if you're guessing that I'm a novice at all this, you're right. I'm learning to be patient with things and I'm learning a lot about houses (let's just say I ask many stupid questions).

The best part of all this, problems and all, is that this house it's ours. There's no landlord and no rules. It's just us.

I love this house. I feel like I've been here a while (like two years instead of two weeks). I've discovered Lowe's (and it should be a rule that at your closing, the bank or whomever holds your mortgage should give you a five hundred dollar gift card to spend however you want). I can do the laundry whenever I want (even at three in the morning) and that I have a garden to putter in. It doesn't matter that I don't have so much money for clothes or for Vera Bradley bags anymore.

I'm happy.... and settling in.

Until next time....

Okay, so I've been busy. To find out why, read on....

This is a story of how we finally got a house.

Yep, we got tired of apartment living. There's nothing like the sound of your neighbor's upstairs arguing at 3:00 in the morning, especially after a rough night of partying. So, it was the motivation for my husband and I to maybe at least, um, try.

For the most part, we were comfortable (except for the neighbor, affectionately nicknamed Godzilla). There were no commitments (except to our cat, Oliver), especially if the dishwasher didn't work or the toilet got plugged (which is, in our universe, a bad, bad thing. More about that some other time). If we were truly disgusted, we could get up and move somewhere else.

Except, that got old.

Home ownership, anyone will tell you, is a serious commitment, taken not on a whim, but with a great deal of thought. I've bought two other homes with my husband, which is no easy task. Murphy's Law is one of the great mottos of his life. So, with that in mind, he convinced me that we could at least look. I agreed. There were the usual, requisite discussions about where (not the snow belt) and how much (not too much), so with that in mind, we found a real estate agent and went to work.

Now, I've heard stories of people looking endlessly through listings and on-line sites. I fully expected to do the same thing. So, it was surprising that on the first trip we took with Nancy, our agent, we found the house. Not too big. Not too small.

It was just right.

It was the place I had always dreamed of. A beautiful kitchen. A backyard (with a garden for me). An office to write in that looked out at the garden I would lovingly tend.

But most of all, it was quiet.

Throughout the whole negotiating process, I kept telling myself that it was just a house, a place to live in.  If we didn't get this one, there would be something else. Something better, I reasoned. It was a tense 24 hours, but on April 16, 2011, my birthday, I got the best present.

A house. All my own. To love and to tend, forever and ever. In sickness and in health. Till death, I pray, do us part. It didn't matter anymore that I still lived in an apartment with a neighbor upstairs named Godzilla or that gas prices were still going through the roof.

I had a house.....

False modesty, categorization and the search for self-worth

I love Belinda.

Okay, so I know it's an odd beginning to this post, but stick with me for a minute. I work with a woman named Belinda. I haven't known her for a long time, but we liked each other the moment we met. She is a woman who, I have found, has my back. She knows what I struggle with. I know she prays for me and thankfully those prayers have carried me through the last month.

Belinda is also black.

I'm not a person who looks at someone's color or so I thought. She made a comment, that we were both strong women. I said, quite enviously, that I wished I was a strong, black woman. Then she said something to me.

It doesn't make any difference.

We grew up differently. Belinda says that she was raised to have a strong self image. She knows how to read and talk to people, a gift that I frankly wish I had. I was raised the third out of four children. I had difficulties growing up. I was always the one the kids targeted and made fun of. I never understood why. Maybe I was perceived as stuck up or stupid. Who knows?

Truth was, I was just a scared kid. The psychologist at school said that my parents didn't pay enough attention to me. My mother didn't know how to help me. So I grew up, always thinking that I wasn't worthy. Maybe it was my Catholic upbringing. Who knows?

I've struggled with a poor self-image most of my life. I think most women do. But God never meant for women or men to feel that way about themselves. I was raised not to act too proud or too immodest, there have been times in my life where I've almost taken that concept a bit too far.

False modesty.

False modesty is a sin. Where in the world does it say that putting yourself down gets you anywhere in life? And why do people think they are so unworthy? I've wasted so much time being afraid and letting fear rule my life. I want to break free and use the gifts that God gave me to make a difference in this world. True, I will still make bad decisions or say the wrong thing (or things), but there is forgiveness. Good does come out of bad, whether it's a self-realization or a good change in a relationship.

Good happens.

Belinda is right. We are all strong women, a force for good in the world. It's not our color or they way we look. It is truly about the "content of our character."

Until next time.....

Working it out.

It's been a rough week, writing wise, that is.

I've been working on the story and doing some journaling (or self-contemplation) at the same time. I do this because if I'm feeling blocked, at least I can write about something. For the people who know me well, they know I don't talk a whole lot about what I'm thinking or feeling. I don't know if it's because I don't want to hurt people's feelings or whether I'm making something out of nothing or a combination of the two, but it's just hard. I always feel like I'm the one who makes it right or at least tries to.

I'm told I need to talk about things. True, but is it really necessary to talk about everything? Today, with Facebook and Twitter, it's easy to say too much. While I love to tell you what is really in my heart or on my mind, baring my soul is not my favorite thing to do.

Okay, so it's been a bad week.

So, while Oliver (aka cat or human in pygmy form) and husband reacquaints himself around the house in the evenings (he's been attending college. He is now home on break), I will attempt to get myself out of this hole I'm in, figure out the way the next chapter should go and feel better about myself.

Until next time.....