A week...

Honestly, I am amazed at how a week this year, still manages to bring to the front of my mind the feelings of the same week thirteen years ago.  You see, one of the times that I can clearly remember talking to my aunt was then.  It came in a phone call, because being in New York they had said that the plane had crashed in Pittsburgh.  And that would have meant that my family was affected.  And yet, we were affected.  It changed my brother's year at college... It reminded us to be grateful for the fact of all our friends who no longer worked in the towers.  And yet it also brought us a level of pain and loss.  Too many friends felt the sting of loss... and even then other friends became the "walking dead".

In this desire to push ahead and turn a day of death and destruction into Patriots Day... I wonder if the "walking dead" have been able to get unstuck and move forward.  It is a question that I may never know the answer to, because we left New York behind a long time ago... and being sued for divorce, many of the friends we have had are pushed because they were friends with my husband long before me.  And I have just come to accept that.  Accept that in this moving forward... my husband is getting almost everything.

And yet, I wonder if I am not be entrusted with the one person who is the blessing from God, and if that trust is worth more than all the money we could ever have.  And to still be able to love God...  Does that not make me richer than most people in this world?  I often wonder, and yet know that I may never know the answer to the question.  Still as I sit here beside my munchkin who is yet again sick enough to be back in the hospital...  I am thankful for the trust God has shown me with raising her, and allowing me to teach her to love God.  And in that teaching...  She is learning about those who came before her, so she can teach those yet to come...

Not really good-bye...

Today was a sad day for me.  It marked the end of a life for a very dear member of my extended family.  It was sad to sit inside the church and listen to the priest bless and ask God to forgive my aunt of any sins she may have forgotten to address when she was alive.  And yet, as I sat there...  I realized that the loss of my own mother had allowed me to be in the church to say good-bye to my aunt.  And yet, while I was losing my aunt here on earth...  I realized that I was gaining something that had been stolen from me for so many years.

You see, for whatever reason my mother had in her head, we were kept apart from her family and especially my father's family.  And this became so much clearer to me as I went thru the pictures that my parents had taken during my life.  When I was born, we were surrounding by their families.  They were there to take me to church the first Sunday I was allowed after I was born.  I could see them at my baptism and christening...  Easters, Thanksgivings, Christmases...  They were always there for me, and my parents. 

And then we began the series of moves...  Each move brought a new level of distance.  The photos of our whole family grew apart.  It started with months, but about 30 years ago... It turned into years.  And while I was still surrounded by my mother, father, and brother...  The other connections with family seemed to be trimmed away from my life.  The family became names and stories that my mother would tell me from time to time.  And I began to feel lost.

I already knew that I had ruined my mother's ideal of what her marriage to my father should have been.  I divided my father's attention, and added a burden of providing for me.  Yet, it was one he took on willingly.  It was my mother who wished I had never been born, because I began to take away the people she needed to know loved her.  And the biggest issue was that I took away her desire to constantly seek God.  Even now as an adult I can't understand how something as simple as my birth accomplished all of this.  It is like trying to explain our salvation with only talking about Christmas.

And with my mother passed on from this world...  I have been able to work on fixing the connections that were taken from me.  I in taking the step to acknowledge the loss of my aunt...  The person who was always smiling even when she was in pain and sick from chemo...  I found again... my aunt and my uncles...  cousins and their children... and even my great uncle and his family...  I found family that I held in my heart wondering what they were doing and why we shouldn't call them... shouldn't go see what might be up...  And over time with my mother's distance to all of our extended family...  I found that we were prisoners of her in her house.  The hardest part of this all was the fact that I became a child who didn't value her own life, and felt like I didn't belong in this world.

So today, in the pain of yet another loss in my world...  

I found connections... 

I found my family... 

And I found that I belong and have value to my family.

The sad part is that it took my becoming an orphan, to learn my value to my extended family.  It took the pain of years of living with my mother to be able to now begin to see where as much as she was trying to protect me, in that process she hurt me.  She took me away from the very family who loved me and wanted to spend time with me.  In that process, she also took away my sense of belonging to something bigger in our world... and in many ways tried to kill the part of me that needed to know I belonged and had a purpose...

Even if that purpose at times was to just be able to share smiles, hugs and kisses with my aunt and uncles to brighten the day... To be able to know that my desire to learn and understand this physical world allowed my family to watch me learn and grown.

So now, I wonder where these connections will now allow my daughter and I to be showered in love...  And to know that we both belong to something that is much bigger than the walls we live withing...

We belong to a family, and it is that family that encourages us to keep trusting God when we stumble.  And I now understand...  I have always needed to belong!!!

Death and Memories...

I grew up across church lines.  It is an interesting conversation, but that is for another day.  Yet, in this crossing of lines... I was born into a merge.  My mother was raised Catholic and my father was raised Orthodox.  In my life this line became the one that would matter the most to my father's family.  I didn't understand how much this line would matter, until I got married.

You see... my father's baby sister was a joy to be around.  It was fun hearing about all her travels and adventures.  Hear about her job and all the things a kid looks forward to as a part of being grown up.  And it was an exciting time with her.  It was on a visit to see her that I got to see and swim in Lake Erie for the first time in my life.  It was her doorstep that I showed up on at 1 in the morning when my mom's mom threw us out of her house, all because we were going to see both sets of family.  And going to see my father's family was like the worst thing my mom's mom could hear, because the attention of us was not focused all on her.

And arriving on my aunt's doorstep... we were welcome like the lost showing up.  We belonged and she didn't care that we were sleeping on her floor...  She gave us shelter when we didn't know where else to go.  I can remember that night, because my brother got so sick he was throwing up.  And my aunt picked up a roll of paper towels and said... I have cleaned up enough vomit thru chemo...  You made the mess, you get to clean it up.  And in the morning we were cheerfully awaken and able to spend the day with her and my yia yia...  Those memories are there...

And while we lived most of my life far away from her...  There were times when we would get to see each other.  Like the Thanksgiving of my freshman year in college... And then at my wedding...  And even at my daughter's first birthday party.  And yet at this moment my memories of her also have stopped to remember the reason that we drifted apart.  The reason that after my wedding and thru my father dying...  My last memories of her are scattered with the last time I remember us being together was for my daughter's first birthday party.

You see... The day I got married, which I still have good memories of... I made the choice to be married in the Catholic Church.  It was something that pleased my mother, and because it pleased my mother... my father was happy for me.  Because my father saw beyond the message/doctrine of any one Christian Church.    And my father knew that no matter which church I was married in...  I loved God.  Yet, the one person I thought would be thrilled that day for me... wasn't exactly.

The joy of sharing that day with my aunt, was shadowed by the fact that she was disappointed that I didn't get married in the Orthodox Church.  And at the point I learned of that disappointment, it was far too late to change a thing.  And I am not sure I would have changed anything.  And yet that disappointment turned into a wall.  One that we never seemed to overcome.  And yet that wall stayed in place for other reasons...  

After my father died... blame was thrown around.  We didn't do enough.  If only...  and that list was long...  This added fuel to the fire of the disappointment of where I was married.  And my mother built that wall bigger... and bigger.  And now years later and having traveled thru more loss and abuse that I like to think about...  I know that I let the abuse keep the wall between me and my aunt.  And now she is gone.  

And with death I can't pick up the phone and try to locate her.  I can't make the choice to finally friend her on Facebook.  I am left with the memories of days long past.  And also left with regrets in my heart.  But I am left with one hope...

My hope is in the fact that my aunt shared my faith.  She loved God.  And maybe in heaven I will get the chance to regain what was lost in our broken world... Lost thru abuse and control on my life, and anger in my mother's...  And then we can dance, laugh, and talk till we feel like we couldn't keep our eyes open another minute.  And maybe then I will get to know what God did in her life all those years that the wall existed.  

And right now... I pray my father is hugging his sister.  Telling her how much we loved her.  And that the wall that my mother built higher has been crumbled so that she can be in fellowship with my aunt in heaven also...  And while all I know about heaven is that we are in God's presence...  I hope that what I pray is true.  Because I miss my aunt, and I no longer will be able to talk to her in my life.  

Yet, in eternal life...  

All I can do is hope and pray...

Choices...

Each of us has a lot of choices we face each day.  And yet, many of us never stop to think about what the other side would look like.  We get up and get dressed in our brand new clothes.  Breakfast is the next thing on our mind...  And that is where the choices become hard.  At least in my world.

You see, I don't get the luxury of my husband... He is sitting in jail being served three meals a day.  So, he has no clue what it is like to wake up and make the choice to not think about food.  To avoid the thought so much that you seek any way to make your body think it has been feed, even when there is nothing left to eat.  And actually there is, but who wants their child to know the pain of hunger.  So you make a choice... and make sure the one person who needs the food to grow and learn is fed.

Yet in this world, hunger is seen as a problem for other places, not for the backyard of the States.  We see pictures of children in other remote areas, with pleas for funds for the ability to feed those children.  And yet, here we are left with the fact that if you are hungry... you have done something wrong.  Of course we have programs to help, but it is not a great amount of help.  And the comments that come with it... are enough to break your heart.  Yet, for the sake of your child you are expected to swallow any self worth that you have and submit to the constant verbiage of the community stating that you must be lazy... you like living off of the work of others.  And yet, without knowing a thing about you...  The world is telling you that nothing you can do now... except get off of the government doll... will ever show that you belong.

And sometimes, it gets to be to much.  You are given so many rules once you are stuck in this system that you begin to wonder where you even stand a chance to live.  And yet, with the planning you do... sometimes the month is easy and other times you are faced with the days until you are able to have fund for food... wondering how you will feed your child... Let alone even thinking about the fact that you need to eat also.  Sadly in order to make the funds last... you can not make the best choices of food.  And are stuck watching sales and eating a lot of pre-packaged junk in order to make it thru the month.  Then you face the comments about how you are misusing the funds for food...  But when you have just about $3.00 a day to feed your whole family...  You learn how to stretch the funds.  You learn to ignore the looks and comments, even when you feel the last of your ability to know you can provide slip out of your fingertips.  And you fall into that mold of being poor.  Knowing that the label poor leads to people thinking you are stupid, lazy, and a whole list of other things...  And wanting to cry because you are not.  This is not the place you wanted to be, yet it is where you have landed due to the events of your life.

Fear? Faith? and...

These past few weeks have been a challenge for me.  And yet why they were is because of fear.  Fear is apparently an innate emotion.  And it is not alone, it comes along with joy, sadness, fright, dread, horrors, panic, anxiety, acute stress reaction, and anger.  And you would think that I might be able to understand something of each of these emotions... but I don't.  And yet, I am struggling with the fear verses anxiety battle.  And somehow I am suppose to be able to tell them apart.  

And yet fear tends to be associated with the wicked.  And yet fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.  And what is that wisdom that we are seeking.  Is it a greater understanding of God, or an ability to make sense of this world around us.  And yet how do you want to understand a world that is constantly changing.  Changing so often that I wonder what I should cling to for support.  And while I know we should put our faith in God... There are times that if that is all we have.  We find ourselves alone.  

And yet going forward... If we can control our fear does that mean we are in a place of God?  Or is it more along the lines that fear is equated to the pain we suffer when we give birth to our child.  Which makes me wonder if fear relates to the pain we feel in our body each and every day.  And yet...  I know what it is to fear God.  I know what it is to fear not meeting God's standards.  And I even know what it is to fear my parent's standards...  

Where this all leaves me... is trying to figure out if the fear I live with day after day is rational or irrational...  Is years of torture in knowing that I was a failure that has left the fear?  Or is it just the fact that I am broken?  I might not know right now, but I want a better understanding of fear... And to know how faith can replace fear......