Brave Things

My favorite relative did an amazing thing that forever made him my hero the last eight years of his life.
He made a life-changing decision to address a problem instead of running from it anymore and I saw him as one of the bravest men I had ever met.
I decided that I would remember him every time I thought of NOT doing something because I was scared, or "too old", or it was "too late". It has served me well...when I act on it!

I am 63 years old as I write this and although to date I've not jumped out of a plane, taken up rock climbing, or learned to surf, I am doing things that genuinely are big and brave and hard...for me.

Let me back up a bit.
I was a shy kid, sort of had a small comfort zone and didn't much like straying out of it.
I was also a tall, skinny, pale, blonde girl...sort of noticeable even though I did everything to NOT be noticed.
My mom, with best intentions...don't we moms often unintentionally give our children fodder for their future counseling sessions by doing things with best intention...but, I digress...which I do a lot...my mom used to want to sew or purchase outfits for me that were bright and bold. The tags should have said they were made by "HERE I AM! LOOK AT ME!!!"

I was so very thankful that I went to a school for the first seven years of my educational life that required uniforms.

Anyway, I used to dream of being a pilot, or a singer on a stage, or a heroine of epic proportions and my heroines often died...so my dreams were big, but I hated attention being drawn to me...I was shy.

So, when I say that I am doing things that are genuinely hard or brave for me. I am speaking of that hidden "young self" that will forever be inside of me and that often causes me to be stunned when I make a statement like the one in the earlier paragraph, "I am 63 years old"!

One of the hard, brave things I am doing is an elimination diet. This particular one, for some reason I have forgotten, is called an "easy" elimination diet. It is comprised of four phases of 35 days in each phase in which I eliminate between two and four food groups or additives and then after three weeks one at a time reintroduce them into my diet. The idea is to figure out what I have been feeding my gut that has made it sick and uncooperative for years now...yes, years!

Now, at first I thought, "I should've done this a long time ago,"  because honestly I have figured out two culprits already (I am into phase one for well over a month due to messing up) and I feel so much better already. Part of the reason I thought "Why did I not do this before" is because quite a few friends of mine that are my daughters' ages have done this and are thrilled with how great they feel.

Then I realized: Wrong, wrong, wrong! When I was their age everyone was trying to eat healthier, but no one was  offering this type of program or advice, nor were people even aware of some of our personal food demons that were making us sick or sluggish.

Nope, I am proud that even though I am a bit older- by a lot - than many of these younger friends, (got that?) I am addressing it now....AND, I have a lot more years of eating habits literally under my belt than said younger women, so it is a heck of a lot harder for me to hit the "redo" or "refresh" button at this stage of life...but I'm doing it!!!! A quick shout out to the aforementioned friends for being my inspiration!!

One of the other things I am doing is slowly working at getting back into the music business. My hubby and I played professionally in our pre-children years when you actually played four forty-five minute sets a night at a club where people came to actually listen to the band and dance and drink and other stuff. Well, lots of the other stuff went on in the parking lot or in upstairs rooms in the club, but I once again digress.

We then continued throughout most of our married life to play music, but usually leading worship at church, which we have loved. However, God tried to gently nudge us out of that gig and after twenty-seven years we started going to a new church and, voila, ended up back on the worship team and once again heading the worship team. We left that church, took a year plus off of organized religion and then started going to a new church plant and before we knew it we were back at it.

Well, suffice it to say that God let us blunder about a bit, then we decided it was time to exit their music ministry as well. God is often scratching his chin and chuckling, I am quite sure.

Now we have started working up set lists, and a friend has asked to play with us and we are beginning the arduous task of approaching pub owners, etc. about playing at their establishments.

We also have been playing once a month for an interdenominational prayer group that has the most astonishing array of men and women, usually more men than women which is sort of cool for a prayer meeting when you think about how historically it's the women folk that seem to populate such gatherings. These are sweet and free-flowing and we love them.

The pub thingie is unnerving and scary and we only want to play early in the evening for no more than two hours. Things change, we have changed, and  getting home early doesn't feel uncool anymore...it hasn't for a very long time!
This is another brave thing.

I am realizing that I am a "hard learner", meaning that for some reason I am wired to use denial and  excuses, and to let my fear of failure or fear of success, keep me in indecision mode...which by the way IS a decision!

I have been in therapy for years, as well as several 12 Step groups and understand the "whys" of many of my behaviors. I have also made miraculous progress in so many areas of my life.

However, there are certain behaviors that reveal themselves in my response to some stimuli and stressors (good and bad stressors) that can only be called self-defeating, fear-driven saboteurs of my growth in certain areas of my life. Such as the above named areas of health and music...and actually, come to think of it, this... writing.

Now, something that has come late to me in my sixty-three years ( remember: "hard learner") is that I am not an extrovert as many have labeled me in my adult years. I am a social introvert. Meaning this: I get recharged and reenergized when I have down time and alone time with me, myself, and I. I love people and love connecting and interacting, but it is often scary and hard for me to walk into it initially , then I engage and most often enjoy, yet when it's over I cannot wait to get home to my music, book, favorite TV show, a soak in the whirlpool, or wherever my retreat mode leads me.

I am also what blogger, author, speaker Glennon Doyle Melton calls a "feeler" and I spent a long time trying to not be a feeler! I am hard-wired to be one and because of some things said to me early in my life about how I was "different" from the rest of my family and "wondering just where I came from" I was convinced that it was a negative thing to be avoided or at least hidden from others.

When we want to hide something or change something about our core selves it means attempting to reshape ourselves and putting on a facade and a persona. We become Shape Shifters of a sort.

We get so good at keeping others from knowing who we really are that we eventually try to leave our real selves behind, bury them. The longer we go before finding and reasserting who we really are, the more painful and difficult the process is.
It took me years...and I still discover pieces of myself that got left behind from time to time! I am working with my Designer to reestablish the 100% true Marsha, and at times it feels like an adventure and at times it is no fun at all.

Here's the interesting part. The whole time we are hiding our genuine self, it is always just underneath the surface trying to break through. It's that subtle yet nagging sense that  "something feels off" or  "I always feel just a little out of kilter with my life and my world" that haunts us sometimes at night and saps us of energy.
I think that is why so often when someone has a serious life-crisis, or a breakdown, it's often more of a breakthrough by their true persona. Those crises are often a gift of grace as they allow us to see that we have been living untrue to ourselves and letting some other false identity take our place.

Well into adulthood I found myself finally admitting that I was struggling with depression and I sought help from a counselor.
Once we began to clear the debris...which was very painful... sort of like shedding my outer skin so I could grow...I saw that the "feeler" introvert that was also extremely creative was not a bad person to be. I began to travel lighter as I threw off the oppressive identity I had allowed to curl about my soul like a boa constrictor.

I accepted a part in a musical, the lead part! I was tricked into that - ha! I continued participating in it playing various roles for quite a few years after that. We are talking a production that our church put on, so not Broadway, but one of the most well thought out productions imaginable with sellout crowds at various venues around the city.

I also began playing bass guitar again and, as I shared earlier, getting more involved in our church's music ministry, eventually as the director of that ministry and then again at the other church we attended for a number of years.

The point is...when we realize that we may be living a lie. We also begin to understand we are not allowing others the privilege of knowing us and not allowing ourselves to flourish as who we are created to be. Then when we take steps to get in touch with who we started out as...well we can flourish and fully be!  And that is the freedom to be. That is indeed freedom to lay hold of!

So, if we ever get hired to play (we are fun to listen to) come have a beer or a glass of wine and enjoy. I will be the one that's not in bright colors, feels a bit uncomfortable and having a blast!

The Who say it pretty well...   check out the link!

When (We) People Unwittingly Say Things That Hurt More Than Help

It is raining hard at five a.m. and the birds are already noisily awaiting the dawn. The cloudy skies are sliding from murkiness into a more defined dull gray.
Now one raucous robin is insistently calling out a repetitive monologue.
Being awake in the wee hours always is at once a place of deep connectivity to God and profound loneliness.

Our daughter's little almost 8 week old baby boy is in the hospital since yesterday early morning. The ER docs were concerned about meningitis so after getting an IV in him and doing some blood draws and catheterizing him they added a spinal tap to the list!
It was so very necessary to rule out that terrible, yet treatable illness. It was also in and of itself terrible for her and her husband to watch him go through such a tortuous diagnostic tool after such a long sick night at home fighting to breathe through the mucous that was accumulating too fast for his little body to deal with.
She texted us to let us know they were going to the ER.
Then she texted to let us know they were admitting him.
We finally got to hear her voice and she was tired and drained and behind her resolve one could here..."I want my mom. I want someone to take care of me while I take care of my new baby boy who is so sick and I am so scared."
Yesterday was Mother's Day...

Mother's Day is a "holiday" that I used to love. Now, I have mixed feelings about it.
My mom is gone...almost five years, but this is one of those "holidays" that for anyone who has lost their mom, has a difficult or broken relationship with her or their child, wishes they were a mom, or anyone who has lost a child feels the pain in their heart not unlike that of salt being rubbed into a wound.

I will go to my daughter if she asks me to come into their struggle over 800 miles away. I will get on a plane and be there with her and her little family of four. She texted in the middle of the night that it was "a lonely feeling to be there with her baby" who was spitting up his entire feeds with so much mucous, then falling to sleep with his little IV in. She said, "I work in this place weekly. I have a deep empathy and compassion for those who must spend weeks and months in the hospital." She is an oncology nurse. You would want her for your nurse if, God forbid, you ever needed one.

Our entire family has a strong faith in God who created and designed each of us and numbered our days. We know he is mighty and powerful and able to save the helpless. We also know that he realizes we are frail like the grass that flowers in the morning yet withers at night. He is a God who weeps with us and holds us and carefully tends our hurting hearts.

There are evidently several nasty viruses that are going around right now. The doctors told our daughter and her husband that the older kids and adults can fight it off better than these new little ones can. Their 23 month old had the virus first, then the little one, and both our daughter and her husband are coming down with it now as well. He let them know that not getting their little guy into the hospital would've had disastrous consequences and the docs were so glad they had gotten him in.

I know that when people tell you that " We went through this" or "My (older) child or grandchild went through this" and "are fine" or "quickly bounced back", they are trying to help and offer some sort of encouragement. However, it FEELS like a dismissal of the real fears and struggles our family is vulnerably sharing with them, inviting them into our moment to just be there with us and offer prayer and support .
How does one let others know that they covet and appreciate their prayers, yet please do not offer platitudes or try to minimize what is going on at this time in our lives comparing this situation to one that is truly not the same, and even if they were, that is not, in my book, the definition of empathy.

I guess what I am realizing is that it is at such times we are called to take the higher ground and exhibit grace, even if what someone unwittingly does feels graceless. I also realize that I have most likely done the same unwittingly and may even do it again (although I hope I only grow in this area).
So, I rest in the knowledge that the only perfect co-sufferer and compassionate friend is Jesus and not expect all of our friends and family to respond perfectly or at times even well.

Thank you God for caring through the long night watches so far for our little Crosby. Thank you for friends and family that "get it" and for those that love us clumsily as well...they do love us, and for that I am grateful. I have loved You clumsily and yet you never alter your love towards me!

 Complacency and lethargy swirl about the soul like a net entangling our feet. We would swim and leap through the water, gliding as we were created to do, but cannot. We would embrace our days and move through them with purposeful energy, but this lethargy is a shadowy weight that causes mind and body both to respond with a sluggishness that fatigues a person more than any hard labor ever would. What or whom is the origin of such lethargy? Hmmm...Oh, but that we would respond like the Psalmist! 

Psalm 57:

"5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.
6 They spread a net for my feet—
I was bowed down in distress.
They dug a pit in my path—
but they have fallen into it themselves.
7 My heart, O God, is steadfast,
my heart is steadfast;
I will sing and make music.
8 Awake, my soul!
Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.
9 I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.
10 For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
11 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth."

And so in my heart being steadfast to God, I will sing and make music and awaken the dawn! 
Thank you God that you are stronger than our enemy who uses my flesh against me to render me inactive in my pursuit of you and all that you have for me! Just keeping my eyes on you...let's me awaken the dawn! Wow!!!!

"But I will sing about your strength. 

In the morning I will joyfully sing 

about your mercy." Psalm 59:16

Why IS Enough Not

ENOUGH?!

It is crazy the way we consume and then consume to store what we've consumed and then have sales and make donations to make more room to consume more!!!!!

STOP! I want off!!! 

I have been hungering for space in my life since 2004. It's in my prayer journals and in my devotions and written on my heart!

Then why has it taken this long to let go?

Because I didn't want God more than anything or anyone else in my life, plain and simple.

I so often have felt like this... 

but... all I do is this...

It is, was , will ALWAYS be my heart...it's a heart problem. The more cluttered my life gets the more distracted I am from what really matters.

SOMEtimes...

that's a good coping or defense mechanism, but ULTIMATELY...

I miss the real life I was meant to live and lose touch with the real person I was created to be because...

I have lost sight, I have lost touch with God...my one true, faithful, forever LOVER of MY SOUL!

He always is here.

He always is in love with me and calling me.

He always wants to just be with me and to bask in one another's presence.

I  have filled up the empty times, places, spaces, and seasons in my life with STUFF...good and bad STUFF.

Well, I am tired, fatigued, and weary because nothing, no activity, no person, no ministry, no addiction can replace the very source and Love of my life.

It's funny. I am a creative artistic type, but have a strong desire for order. I have never been able to figure that out...and maybe never will...but MAYbe...just MAYbe... some of that is because I have been unsettled and distracted like Martha. 

             

Luke 10: 41-42

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed - or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her."

Martha wasn't wrong to serve, but she was possibly motivated not out of love and devotion to her Jesus, but perhaps for baser reasons. Reasons such as approval, acceptance, prestige, and on and on. We've all been there and done that! 

I FEAR...

I have lost much time with that mindset far too often. I sense my God has been grooming me to quiet myself and let go on so many levels that it has been scary and difficult, and yet exhilarating and freeing. The things of this world, this life we think is oh so real...it has been slowly losing it's flavor for me, like gum that's been chewed too long. 

HOWEVER...

God knows me and knew just how long I would dawdle. He knew my tolerance for staying with "fillers" and "fluff" and the idols that would never fill me up or quench my thirst...and He just waited and loved me and gently spoke terms of endearment to me. Sigh! What a lover He is! What a pursuer of my heart he has been. Grace...it finally broke through and into my numbed out mind and heart and said, "I'm here, I've been waiting. What a sweet journey we will have in this life and after!" 

I KNOW...

I will stray back sometimes. I will heed the call of the sirens. I also know, that it is less often and that I more quickly find myself back at His feet, letting Him stroke my hair and speak truth and light and life into me...filling me up. 

Psalm 63:1-8

(When David was in the desert)

You God,are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you, 

My whole being longs for you,

In a dry and parched land where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and glory.

Because your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify you.

I will praise you as long as I live,

and in your name I will lift up my hands.

I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;

With singing lips my mouth will praise you.

On my bed I remember you;

I think of you through the watches of the night.

Because you are my help,

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

I cling to you,

Your right hand upholds me. 

What more could I need? He is enough.

Once Again It's 4 a.m. 

So many things could be waking me up.

Is it the 12 hour decongestant I took at 8 a.m. yesterday morning?

Is it my "time of life"... again?

Is it the "blue light" stimulation from being on the computer too close to bedtime?

Is it the recurring back stiffness and at times pain from this herniated disc?

Do one of these things awaken me, but then my mind switches to the "on" mode?

Images and thoughts come unbidden into the half awake/half asleep place.

I finally realize I have been awake too long to stay in bed and go back to sleep.

I have to get up, make my beloved fragrant hot Aveda Comfort Tea/ Sinus Soother Sleepytime cocktail, sit in the semi-darkness of dimmed lights and get the thoughts out of my head.

The images and thoughts are so many things...

Too many things to write out here...

God, You know I desire to sleep deep and undisturbed. You know that it has so long been an issue, so I trust you in this...again.

I feel secure in you when I fall to sleep and what can I do but turn to you when I "fall awake"?

I lay my sighs before you and all those things that make up those sighed prayers...all those concerns, all those images of people I love, people I know or have met, and those murky images of the past or of an unknown future.

I know you hear me, I want to wait in expectation, but I also want to sleep...the deep restful sleep that I seem to remember from some time a very long time ago.

The furnace cycles on, the house creaks as cold areas warm up, I have finished my tea and and as David the Psalm-writing king did I also I offer my words, my sighs, my cries, my prayers, my voice, and my request to You O Lord.

Help me to wait in expectation...to sit with you a while and just be in your presence...to know you.

Breaking Bread

Two things I love are traveling and preparing food and eating with loved ones and friends.
The traveling costs a fair amount as we dream of returning to Italy someday after two trips there and amazing memories made and food shared! So, cooking and eating food here is more realistic in my life right now.
The winter is always when my "inner cook" surfaces at our home. There's just something about the cooler temps and shorter days that make it more pleasant to be in the warm, aromatic kitchen. Whether chopping (very therapeutic by the way), baking, or stirring and sautéing, I love to feed my senses and love to feed others' senses as well.
We've exchanged the art of hospitality, comfortable "down time" around a family table for the art of entertaining and impressing others with our culinary achievements and beautiful, creative presentations.

http://www.justapinch.com/recipes/soup/vegetable-soup/squash-bacon-and-swiss-cheese-soup.html

One of my favorite memories is of having a friend over in the middle of the day and serving her leftover homemade chicken pot pie and a salad and sitting in our old, funky eating area next to the kitchen and talking and sharing for hours that winter afternoon. It warms me every time I think of it.

I need to ask her if it does the same for her.

There's so many more. Sitting with friends at our table or theirs after a homemade meal, sipping wine then, hot tea or coffee, lingering over some sort of desert and just being with one another and sharing in one another's lives, the good, the hard, and the reality. Laughter and tears and often some praying. We seldom leave the table the entire evening!
It is quite possibly one of my favorite times of the day.
Even when it's just Fred and I, I love the camaraderie of working together in the kitchen on the evening's meal, sipping a glass of wine and catching up on one another's day. Then we either sit and with music playing or we have a few lovely BBC shows that we are addicted to and we stream those often stopping them to talk about something going on in them or to clear the table and finish up our show or save the rest of it for another evening.
Shauna Niequist says in her book Bread and Wine that really communion is whenever we gather with others and share food.
"Communion is connection, remembrance" and "He's here! God is here, and he's good. Every time we eat, every time we gather, every time the table is filled: He's here. He's here, and he is good."

FEARFUL and Yet God...

 FEAR - God

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

     

Fall is here and it is my favorite time of year. It's when things supposedly slow down a bit. 

Yard work tapers off more and more. 

Outdoor gatherings are more mellow. 

School schedules dictate earlier bedtimes...quieter evenings at home.

This fall also holds fear for me.

An uninvited guest pushing it's presence into my thoughts and at times into my heart.

I DO firmly believe that we are to look at our problems through the lens of our God and not the other way around

I am a person of prayer and committed to praying for those I love and even for some I may not particularly like. I pray for myself as well and am quick to ask for prayer from those with whom I feel safe doing so.

It's not like this has never entered my life before. nor is this the FIRST fall I have found fear an unwelcome companion at times dogging my heels.

But...

I have three friends at the moment dealing with breast cancer.

One is recovering from it and the treatment (mastectomy and treatments) and she is a beautiful woman and friend and wife and mom! Strength is what she exudes, though I know she often does not feel strong, she has endured multiple major health challenges! Sonja, I love you so deeply! 

Two are newly diagnosed and just starting treatment.

My friend Linda is a peer as far as time of life and age and is just starting radiation after her diagnosis, biopsy, and surgery in August. She has a wonderful attitude and faith!!! My heart breaks though as she endured her sweet husband's own battle with cancer several years ago and finally had to release him to the Lord. A year later she also said goodbye to his father at the same hospice center AND room! We were to get together today after her radiation treatment to celebrate our August birthdays at a local restaurant...alas, she's not having a good day and we had to cancel again.

My other friend is Rachel, a young wife and mom of two girls, who just moved far from her established home with her husband when he accepted a lead pastor position in another state. A few years ago Rachel's husband, Matt, also battled cancer and beat it! However, it forever alters your life no matter the outcome. Rachel, diagnosed in September with breast cancer, is presently starting chemotherapy and even with her tremendous sense of humor and her faith she is able to share honestly how hard this really is on so many levels.

For the past several years, I was having mammograms every six months because they found a spot they wanted to monitor. I went for several of those and then talked with my primary care doc who I trust very much. He agreed with me that since it hadn't changed and I have a history in the past of lots of Fibroid cysts and there is no family history of breast cancer that I should take a break from all the radiation exposure and mammograms and wait until after the first of 2015 to get another one.

I was good with that...we are looked at here in the U.S. in amazement by Europe as over-reactionary and needlessly scaring women and performing lumpectomies and mastectomies when the "cancers" being excised would often not create any problems for the woman and she would die a natural death before it ever impacted her life, if ever.

I WAS good with it...

However, I also have lost sweet friends to breast cancer and I have a daughter that is an oncology nurse, so I do not have my head in the sand...I know that there is real breast cancer and I am seeing these three friends deal with it right now.

My problem is that this has all triggered my own fears about my situation and I am going to God asking him to bolster my faith and to remind me that it is he alone is who responsible for each and every one of us.....I am not doing well right this moment. I do believe my fears and my problems are small in the light of who God is. I do! The more I stay in the scriptures the better I do, but sometimes I just have "a day" or  "a week" or even "a season".

I guess I just want to be real and honest about this all and in the midst of it ask anyone who just might happen across this blog to lift my three friends up in prayer and pray for me as well. I know my eternal destiny and that is truly amazing as far as dealing with my mortality. Sometimes though, in the quiet night hours I lie awake and Fear knocks, I try to see if I can feel what my mammograms see, I can't, I think of these women that I love and I do not want them to endure any more losses and then I pray for us all...and then I cry...life here is not what was intended for us...