What I'm Learning

For some unknown reason God keeps putting children into my life.  First it was Pablito in Guatemala, then a job as a Children's Ministries Coordinator and doing life with a beautiful family with three young children.  Now it's working with third through fifth graders in a school setting when I had specifically stated I preferred high school age.  Turns out it never matters what I want.  God is gonna do what God is gonna do, and somewhere in all this it's a lesson.  More often than not it seems like it's a lesson in trusting Him.  I constantly try to move ahead, do things on my own, without giving thought to trusting Him.  I need Jesus.  Can't do this without Him.  And I need community too.  Even though my life is a little lonely right now, He gives me community, caring people who want to be there and walk with me through the hard stuff and the good stuff.  It's a blessing.  So even though those naughty third graders get to me sometimes, I can learn from them, and be Jesus to them.

Living with illness.

I feel like a special needs child, unable to be left alone and constantly needing care and attention.  I'm not trying to say anything negative against children with special needs. They legitimately need care and attention, but also have a lot to offer the world if we stop and notice them.  I guess that accurately defines how I feel.  I legitimately need attention and have a hard time being by myself (usually), but I have a lot to offer if the world would stop and notice and look beyond the wounds and the surface.  There are a lot of differences between me and a special needs child and it probably isn't right to even compare myself to one, but one difference is that frequently their needs are noticeable.  On the flip side, my panic attacks and depression and PTSD are not noticeable at first glance or if you don't know me.  It's not something you talk about or share, but the symptoms and needs are no less life altering and life-interrupting than someone with a physical illness.  Living at home has been a blessing, but it has also been extremely difficult at times, both for me and my parents.  They want to help me, but don't know how.  I don't want to want their help, but I know I need it and I know they support me.  Our society has taught us that asking for help is a bad thing, that we always need to be independent.  But as I've walked a difficult journey, the one thing that keeps me going is a supportive community of people around me, whether it's my parents, my friends, pastors, mentors, etc.  We can't do this on our own.  We all need help and support and need to come to a place where we fall at the foot of the cross and say we can't do this on our own.  I've learned a lot in the past month about how much God loves me, is with me, and is waiting for me.  Living with a seemingly invisible illness is challenging in more ways than one, but I want to continue to work on finding my way back to Him and know this suffering was for a reason.

Communication at home.

Home can evoke a variety of emotions for different people. For me, it generally holds positive feelings and a knowing that I am safe there. However, having moved "home," aka back in with my parents, it is not easy. Not easy for me, but not easy for them either.  A definite loss of independence, along with feelings that I'm constantly being watched or what I'm doing isn't good enough, or should be doing more. That was the issue today. Mom freaked because she feels like she does everything around the house and no one helps her, etc.  What I wish more than anything is that we could all communicate better.  Mom could communicate her expectations clearly and concisely, and communicate when she is not happy about something. Dad could just communicate his feelings better in general. And I could improve my communication as well, though I don't think I need to disclose my every move or conversation.  Bottom line, communication is of utmost importance if the three of us are going to maintain sanity.  Let's hope we do.

Trusting isn't that easy

It's interesting that last July was when I started this blog, calling it the Trust Fall. But a lot happens in a year, and trusting isn't that easy.  When life seemingly fell apart this winter/spring, God was nowhere to be found.  I hate that saying that "if it feels like God is far away, guess who moved."  I've been wrestling with the picture of God that I had, what my expectations were of Him, because I can't understand why He allows so much suffering.  A God who has felt absent in recent sufferings is not a God I can trust, nor deal with.  And I don't think that either of us "moved," per say, I just think that I have had to change my perspective.  I'm slowly getting to that place, and finding a different picture of God.  I think that as I continue to blog (and try to stay on top of it this time!), I will begin telling my story.  More and more I'm hearing God telling me that we all have a story and it's meant to be shared. There are many parts of the story we can't control, but we can control our own part in our stories.
So, I'm not doing any trust falls at this point, but I think I'm getting to the place where I can think about trusting Him.  My pastor keeps telling me that I have to just walk through it, this struggle, in order to come out stronger and healthier on the other side. I would rather have a step by step plan of how to fix these problems so I can be healthier, but apparently it doesn't work like that.

Insanity and Hope

Here's a good idea. Start a blog and then don't write anything again for six months.  Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.

An update to the first post:  God gave me a good, at times difficult, summer off, basically doing nothing but working on getting healthy and finding balance.  I applied for a bunch of minimum wage, part time, "minimal stress" jobs but didn't get any of them.  Barely even got any interviews.  You know the standard questions people ask, like where you work and what you do? None of that applied to me. I quit social work, a burned out mess of a person with nothing to fall back on except the arms of Jesus. And even those felt pretty hard to hang onto sometimes, given my severe control issues.  So I've been learning to adjust my definition of who I am and came up with different answers to those questions. This past summer it was basically "I just chill and I'm trying to figure out my life," but now I get to say that I have a degree in social work, but work as the children's ministry coordinator at my church. I started there the day after Labor Day.  I know God must have orchestrated this because I got the whole summer off, and He has placed me in a position to work in the Hispanic neighborhood that I love and have felt called to for quite some time, all while doing ministry with the church.  However, this position also tells me a lot about God's sense of humor because I have never been considered one who loves children.  There are many challenges that come with working in one's church and I'm getting to experience that, but as I find a routine and implement some cool ministries I also see God working.

After all that...the reason for today's post.  Something I have a hard time remembering is that when you keep your expectations low, there is a much smaller chance of them getting smashed. I tend to have high expectations, especially of myself, and oftentimes of others too. High expectations create a much greater chance for failure.  Furthermore, to quote Albert Einstein, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  I have been insane. I've been considered crazy for other reasons too, but for purposes of this definition, I keep trusting, keep pursuing, even though I know it's wrong/stupid/bad for me, and I think things will be different.  When will I learn?  To an extent I think all of society has a level of Einstein's definition of insanity within them.  We get burned, get hurt, but we go back to the fire, back to the source, don't make changes for whatever reason because if we don't go back, it's like we're saying we're giving up hope- on that relationship, that career.  But something's gotta give.  I can't go back, only forward, and sometimes we do have to know when to call it quits, when there is no hope left- for that relationship, that career.  There will always be hope for people, and it always comes back to trusting God's plan, but here is where I call it quits on hope for that relationship I've been clinging to. It is only a "better than nothing" thing, something to fill the void because I feel so isolated and alone, and that isn't fair for him.  Jesus will fill the void if I let Him, if I keep coming to Him, and He will, and has been, providing some awesome women to be a part of my community.  There is a reason to hope.  Light shines in the darkness.

A New Blog on a Hard to Trust day

I've been formulating this blog in my head for the past couple weeks, and today turned out to be the day to get it started.  Today is one of those "hard to trust even though you know God has a plan and it's good and everything will work out and you have to stop being irrational and crying" days.  A little more than a month ago I decided, after many months of unhappiness and effects to my health, that I would resign from my job as a home based therapist.  This was a major step of faith because though I had been looking for another job, I hadn't found one yet.  But I knew that God was calling me to live a better life, a healthy life that glorified Him, so I quit.  Thus began what I'm thinking of as "the trust fall."  You know that game you played as a child (or in college!) where you stood with your back turned and someone stood behind you and you fell backwards, trusting that they would catch you.  A lot of times this is done as a "team building" exercise.  It usually felt like torture to me.   I like to be in control, not putting my life in some jokester's or weakling's arms!  So, that being said, living with no idea of what's next, or how I'll be able to support myself once my savings run out if no job comes along is really stinkin' scary.  What could God possibly have planned, and could he please let me in on it for a second?  As always though, He shows up.  He is there in the beautiful faces of my church community, He speaks through my precious friend Maribel who is helping me speak Spanish.  Seriously, if I could have even half the faith and wisdom that that woman has.  She's amazing.

So, here we are.  God doesn't make things easy.  As Maribel said, the path of God is difficult, and is only for the courageous.  He has certainly taken me on some adventures, and continues to do so.
Seguimos adelante.  We continue forward.