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I just heard a sermon about risking failure and stepping out in faith. (So much easier said than done, but definitely pays off in the end.) I’ve gotten one clear message from God about my pursuit of seminary, and it isn’t the best news possible. The single recurring message I’ve gotten is that I might not walk away from this with a degree.

Now, having once unsuccessfully attempted grad school, this isn’t the kind of thing I want to hear, exactly. But I do know one thing for sure, and that is that God has better things in store for us than we can even imagine. I would give anything to walk away from this endeavor with a Master’s degree, well, almost anything.

For whatever reason, be it selfish, or egotistical, or just simply wanting to have faith in myself and my ability again, I want that degree. I’d be lying if I said that the prospect of not ending up with one isn’t disappointing; but I also realize that I’m not in this process to to restore my faith in myself, I’m in it to grow in my faith in God.

My ultimate goal in this process is to grow closer to God/know God more intimately; to become like a seed planted on good soil; to exemplify the kind of life that a follower of Christ lives; to serve God, and to bring glory to God.

I’m just a baby in my faith. I’m coming up on 3 years since I gave my life to Christ. A lot of people know Christ their whole lives. I do believe I have something to offer in service to God, a new perspective, some definite talents.

At the end of the day, if I reflect honestly, I do believe that God isn’t necessarily saying that I definitely will not end up with the degree I want. I believe God is saying that this shouldn’t be my goal, or my focus. I do want so much more than a degree from this process. A degree needs to be a take it or leave it kind of deal. If I get one, great! If I don’t, I will walk away with knowledge and wisdom that are so much more valuable than a framed piece of paper on my wall. That alone needs to be enough.

Isn’t that true in so many situations? Our number one goal should be to seek God wholly, not to find satisfaction in things of this world.

Still, letting go of that dream will be tough. I resolve to do it, though. I cannot give myself fully to this process if I am in any way putting my focus and my hope in something as ultimately meaningless as a degree.

If you can, please pray for me in this process of letting go of my ideas of success; and starting on the road toward reaching the potential that God has set for me in this journey. Thanks a million!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ROXTFfkcfo

This is a powerful post about the things that really matter!

And a video to put things into perspective!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ROXTFfkcfo

Your life isn’t complete until you’ve seen these adorable wee little things.

I just wanted to help you get your cuteness fill for the day.  How can you be sad or mad when you look at those lil’ guys?  Sending my love!  Have a great day!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRAHhDjaviA

“I Am” by Kirk Franklin

It is hard to believe sometimes, looking back at my photos from childhood, that the kid in those pictures was me.  It is hard to look at them today, with an adult perspective and understand what things must’ve been like for me then.  My perspectives on things were a lot more simple, even if the experiences themselves were not.  See, times have changed.  My life has changed.  I understand far more about myself than I ever did when those photos were taken.  I cannot look at them now, without the intense desire to nurture the little girl staring back at me.  The same goes for photographs of my sister.  A psychologist now, I often wonder how much of her experience of childhood has become convoluted by an academic understanding of how the mind works.  Whether it is sad, or just something that simply is, those times can only be glanced at, much like we glance at the photos themselves.  Those moments in our lives are over, and all we can really do is make sense of what we went through, so that the same mistakes are not made as we move forward in our lives.  

I think the same can be said for photos from other moments in my life.  I could look back at pictures from a little more than a year ago, and realize that I was suicidal when they were taken.  Or that recovery had not quite taken hold in my life.  Or that I had completely given up on the God that I now know and love so very dearly.  

It is alarming and confusing to consider that I was the person in those photos.  I was that person, drinking recklessly and taking pictures to remember things that alcohol would blur.  I was that person, the beautiful young woman, seductively staring at the lens.  I hadn’t eaten in days, and the last time I had eaten, I didn’t keep it down.  The operative word in those snapshots being “was.”  It is important to always consider how a few simple turns can take me to that place, and that I’m no better than anyone else struggling with those things right this minute.  I am also, however, no longer the person I used to be.  I am a new person.  Time, work, experience, honesty, love, care, and most importantly, God, have all made me into a new being.  And as easy as it would be for me to become the person I was, I know that I don’t have to.  I have so many supportive loved ones to reach out to.  I have communities, families, and supports who pour into me spiritually.  I guess you could say, I have connections.  I know people.  I know people who know people.  🙂

I wish I could convey how God has changed my life, but again and again, I find myself at a loss for words as far as that goes.  

Sunday was Easter.  The service at the church I went to had me in tears.  They posed the question, “What difference does it make?”  Throughout the service, people walked up with posters with a word on it, conveying who they used to be.  After holding it up for a moment, they flipped it over and showed who they had become because of God.  I started to think about all the things my poster could say.  

Silenced… Empowered.  

Suicidal… Thriving.  

Inconsistent… Unwavering.  

Self-centered… Compassionate.  

Bitter… Forgiving.

Combative… Serene.

Stagnant… Taking Off!

Apathetic… Hopeful.

Here’s the one I actually made a picture for.  It makes me smile.:

People from my church will get that one.  Or people from the south in general.

So, I’ll be making my transition soon.  I’m taking another step down in care.  I’ll have a little more freedom, and I’ll basically be starting my life over.  Like… completely over.  I’m thrilled.  And excited.  And hopeful.  And terrified.  And willing.  My heart is open.  My mind has transformed.  My spirit has blossomed.  My faith has strengthened.  If I didn’t trust God completely, I wouldn’t be doing this at all.  I’d venture to guess that if I somehow had the opportunity anyway, I’d still be far too frightened to do it.  

So, where do I start? Well, I’m still waiting for my sister to post my previous post, which I hand-wrote and mailed to her for posting. (Ahem)

Life is pretty much non-stop here. We start at 7:15 am with our first group and end at 9:30 pm. We have 8 groups in total, with 3 snacks and 3 meals. We have a weekly outing. Last week, we went to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Usually, we go to Michael’s, Wal-Mart, or to get manicures. I’m in desparate need of a mani/pedi.

Recovery is a really intense process, as it turns out. About a week in, I started to desperately wonder what I had gotten myself into. I guess the first goal is to tear down any harmful coping mechanisms you’ve built up to avoid your emotions. I’ve been pretty successful with that, but it took time. I feel like I am now in recovery with all of my addictions. I’m on week 16 or 17 now. I’m starting to lose count.

Often, the result of losing your old ways of coping is a flood of uncomfortable feelings, the ones you’ve been avoiding for, basically a lifetime. None of it is much fun. In fact, the words agony and torture come to mind.

I had about 3 goals in mind for my time here. The first was to address my addictions. The second was to address my trauma. The third goal was to develop spiritually, to a place where the first place I turn in difficult moments would be God and prayer. I feel like I’ve accomplished 2 of those things, and now am in the stage of maintaining them. At the moment, I’m in the process of addressing trauma. It is not easy, and often feels about as comfortable as wearing full footie pajamas made of wool in Louisiana in the hottest part of summer. I’m sure you get the idea.

At the same time, I am extremely pleased with what I have accomplished, all current discomfort aside. I also have the intense comfort that only God can offer in the most difficult times in one’s life.

I guess that’s all I have at the moment. I only have limited time on the internet, though I’ll hopefully be going to step down to the transitional level, sometime in the next few weeks.

Please, feel free to share any comments or questions. I know it’ll be the only way I have to talk to some of you at the moment. I hope all is well with everyone. I’ll be sending my love.

*****

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it means to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do this through him who gives me strength.

Philippians 4:11-13

Over the past week, I have realized that logic and faith are not mutually exclusive.  Beyond this, though, I have started to recognize that like God and the devil, good and evil, yin and yang, male and female, high and low, hot and cold, dark and light, right and wrong, etc… etc… Logic and hope do not simply occur concurrently in our world.  As different as they are, as much as they oppose one another, the truth is that one cannot survive without the other.

So much has led me to this conclusion.  Perhaps this isn’t a conclusion at all.  It seems that with this realization, a journey has commenced.  It is not a different journey, like changing lanes or starting new chapters.  This epiphany leads me to believe that, though I have been breathing for almost 28 years, my life is just beginning now.  Some Christians may refer to this experience as a baptism or being “born-again.”  Buddhists see such a phenomenon as a rebirth or reincarnation.  For me, it resembles being born for the very first time, because up until this moment, despite each breath, I was dead.

I will refer to my life before this moment as my “pre-journey.”  It started roughly nine months prior to October of 1983, on a day that, despite my existence, I would like to pretend didn’t happen, mainly because the very thought totally grosses me out.  Maybe that’s my first mistake.

When my mother went into labor on the day of my birth, I held tight and refused to budge.  Not much has changed.  Unfortunately for myself, armed with a degree, a scalpel, nurses, and drugs, a doctor took the liberty of cutting my mother open and ripping me from the dark warmth of being cradled in the womb, into this cold and savage world.

With that being said, I’m hoping you can sense my dissatisfaction with that agonizing moment being the beginning of my story.  This moment began a long-standing belief that being brought from the darkness into the light, was actually a violent, and unfathomably painful experience.

My theory is that I had experienced a glimpse of this world before, and knew I wanted no part.  I’ll let you interpret that in your own way, or as they say in AA, “take what you like and leave the rest.”

Through all of this, only two consistent beliefs have survived.  The first being that I have something to offer this world.  The second is that I am supposed to write.

My week-old epiphany is summed up like this: without hope, proceeding with life would lack logic.

I see no hard, scientific, statistical proof of purpose; and yet, without that, there is no valid reason for living.

I’ve always appreciated that logic worked like an infallible equation.  Enter the variables, and watch the answer manifest.  This is fairly ironic, considering I’m an emotional feminist who values the qualitative over the quantitive.  Personal experience has always trumped science.  At the same time, however, I’ve evolved to use logic to defend the subjective.  In other words, I’ve manipulated mathematical perspectives to validate my experience of life.  It is similar to a woman who emulates men, or black people assimilating to white culture, for the sake of succeeding.  It is sad, sometimes, that this must be our approach to survival and success, and yet it is often the most effective technique.  Maybe this is because changing the system would require a collective revolution, like the one recently witnessed in Egypt; while climbing to the top on our own requires that we rely solely on ourselves.

A lot of people believe that you can only rely on yourself.

My persisting dilemma has been that I simultaneously believed that I could rely only on myself, and that achieving positive change in this world would require some level of consensus and cooperation amongst people.  These convictions led me to gigantic brick wall of hopelessness that read like so: trust no one, rely on everyone.  How can you place faith in people you cannot trust?  This lacks logic.

But I digress.

My life has been a pattern of blaring contradictions, like feminism and pornography, or the Westboro Baptist Church and their association to Christianity or freedom of speech.  I mean, though I can understand the argument I’m left asking if  these things honestly support each other at their core.

I’ve dabbled in religion, but found that it seriously compromised my faith.  I’ve always believed in a loving, beautiful, non-judgmental God who manifests in all of us and in all living things.  And yet, I’ve spent most of my life in a one-sided argument with a God who forsakes me; all the time believing that this bipolar divinity is one force, despite being in complete opposition with itself.  It wasn’t until recently that I started to see that I was projecting.  I created God in my image, so to speak.  And this dude was a moody, vengeful, cruel, bully who demanded my love and devotion despite the absence of reciprocation.  So, you can imagine my disgust with this hypocritical higher power who got off on pushing me around.

As far as I saw it, “God” was only useful for feverishly praying any time I found myself in a car with a drunk driver behind the wheel.

Over the past few months, I started experimenting with AA, after a few pathetically failed attempts at SA and NA.  I’d never considered myself an alcoholic, but I did know that I wanted to stop drinking (or continue not drinking), and alcohol did have a record of interfering with my life.  Within those membership requirements, I accepted the support I received there, and have since been battling with how I will approach the acceptance of a higher power and the admission that I am powerless over alcohol (or anything at all, really).

Yes, I am a control freak with a complete lack of control.

Overall, my journey has been dark, excruciating, and seemingly endless.  It has also been enlightening, humorous, and entertaining.  That, I cannot deny.

Over the past few weeks I have discovered that there is a purpose.  I did so by asking myself, “what is it that holds you back from ending it all?”  The answer was… hope.

Ironically, this had also been a large part of why I did want to end it all.  I felt like I saw so much potential in people and in the world, but realized I would never experience the collective cooperation needed to enter into truth and joy.  Hope crippled me.  I had hope, a hope that was suffocated by the volumes of people in the world living in situations that were as, if not more, hopeless than my own.  As much as I was disappointed, my hope remained.  When it came down to it, I could let my hope wilt for the sake of survival, ultimately eliminating any reason to survive; or I could find a way to help perpetuate this stubborn flame, with the intention of warming and enlightening a cold, dark world.

I have to believe that there is a purpose to living, without that, survival is meaningless.

This blog is intended to chronicle my journey.

I assure you it won’t all be this intense.  My life has a tendency to be unyieldingly hilarious.

Sooooo… sign the liability waiver.  Strap yourselves securely in.  Keep hands and feet inside the vehicle until we come to a complete stop.  Enjoy the ride!

(I hope you like roller coasters.)