Connections

I am not normally the person who requires acknowledgement for something good.  I tend to listen much more to all the things that I have done wrong.  Where I have failed.  And to how simply contact with me, seemed to be a poison that took so much away from those around me.

Living knowing that your simply having come into being tends to make you wonder why you are still here... and the hardest part is knowing that the desire for your life to be erased was so strong in your mother that she often wished she could end your life.  I am not sure why my father was so blessed to have me as his daughter, and my mother set out on a path to make sure that I knew that I had ruined her life and plans for the future.  And yet, how did I do that?

In having one day tracked down a notebook, because of course you couldn't start anything new, until the old ones were all used up...  I came across my mother's journal from when I was 4.  And at the time... I had read the whole page before what it said became so clear to me.  My creation by God had driven my mother away from her desire to pursue God all the time and bask in learning more and more about Him.  I trapped her in a world of feedings and diapers to start and created the worries on how to provide for my needs.  And in that process of just being a mother and being concerned with providing...  I changed everything.

She lost the hours of time that she could spend with my father seeking God.  Learning from him about this God who is difficult to describe in words.  Instead, she was nailed to the house and told to mold into this role of mother.  And this role was not something she ever really wanted.  I often think she would have preferred to be the one working and have left my father at home with us.  And that idea was reinforced each and every time  she threatened to walk out the door and leave us all behind.  And it is honestly not a blame that I have carried with me easily.

Perfection was the demand on me, her first born... I was pushed to read, write, draw, and just about everything that I did... I saw the bar of perfection.  And I could also see each and everything that I did wrong to keep that bar just out of my reach.  I didn't know how to fix the mistakes.  I just knew that enough of them and it was like living in a war zone.  Dinner would be thrown...  words would be screamed...  and then it would be the we would all be better off without her.  And to this day, I don't know why.

Okay I could have liked not constantly living in fear of the next look of disapproval in my mother's eyes.  The why did you let the world into our world look.  The you know if they keep poking in our family you will never see us all again...  She made it sound like I would be relocated to the other side of the world.  And maybe it wouldn't have been bad for me, but then who would be the buffer for my brother?  And so, I would bite my tongue... make everything all better... and plant this smile on my face that made me feel like I was going to vomit.  And joined all the clubs and activities that my mother desired.  And somehow, despite her great desire for me to be smart, funny, popular, and just the all around perfect daughter, sister, student...  I never could reach the bar.  It became this dream that each time I got one step closer...  I could feel the weight of even more demands on what perfect was creating even further for me to go.

Friends were okay, but you didn't share about your life.  We would pick up and move... and it was like life just disappeared.  No connections to the old life... just pick up and start over.  You see friends didn't matter, only family did.  And each time the bubble around our family grew tighter.  And by the time I was in high school, I probably didn't help this fact because I began to seek control...  Causing enough pain with cutting to prove that I was alive.  Stuff feelings and memories into box after box in a way to avoid remembering.  And even controlling each and every thing that I ate...  I wanted control and stability.  And what I got was isolation and disappointment.  And the lecture of hurry up and get fixed so we don't have to send you to talk to someone.  And don't tell that someone what is really going on... just make yourself better!  

You see, needing help was the biggest mistake I could have ever made... because it brought strangers into the walls of our world.  And strangers always wanted to destroy families, because well behaved children are worth something to them... worth enough that they will take them away never to see their parents again.  And while I learned how to make myself appear better...  some things didn't change.  I stopped eating much at all... and I bought clothes that defied my mother's idea of modesty...  and in the end I can still hear her telling me that I was a tramp... she could see the top of my chest.  And if I was going to dress like I was asking for something and look like a street walker...  Don't come crying to her when someone calls me on that and things happen...

And in my spring semester of my freshman year of college...  That line was taken from me.  Not by choice, but by force.  And true to her word...  Not a word was spoken about what happened my whole life.  The wall went up and even as she was dying... the demands for perfection kept that wall erect.  And left me wondering why poison to her, was the very thing she relied on all these years later to provide the help so that she could remain in her house till just before the end?  Or did my help become the poison that took her from this world, like I had taken so many others from her in the course of my life?  Did I love too much?  Or was I some kind of death magnet...  I might never know.

Overcoming Fear...

This is a phrase that raises questions.  Sometimes more questions than I can find answers to.  And today in reading about Israel after they were freed from Egypt, I find that I am stuck in the question of how do I move forward against odds that seem impossible.  And despite the fact that I trust and have faith in God...  I still tend to worry about how I am going to get thru this next step.  

And I know that I am not suppose to worry... That God will provide all that we need.  And yet I struggle to figure out how He will provide all our needs...  and it gets harder when I find myself looking at our ever shrinking budget.  And it isn't like I am wondering how we are going to plan our next vacation...  I am simply wondering how to make sure that we have enough food to eat.  Or even that we can manage to afford to have clean clothes.  And even in the time that I seem to spend worrying about all these little things... nothing changes.  The bottom line is still the same.  That unless I am willing to swallow my desire to be able to take care of all these things on my own and seek out the resources in the community...  This is not going to change.

And yet, when you are new in a place... how do you find out where these resources are.  And I still have no idea.  And I watch my baby eat what is left in the house for food... counting the days until she will be able to eat at school... knowing that I will have to adjust to being able to learn that what little is left for me to eat... is all I will have.  And that I must just accept that I can provide food to keep my baby from ever knowing this empty feeling of hunger... true hunger.  And that maybe this is one cross that I will never be able to abandon...  One that started when it was my family and I accepted the little bit of what was left, so that my brother would never know that pain.  

And maybe it is the reason why I struggle so much with having a supply of food stored away for us as we need it, but right now I am having to start over.  And with that brings the days of the empty feelings inside...  and I use to know ways to make the feeling go away.  But it seems that all of the tricks have drifted from my mind.  And I am now having to figure out how to make sure that I can with a smile... give my baby all the food her body requires and settle for what is left...  And to pray that I can keep her from understanding the struggle that life has become with so much loss...

And even while I hold my breathe and pray for a miracle...  I can't open my mouth and let the words come out and say I am hungry...  I don't know how we are going to be able to eat for the next week... let alone all the weeks to come until I can get funds to allow us to get more food.  So, I will settle for my meals of peanut butter and bread for all the days of the week just so that my baby can have food to eat.  And I will still try to hide the pain that I am feeling inside... wondering why in this world people can worry about where they will go on their next vacation and which restaurant will they eat at...  while I sit her wondering how I will feed my baby.  And I wonder how I will ever overcome fear...  And yet with faith I am to rely that I will never know hunger.  I only wish that was true. 

A Comedy of Death...

These past days have been hard on me.  And it really seems like these days have added up to several months.  Where this got to be difficult is the days that I had to step back and take care of myself, and I had to trust my friend, and let go of some of the control that I still seem to demand in my own life.  And in that process I had to risk myself.  And in many ways in stepping out in faith to trust someone, opens the door to the death of a small part of my heart.

Now that is not something one would typically find funny.  And you may wonder why I would say it was a comedy of death is because that is sometimes the only way we can deal with the struggles of our broken world.  When we go out and begin to start a day in the world...  the demands on us tend to make sure that we put on the outfit and manners that the world demands.  You see while we walk around wearing the mask of comedy... deep inside of us the other masks which show who we really are remain buried.  

And yet at points in our lives, we reach points where as much as we would like to be the person who is the perfect display for the world...  we are unable to accomplish this desire.  And we see that the desire for that perfect mask, actually makes us long to disappear...  to be erased from time...  and brings us in touch with death.


And yet with the world around us is dancing in the mask of comedy, seemingly missing the fact that our own mask has fallen to the floor and shattered.  And that in order to save us from falling into the draw that we call death they must risk also trusting us with who they are behind the mask.  So then we are faced with the question as the dance of death is lapping at our ankles, will anyone hear our cry within our heart for help... and willingly risk letting us know that despite the masks we all wear...  that we might see that they are as broken as we feel.

And yet calling it a comedy of death is actually the way we ignore the fact that in our world... people go out of their way to hurt people.  People they profess a great love to, and also people they hate.  And yet in that hurt, some around us feel so broken, and alone... That death seems like the only way to heal the hurts they see they are causing in the very people they love and yet are trying to steer away from the comedy of death... because that very act - bring a stop to the dancing and silence to all the voices of people who knew us.

And within me, years ago I faced for a small window of time being cut off from contact in what was then my world.  And recently I willingly went back to that world of silence, without contact to my world... 

In the quiet, away from what is left of my family.  The storms that had been gaining power inside of me came spilling out.  And the waves of emotions that threaten to drive me back into dancing with death... became ripples... fading into the lake.  And once back into the main body of water, their ability to live in my dreams and turn them into nightmares fades, just like the ripples in the lake after you drop a stone into the water.  But if we were to try to contain these ripples, you just might understand the hurricane of emotions that I feel inside of me... fighting to see the light of day.

And yet, in the world I grew up in, it was plainly clear that I either learned to contain the emotions that threatened to tear me apart, or to disappear.  You see, emotions have been drilled into my brain as showing the world that I am a failure, weak, and worthless.  And it forced me to learn ways to contain and deny that they even were possible.  And in this process... I learned that I would always struggle with this.  I had to do it perfectly for my mother to love me, along with lists of other things.  And that seemed to mean that I was never going to know love without the pain of learning by mistakes, which found me facing punishment and wondering how I would explain them away.  And this process with my mother became a different dance.  A dance for approval and love.  One that in time... I came to believe I would never master the dance and earn her love.  And yet, in the days before her death... the words I love you, came rolling out of her mouth... with no conditions, demands, or requests.  Years of being a servant for God, and praying my mother would love me...  ended with three little words and her death.  And in those moments, the comedy of death changed for me, FOREVER...

Photo: Credited to http://fifoglejdura.blog.pravda.sk/2014/07/15/kvoli-tebe/