I’ve been following the health journey of a pastor’s wife friend from our former circuit. There were several us pastor families who dispersed from the area around the same time. Their family moved the farthest, all the way to other side of the world. They were missionaries in South Korea before needing to come back to the states for treatment.
Please pray for Gretchen. She has tumors in her brain that keep coming back. We keep praying for healing and for these tumors to shrink and go away. The doctors say they’re coming from somewhere else in her body, but they haven’t been able to find a source. As of tonight, she’s no longer wanting any more standard Western medical intervention.
Her family sent out a request tonight asking for prayers. If anyone can offer a prayer for them it would mean a lot to her family as they decide where to go from here.
Last night in class my presentation went fine. I had to stop in the middle of my slides. The sweating, rapid heartbeat, and increased noticeable body odor was something I needed to halt before it became a choking stutter. I stepped away from the podium to catch my breath. I told the class I did not have a phobia of talking in front of people (our teacher had told an earlier story about phobias), but if there was a rung or two beneath the phobia level, that’d be me. The strange thing was, I hadn’t even been nervous.
“You’re doing great”, they started to say, though I heard it like a muffled rain. I probably should’ve looked around, but instead I kept my eyes on the neon screen right in front of me. I finished the slides then moved on to the demonstration. My client (the teacher who was playing herself) was a 60-something year old woman who was currently having trouble getting student papers graded. She was supposed to have them back by the end of last week, but was finding every excuse in the book to avoid grading. I clumsily tried to apply my WDEP reality therapy questions: 1) What do you want? 2) What are you doing? 3) Is what you are doing working? (evaluation) 4) What is your plan?
I was expecting to feel a huge sigh of relief when it was over. That didn’t happen. I actually felt worse. After I’d gotten my questions out, the whole thing, at least for me, slowly unraveled. By the time our demonstration was over, I’d completely fallen out of character, a third or more of the class was laughing, and somebody had tossed a piece of chocolate at the teacher to motivate her. I stood up from my chair and felt void. I had no idea what to think or why I didn’t feel relieved. The sweat from my legs had left a mark on my chair that would slowly have to evaporate underneath the white fluorescent lights. I thought of the man I had just met that evening, wondering if he’d seen my sweat and thought less of me. It doesn’t matter. This is what I’ve noticed about going to school this time. People are nicer and you’re not as afraid of them.
I rearranged my calendar to make it not so overwhelming looking. The thing I didn’t like was seeing how full the boxes looked. Last summer we attended a $3,500 marriage intensive weekend that was covered for us financially by a couple we’ve known since the days we both worked here. A special scholarship for pastors covered $3,000, and the couple who helped us covered the rest.
One of the action steps we were given was to be intentional about combining our lives on paper, that is, on our calendars. They wrote all of this down on a wall-sized sticky note. They divided the paper into two columns. Having a marriage is like owning a business in some ways. In both cases organization, communication, and planning are important to keep things running and functioning well.
Instead of writing in a size that filled the entire calendar box space, I erased what I’d originally penciled in and shrank the handwriting down so that the event/chapel visit/meeting fit into the bottom fourth of the date box. That one small change significantly opened my calendar back up. Now I could see my things and also see his things. I could see I wasn’t losing my present time with the boys.
When the mornings are open, I can then start to fill in those spaces with a general idea of when to work on what assignments. I felt much better about this major class project coming up on Monday when I saw I had several open mornings and afternoons to work on it. Today I spent a good portion of the daytime reading about and taking notes on Choice Theory/Reality Therapy, which is the theory I chose to present on.
One of the purposes of our theories class, in addition to learning the different theories, is to start to get an idea of who we are as a therapist (not sure I like that word). While there will be mixing and matching of theory application depending on the situation and person you are working with, our instructor says there will typically be at least one or two we find ourselves especially drawn to.
I’ve liked a lot of them. Over the past five weeks, there’ve been a few times when I’ve read again about the tested and familiar attachment theory, or we’ve talked about the three components of person-centered therapy, or someone gives their presentation on Gestalt therapy which is interested in knowing the happenings of the whole person. I read today and again was drawn to something about this one.
Rather than spending considerable amounts of time on the past, reality therapy focuses on the present. It assumes five encoded needs shared by all human beings. The needs are 1) Survival/self-preservation, 2) Love and belonging, 3) Power/inner control and feeling in control of one’s life, 4) Freedom/independence, and 5) Fun/enjoyment. The strength/presence of each need will vary with each person.
Reality therapy is based on the belief that insight alone is not enough to make a change. For example, the couple who worked with us at the marriage intensive helped to take our past and make a plan. They gave us the visual to bring home and keep as a reminder and reference. They helped us identify the areas where we could start to be intentional about becoming and choosing again our present life.
The big kids had a snow day today, so the little boys had a snow day too. We received about 7-8 inches worth of snowfall overnight and this morning. The sky has taken a break for tonight but it’s supposed to snow a few more inches tomorrow. The kids enjoyed some sledding in the morning. Dad took them down to the big hill after lunch.
We had our first meeting tonight since becoming a part of the spiritual nurture board at church. In addition to the board of elders and the board of trustees, we have the board of spiritual nurture and the board of witness and mercy. Witness and mercy focuses on finding ways to involve the church in reaching out into the community. Spiritual nurture is responsible for education and care of our church’s members.
I brought up the idea tonight of wanting to work toward getting something started to support and build up our church’s marriages. We have married couples of all ages, including several sets of newlyweds who I feel are particularly important to look out for. If we are going to be an entity who speaks about the sanctity and beauty of marriage, then we also need to follow up with in-person action. The pastor and DCE jumped right on board. I still sometimes can’t believe any of this is happening. I’m looking forward to serving on this board, and found by the ways God continues to work.
I had another counseling visit today. One of the things she keeps asking me about is how I’m doing when it comes to physical activity. I told her I’ve been going for walks almost every day. I still do my bed yoga, but other than that, not much else besides the for the most part resumed activities of daily living. Since the end of December Josh started doing the grocery shopping again and takes the boys. Sometimes I make the list and sometimes he does. He divides the list into three parts and gives each boy a section of needed items to go find. This evening I carried the vacuum up the stairs without feeling short of breath or like I needed to lay down. I can vacuum the living room rug with no problems.
When she asked about running, I didn’t go into the fact that I’m not really a runner, that was just something I’d been doing more frequently throughout the year of 2020. My daughter and I did a couch to 5K running plan that summer. On the last day, we timed it so we could finish down at the beach. It was warm and raining, and my phone died right as we were getting to the end of our workout. We kept running around the beach area until I figured we’d finished.
(She says she doesn’t remember that part about my phone dying but feels like that is something that would’ve happened.)
We took off our socks and shoes and ran into the water. We swam out to the floating dock and pushed up/rolled ourselves out of the water and onto its wooden surface, where we looked out at the lake and watched the rain. I knew that this was one of those fleeting moments of perfection. We sat there for a while and then swam back to the beach, picked up our socks and shoes, and walked barefoot up the beach trail and back to the house.
I didn’t have a working phone (and again I was frustrated by my brainless habits), so I couldn’t take a selfie of us down at the beach. Though it seemed a little anti-climactic by then, I did ask my husband to take a picture of us once we got back to the house. Sometime during this past week or so, my husband was showing me a picture album on his phone. I saw the picture he’d taken. When I did, I remembered how I wished I’d been able to take one down at the lake. I’d actually forgotten about that running/swimming day.
Back in the fall, the doctor ordered an echocardiogram, which is basically an ultrasound of the heart that also measures cardiac output and function. I’d told him about this last time when I’d been swimming and how after a short while I couldn’t do anymore. I know some of it was the loud Zumba music and the anxiety of a new moment. I said I didn’t think I’d be able at that point to pass a stress test. I told him it’s like there’s a cap in my chest that won’t let me go farther. He said that happens sometimes to him when he runs. He hits a mental wall but when he keeps going he discovers that he actually can. I started to feel like he was not understanding me.
I’d pretty much come to peace with the fact that the healing of whatever it is that’s been wrong with me was simply going to take time. Since in the ER I tested positive for mono, there’s the possibility of having some sort of post-viral syndrome, which is the diagnosis he gave so that my chiropractor visits would be covered by our health share plan. I can lean toward thinking catastrophically about bodily symptoms, but that day at the pool prompted me to make sure I wasn’t just dismissing something that needed further attention, like my peace to be okay with not-rightness wasn’t just some new manifestation of an old problem. I told him some things that doctors don’t go to medical school to hear, and cried softly when he said something I now don’t remember, but was something that again communicated he genuinely cared. He was required to ask if I was suicidal. I said I wasn’t, that in fact, I was there because I wanted to live. He said it’s the quiet ones he worries about most.
I was perplexed by the discrepancies that can occur with people’s perception of us verses our perception of ourselves. I didn’t think I was quiet, or guarded, or feeling unable to talk openly with him. My blood pressure had been normal that time, after the past two years of being high during the handful of times I’d started going to him. Because I knew I was not going to be getting any younger, and because there were minor things I was noticing that I wanted to get checked out, I’d decided I needed to at least get started on settling in with some kind of doctor. After he listened to my heart and my lungs I asked him if there was something he could order, some kind of test that would give me a visual image of my heart.
When that day I had felt something snap inside of me, right above my heart on the left side of my chest, I thought something in my heart had popped. I thought maybe the stress had ballooned out an artery. When I stayed conscious and did not collapse to my death, I figured maybe that wasn’t what had happened. But something had happened, and for months upon even minimal exertion, it would activate an immobilizing pressure or weight, like that spot in my chest was a heavy magnet.
The echocardiogram was normal. I told the counselor I had plans to try swimming again this coming Monday and that maybe this summer I might try to see if I could work my way back to more walking, but that I didn’t really feel a need to do more than that now. She asked if it was fear that was stopping me. I’ve told her everything I didn’t tell the doctor, and our sessions have been joyfully encouraging and helpful. I didn’t go into this time how I didn’t think it was fear so much, but was mostly because I was slowly still healing.
“The voices of the vast majority of Christians throughout history have had no hearing outside their immediate and very limited sphere. Their theological contributions are out of sight, out of mind, difficult if not impossible to recover, except as they have affected the spiritual lives of those people close to them, perhaps their children and their children’s children through oral tradition.” ~How to Think Theologically, Stone & Duke~
One of the ongoing assignments in our Intro to God’s word class is something the professor calls Living the Story. We were to take up a practice to continue throughout the semester in which we participate in the mission of God. One of the books we’re currently reading for the class is Brad Kelle’s Telling the Old Testament Story: God’s Mission and God’s People. One of the homework assignments for this week is to describe God’s mission in my own words. For right now, I’m just looking at his:
“As we’ll see, God’s mission is to restore the originally-intended right-relationships and blessing by becoming a covenant partner engaged in a relationship with all living beings that will overcome human evil and heal creation.”
A previous paragraph says this:
“The first eleven chapters move from creation to Abraham, the one from whom Israel’s story will emerge. Most importantly for telling the larger OT story, however, these opening chapters move toward the introduction of God’s mission by first showing the initial picture of God’s intentions for creation–a creation made perfect as an ideal existence marked by the right-relationships of mutual blessing among God, humans, and the world. We then see the distortion of this divinely intended good reality by human misdeeds that lead to the introduction of God’s mission to heal and restore creation.
I am drawn to words that talk about healing. More than any other word I can presently think of, the concept of healing seems to finally, forever, and once and for all finally address what what my problem is, what my absolute greatest human need of all time is.
By why? Why this word?
Why is this word so much easier to hear than words like sin and rebellion? Why do I want healing from God so much more than I seem to want the forgiveness of God?
When I was looking into more about the above book’s author, I saw that he (Brad Kelle) has written another more recent book called The Bible and Moral Injury: Reading Scripture Alongside War’s Unseen Wounds. So then I looked up the term “moral injury”:
(Don’t ask me why it helps to write this all out)
“Moral injury is the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct.” (https://moralinjuryproject.syr.edu/)
Wikipedia says this:
“Moral injury refers to an injury to an individual’s moral conscience and values resulting from an act of perceived moral transgression, which produces profound emotional guilt and shame, and in some cases a profound sense of betrayal and anger.
And also this:
“The concept of moral injury emphasizes the psychological, social, cultural, and spiritual aspects of trauma. Distinct from psychopathology, moral injury is a normal human response to an abnormal traumatic event.”
When mankind sinned, they were fatally wounded.
When we transgress the law of God, it is we who are broken.
This is why words about healing resonate with me so much.
He sees my injuries. He sees my wounds.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed, Isaiah 53:5
For our Living the Story assignment, I chose the seemingly doable and knowingly enjoyable practice of writing letters to whoever God puts on my heart for that week. God gives us voices to speak of our Savior, help us connect with others, and hopefully serve to build up the church and humanity even in some small healing way. God speaks to us through words and uses words to communicate his story and his love for us.
Something that’s become somewhat of a budding concern of mine (passion doesn’t seem like quite the right word at this point) is wondering how to provide more support for marriages within the local church setting. In the past year, just in our nearby Lutheran school/church community, there have been five divorces. Those are just the ones that we’ve heard of. Another marriage closer to our personal inner circle is in currently in critical condition.
Because I think education is important in building and sustaining healthy marriages, something I’ve been wanting to do is identify and begin to articulate the beliefs I had going into marriage, as well as ones I adopted along the way earlier on, that proved to be unhelpful and even damaging to myself, my husband, and/or our relationship. It is important for our beliefs to be based on what is true, as our beliefs will influence our thoughts and behaviors.
Much of the information I sought out that shaped my own beliefs, thoughts, and actions in marriage came from books sold by Christian resource ministries. Over the years, women have begun to speak up about the relational damage caused by the teachings in these at one-time popular marriage books, most of which I have read. As more and more time passes, and I’ve had time to reflect on how the application of these teachings played out in my life, I have been able to see how many of my personal and marital relationship struggles can be traced back to false things I believed to be true.
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Yesterday the boys and I spent the morning at a friend’s house. For nearly two hours the kids played with Legos and ran around outside while the mothers sat in our rocking chairs keeping warm by the space heater. One of the things we talked about was wondering if life would’ve been easier had we known or been better at certain things while we were younger. Examples included conflict resolution, emotional regulation, recognizing true and untrue thoughts, and awareness of our bodies and how its cyclical nature affects us personally. The biggest thing for both of us was self-acceptance.
One of the things I remember my 2017-2019 counselor saying to me was that he noticed I had a tendency to search for and analyze negative characteristics about myself. “I know this was probably my pride…” or “Maybe I’m just blind here”. I said, “Well isn’t that normal?” He said it wasn’t. I said, “Well isn’t that what we as Christians are supposed to do? Isn’t being able to admit our own faults the way we show we’re humble and open?” He also was Lutheran so he understood what I meant when I asked how we’re supposed to say or believe good things about ourselves when every week in church we’re forced to repeat what poor, miserable, sinners we are? Yes, I’m a sinner, but not so much of a sinner that I constantly need to be bringing it up week after week.
But the whole thing is kind of a radical thought. What would it be like to be okay with myself? To not be assessing and trying to identify what it is I need to change, where I could be or could’ve been better at something, what foods might help me achieve the results I am wanting, where my attitude needs an adjustment, where I am needing to give myself some grace and others too, where I need to swallow my pride and walk in humility. Self-acceptance is for the pagans, the ones who don’t believe they are sinners. Any term with the word “self” involved isn’t fitting for the vocabulary of a godly woman. Self is selfish. There is no self. Who I am as myself is not important and doesn’t matter.
My daughter and I walked down to the lake yesterday. She wanted to show me a beaver den, which we viewed from afar. It was getting late to take the time to walk the border, and I didn’t feel comfortable crossing the lake to get there. When she asked me why, I told her the same thing I told my son while at the beach in September, right after I sighed and said, “Be careful”. The boys wanted shovels, but the beach shed’s garage door is broke and doesn’t open from the outside. The only way to open it and reach the greatly desired shovels is to go in the side door, climb up the lifejacket wall into the roof rafters, and slide down the canoes. Whether it’s true or not, I do not know, but it hurts even now again to say it out loud: “Because I wouldn’t be able to rescue you.”
I took a walking stick with me to use as a weapon if needed. The last time she and I walked down there, we were startled by two foxes running from the beach and into the woods. Most of the time I walk here free from the fear of wild animals. I can’t imagine having to think about wolves, bobcats, or poisonous snakes. A few weeks ago we all watched several episodes of Life Below Zero, a show about people living in the northern parts of Canada. Because of the aggressive bears, one woman carried a firearm anytime she went outside. The foxes were neat, but I wasn’t particularly happy to see them. This is the first time we’ve seen foxes here. They looked about the size of a medium dog.
The adjustment continues with the school changes. For our Bible class we had to turn in a “worksheet” assignment by midnight Sunday. I knew we had to answer four questions with written answers of 300 words, which didn’t seem too bad. I didn’t know that 1200 words equals about 4.8 pages double-spaced according to Google. That made the 4-5 page paper due in the other class seem much more doable. Once again I was thankful the teacher had given me that extra time to finish it. The 1200 words still took longer than I thought it would, but between Saturday to Monday I ended up writing nearly 10 pages worth of words about something else besides just my personal thoughts.
I was proud of myself for accomplishing that, but truth be told, it took a toll. I’ve felt a bit paralyzed over the past few days feeling like I already wore myself out when I haven’t even barely started. Then I started fearing I’d overscheduled myself. I texted three different people trying to schedule get-togethers. There’s the new pastor’s wife who is currently homeschooling, and the other two homeschooling moms I haven’t seen since before the holidays. I emailed the family from church that we’re trying to get back in the monthly habit of getting together with. I write these things down on my calendar so I can see what I’m supposed to do and remember on paper, but then feel overwhelmed seeing everything written, like it’s this cluttered page of squares that isn’t making any sense.
This sounds like one long rambling anxiety mess. It reminds me a little bit of having a newborn. You have your life and your routine and then welcome a tiny person into the mix. In the early months, when I’d added hours a day of nursing and infant care, I wondered how I’d ever have time again to do all the things that were needing to be done, when even before there hadn’t been enough time. By God’s grace, however, somehow it works, and this is the blessing of added decades and years. You have points of reference and experiences to look back on. You’d never go back and relive the hard times, but the hard times are the ones that have gotten you here, to this place where you can look up and see there is nothing to fear here. You and God are together.
The boys and I had a good visit this weekend. We arrived home a little after noon for a sit-down family lunch of chicken soup and crackers. Eating meals together at the dining room table has been a regular occurrence since our family began. Growing up this wasn’t as much of a practice for us, at least not in the junior high and high school years. When I first started getting to know Josh’s family one of the first things I noticed was the way they did their meals. They had meat, potatoes, a vegetable, and bread nearly every night. On Sunday afternoons they went out for lunch with my father-in-law’s side of the family. Sunday evenings were at my husband’s grandparents’ house with my mother-in-law’s family. At home they ate their supper at the dining room table.
Sometimes we ate at the table, and sometimes we didn’t. My favorite place to eat was in the living room just casually sitting around. We sometimes had supper together as a family with a meal, and other times it was whatever you could find after coming home from games or practice. My favorite meal to make was a bowl of spaghetti, with no sauce and lots of butter. We didn’t even own a dining room table at that time. For years we ate off a borrowed table from church. I remember as a kid eating off of an upside-down box, but that was because we’d just moved to a new apartment. Sometimes Dad would leave the house long after suppertime and come home from the store with steak and tator tots and eat a meal at 10PM. I didn’t like steak back then. It was too hard.
With the exception of the first year or so, it took a while after being married, probably 8-10 years, before I could visit my parents house and not be deeply annoyed by something. When you’re living with someone else, establishing your own life together and new ways of doing things, it can be jarring to return to a former way, especially if those ways seem out of line with your redeveloping standard of normal. I was angry with my parents for a lot of years as I wrestled with flaws I did not understand. My dad has said this about his relationship with his dad, that he too was angry with his own father until he was able to look at his dad and his father’s life with more compassion. For some I think this takes more time. For yet others, they seem to come away from childhood without much needing to be worked out. It isn’t something they think about.
I can still remember the day I wasn’t angry anymore. These years I’m truly just happy to see them. I’ve sometimes wondered if at least one of the reasons God put the commandment to honor our father and our mother is because he knew just how much the human heart could be angry. He knew how much time could be wasted and lost. I know that isn’t everybody’s situation, but it was mine. My second life revealed to me things about my first life that were good and rare. It also opened my eyes to significant areas of weakness. When it comes to something like marital communication, I’ve come to think of it as an exchange taking place between two people, one of whom is deaf, and the other who is blind. It makes any talk of a healing Jesus all the more beautiful. (Oh no, not hope, not that…) And though God painfully doesn’t heal everything in this life, it doesn’t change the word of life that in him the eyes of the blind are opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
The table my parents have now isn’t big. It was just right enough for the boys to sit down and eat their breakfast this morning. It seems these days Mom and Dad take turns cooking. This morning Mom made scrambled eggs, waffles, and beef bacon. I took my plate and carried it into the living room to eat where Mom and Grandma were.
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