Miracle: Rediscovering Grace in the Restoration of Faith

December 4th

Miracle: Do you feel you experienced or witnessed miracle this year? How so?

It might depend on how you describe a miracle. Some people describe seeing them in the moonlight, or in the sunshine, or in how the rays of sun glisten through clouds.

Miracles, for me, come through receiving grace. It seems that it often takes feeling a hurt deeper than you ever have felt before and sensing that your friendships, or your job, or your sanity will come crashing down. The sense of feeling as if you don’t do something and quickly you’ll never recover is what I call grace and a defining moment. 

A long-term relationship ended just shy of one year ago. It pained me and yet I so desperately wanted to prove that I was going to be fine and that I could move on, I pushed myself to move on and be alright without ever actually confronting why it hurt so bad to begin with. Several months passed before I realized that this "thing" I wasn't dealing with could destroy every other relationship I had: feelings of doubt, feelings of mistrust, and a general feeling of abandonment. 

I was exhausted - emotionally, hurting and fearing that the people I love and who I believe cared about me and sustained me during the initial difficult time would back away. 

Tired, feeling very much alone, and with nowhere to go, I went to a Church. It wasn’t like any Church I’d ever been to... a satellite campus and broadcasted at  a high school auditorium. Yet, I walked without resistance into the quad of the campus to see a sign that said, “A Place Where It’s OK to Not Be OK.” I immediately felt tears streaming down my face. 

I was undoubtedly torn. At one point, I didn't know who I could trust nor did I know why I wondered and doubted that. This Church I had just walked into announced they were starting a series called, "Torn: Trusting God When Life Leaves You in Pieces." 

The Pastor, Jud Wilhite, said at the beginning, "Maybe you don't know why that relationship ended, or maybe you don't know why it hurts." The tears at this point poured down my face. 

I thought, and somewhat still believe that the people I wanted to confide in, or had already vented to, may have considered me too emotional, or presumed I would have already moved on. I felt as though also these people I loved had their own concerns that I didn’t want to bother them. My ears heard the words, "It's not about you." 

My heart ached. Of course it wasn't, it was about all of them. I wanted to be there for my friends and for my family but knew I couldn't because the hurt I felt inside was greater than any love - at that moment - that I could receive or offer. 

Drug addicts.

Domestic violence victims.

Assault survivors.

Foreclosures.

Job loss. 

And so on... 

Many of us often rationalize that our hurts, a simple breakup, or the natural end-of-life death of a loved one, are not significant enough in either the eyes of God or our peers because our neighbors may be dealing with something that much "worse" or difficult.

In discovering grace, it becomes known that it doesn't matter what it is because you're the only one who is experiencing it. Only you know what it feels like to lose the job, to be abused, to have lost your house or try to quit... something. The one common theme is that each of us can be torn by that one issue only one of us knows about. That's where we can come together. 

So, when I realized my life had left me emotionally in pieces, I chose to seek my faith. It was the beginning of the return back to feeling at peace with myself, at the risk of losing loved ones and friends in the process.

Whether fortune or unfortunately, I had to work at rebuilding my faith, then myself, before I could tackle anything else. It's now all an evolving process. 

Torn: Lyric Video from Central Online on Vimeo.
My prayer for the end of this year, is that through the restoration of faith and self-worth, may also my relationships with family and friends be restored too. That also, one day, if a friend is hurting and feeling like they need to climb out of darkness, I can either have the awareness or the invitation to offer a hand in that climb.

Join the Journey. Answer the Prompts & Tweet Your Link using #resonate11 & #reverb11

Bookends, Measuring the Year in a Life

“525,600 minutes how you measure the year in a life?” begs and so tries to answer the theme song of the musical Rent.

When I think about the “year in a life” right now, I think of the word bookends. It’s the marking of both the beginning and the end of something, and the story that’s told between those markers is how you measure that year in a life. 

Bookends are like the sunrise and sunset of the day. 

At the sunset of one year and the dawn into another I made myself a promise. 

“In 2011, I’m going to like myself more,” I said. I wrote it down. I published it on this blog so that anyone could see and hold me accountable should I have any doubt that I could do it. 

A post called “Floating on the Wings of Earthly Angels” told the story of how very real people turned up in my life in previously unimaginable ways. Emotionally, spiritually, and some days, physically, I was floating on angels. Now, I am again, and this time no one had to say anything. I already knew. 

Anyway, days grew into weeks and weeks grew into months and somehow I found myself standing seven months after that post without a single question or doubt that everything had in fact happened for a reason. 

Tomorrow will mark one year since something quite specific in my life. It will also be what would have been my Grandma’s ninety-second birthday. When I look at where I will be tomorrow and where I was exactly 365 days earlier and then all that has happened in between, I can’t imagine it only being 525,600 minutes. 

I started July 22, 2010 in tears of emotional hope. 

I ended July 21, 2011 with a smile that could not be wiped from my face that could only be described as ethereal joy. No hope necessary, it just is.  

The story that’s told in the middle of these bookends is a year in a life. 

It’s told simply: in small and big prayers, in some very big cups of coffee, quite a few bottles of wine, moments of uncontrollable laughter, the making of some wonderful new friends (some old one’s too) and memories, as well as the shedding of a former self that all built up to an overflowing of gratitude. 

Bookends. 

        Oh, and I totally like myself more. 

The Stuff that Makes Us Who We Are

So, this is home.

They, as in the ubiquitous they, who always happen to be around, always say “home is where the heart is.” 

As I write this I’m in my new home, but it is not home. It’s far from any home that I’ve ever known. It’s new, it’s empty, as in it is just me now, and my cat (and no, I’m not a “cat lady”), and a second bedroom full of boxes that have yet to be emptied.

However, when I think about this, isn’t that how much of us live our lives? We move from room to room, or house to house, with boxes full of stuff we have yet to unpack and explore? I mean this both literally and figuratively. 

“I don’t want to think about that.”

“It’s just dredging up the past.” 

“I have too much baggage.”

I’m sure we’ve all either said one of those phrases or heard them at some point in our lives. In my opinion, that’s a good thing. You want to know why? It’s because you at least recognize that there are some “issues” you have to work through.

Let me digress for a second. I hate the word “issues.” In college, my roommates and I were simply just growing up. We were out there in the world learning academic information that we hoped would carry us somewhere, and trying to figure out who we were, emotionally, at the same time. At any moment we had some sort of situation we would say, “Oh my gosh, she has issues.” 

Seriously, I could probably write a book about the “issues” we all thought that we had then. Since then, each of us have lived through experiences that were far more issue-based than anything we went through back then. 

Recognizing that we have the stuff of our lives that make us who we are is part of becoming an even better person. A friend of mine asked me recently, after this part of my life changed, to find out from my other friends how I could be a better friend. I took that personally and agreed that I had not been a good friend. 

Let me tell you something. Relationships, at least for me, seem to give me permission to distance myself from the people who have sustained me before, during, and after said relationship (or crisis, or medical issue, or major life event.) Those people are my friends, how dare I abandon them for something temporary!

This is just my temporary home. As Carrie Underwood sings, this is just a stop along the way, this physical place, this emotional state, and this actual circumstance that you, and I, and we are all in. 

There is always something far more greater than what we are experiencing. In the moment, it’s hard to see. It’s harder, still, to accept that sometimes. 

My point is, wherever home is, there will be “issues”, and recognizing them will only help you, and me, and all of us move forward to that “something greater.” 

So, this is Christmas. Everything’s OK.

I’m sniffling, not because I’m crying, but because I have a cold. At least, that’s my answer at this moment. Ask me again later and the answer might change. (A short time ago, someone texted me something very simple, and I was fighting back tears).

The Reverb 10 project provides opportunities to reflect on parts of 2010 and manifest destiny for 2011, and some of the writing prompts they choose resonate like the echo of a harp played down the hall and around the corner. That would be the reverberations.

Everything’s OK. You know, I think if a person says that enough they come to believe it. Two weeks ago I sat at the computer I’m at now explaining I didn’t want to worry in 2011. I believed that if I could shed it from my life, the “best of my life could begin.” Honestly, I just didn’t know how that manifestation would occur. But, that worry, the worry that I so desperately didn’t want to be experiencing anymore (I swear, I was living right smack in the middle of worry that I didn’t even recognize it) is gone.   

Have you ever noticed that if you have had a rough go, illness, relationship breakups, or other crisis, people tend to inform you that everything will, in fact, be OK? [Thank you, each of you.]

“This too shall pass.”

“Time heals all wounds.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”

Yes, you’re right.

I’m sure that it does.

That seems to be the case.

Looking ahead at 2011, the recognition is that as tough as something seems to be while you are in it, or coming out of it, or going through it, or whatever, it does get better.

There are two lessons I move forward with.

One comes from several years ago from my Mom. I had just earned my driver’s license and with energy was on my way to pick her up from work. Just past the cul-de-sac I hit a fire hydrant and a geyser of water went into the air. I decided to make it much more dramatic than it was and climbed out of the sunroof, rolled down an embankment, and called her on a brick-sized cell phone.

“Mom? I ran over a fire hydrant.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

Mom’s point was I hadn’t hurt anyone, I wasn’t hurt, and the most I had done was flooded the street. Lesson learned.

Another lesson dates back years ago and carries with me straight to this night. As a child I would watch “A Sesame Street Christmas” with my Dad (aka, "Christmas Eve on Sesame Street"). The song that plays during it rings true and my Dad so often reminds me that it is to, “Keep Christmas with you, all through the year….”

If I do, Everything’s OK.

Floating On the Wings of Earthly Angels

The healing is just beginning. 

In these final weeks of 2010, the healing is just beginning. It started with writing this blog. Everyone needs an outlet of some kind to identify why they are hurting and need healing in the first place. 

Putting pen to paper, or fingertips to keys on a keyboard, is one way a person can get close with their thoughts. Joan Didion once said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” 

Perhaps, healing comes in a two step process when one is writing. First, the thoughts enter your mind. Then, there’s an adjustment between resting on a sturdy foundation and falling into a deep pool of uncertainty. At that point, if you’re writing, the words start to flow. Then, you start to make sense of it. l guess it was more than two steps, wasn’t it? 

This process, this blog is a way to heal, for me. It is my sincerest hope that if you’re reading this, and you wonder how to begin the healing process that maybe you find a nugget of hope, or process, or passages to sustain you. After all, the characteristics that make us all human come in the form of faith, hope and love and are sometimes masked as doubt, worry, or regret. 

Floating on the wings of earthly angels. I’ve said this statement a few times this week and at first it sounded quite holy and mighty. Then, I realized it just happened to be the truth. 

Sometimes, things change in our lives in a way that we don’t understand, or we have trouble accepting why things have changed, or just can’t get beyond being stuck in a moment. 

The healing process for me got a kick start because of others in my life. The recognition that people like you for you and for no other reason is one of the most comforting feelings in the world. People just sometimes show up. You have no idea who they will be or why it is them, but when they do, embrace them with open arms. I have to. 

I’m trying to like myself more. It’s really easy to give up on yourself when you’re so busy running errands, going to work, cooking meals, dealing with the kids, the cat, the dog.... You get the idea. You become exhausted. Remember when I talked about napping? We can’t do anything for anyone else if we don’t do something for ourselves. In 2011, I’m going to like myself more. 

You know, giving is not about the anticipation of anything in return, it’s about the genuine human character of the giver. People who give do so because they want to and because they can. 

And that, realizing that in order to really give, one must heal (which may involve forgiving oneself), accept love, and try to like themselves more and allow themselves time to do all those things, is the lesson learned in 2010. 

Oh, and to smile more. Maybe someone will smile back. 

Get Your Own Blog Prompts at www.reverb10.com

Comfort, Guidance, Resilience, and Blessings

5 Minutes to Remember. That's the challenge today from Reverb 10. Set an alarm clock and see what I can remember. It's not that I don't remember specifics, I just remember feelings, emotions, and particular moments. 

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At the setting of the sun New Year’s Eve imagine your memory erased. What if your entire life, everything you’ve done, specifically this year, disappeared. What of those 12 months would you want to remember and how would you encapsulate it?

“Jesus, please come, please come today. Hear me. Heal me. Be near me I pray, “ sings Heather Williams. These song lyrics I remember in 2010. Comfort. 

“Lead me with strong hands, Stand up when I can’t, Don’t leave me hungry for love, Chasing dreams, what about us,” sings Christian band Sanctus Real, from the real life emotions of Matt Hammitt. These are song lyrics I remember in 2010. Guidance.

Imagining just two minutes to remember 2010, I remember:

Moving out. Moving In.
Saying Goodbye. Saying Hello.

Packing. Unpacking.

Unlearning, and learning.

Frustration, and relief.

Anger, resentment, and hope, plus belief. 

These things, “I’ve fallen so far, flat on my face, Lord I need your grace today,” Heather Williams sings.

2010 is not about the falling down, despite how I may sometimes feel, or the giving up and saying goodbye before I was ready, or the endless breaking of hearts. 2010, from what I remember, was about comings and goings. For others, it was about beginnings, and endings. 

What's that word I keep saying? Oh yes, resilience.

It’s the life affirming reasons why we are here. Sometimes we arrive at a place and we wonder how we got here, not literally, but figuratively. 

I met a woman tonight who moved to my town because her husband's job brought her here, and in the last four years life changed. 

Life is not what I thought it was 24 hours ago. 

In 2010, I will remember most the change. The change in jobs, in scenery, in friendships, in relationships, and in the situations I left behind. Somewhere in there, I will remember the blessings.

"Change, Big Or Small, Is a Real Challenge"

“... I will be in the hospital Easter, but remember I love you. God bless you, dear one.” 

My Grandma, always putting others first, in the Spring of 2006. She wrote the words in a Easter card, the last legible writing I ever received from her.

“I love you more.” 

My Grandma would say that to me each time she ended a phone call with me. I can hear her saying it to me, it’s the whisper of the faintest distance in the dead of night. In my heart I say, “I love you.”

I can feel her say, “I love you more.”

Since my last post about not wanting worry wrinkles, a part of my life changed. A significant part is no longer and now that is part of my journey.

I believe you don’t necessarily have to be a religious person to experience God’s grace. In a year, for me, that’s been full of changes, both good, and bad, and somewhere in between, grace defines me. 

She, my Grandma, taught me to affect my circumstances, and not to be affected by them. 

Tears, they may stream like a slow, but steady drizzle from a faucet, onto my face, down the curve of my lips, and into my mouth, but they are happy tears. The salty sensation, the cool wet kiss of my own emotions on my cheek, remind me again of the resilience, the promise, and gradual, if not certain, passage to happiness. 

My Grandma suffered a stroke in June 2006. I never experienced her the same after that. In my memory, she is this strong-willed person who said, “Don’t give up on me just yet.” 

She died a few months later. It was grief, and to this day, is grief of the deepest magnitude I have experienced.There is a hero for every person and in every family for different reasons and at different times. My hero is, and has been, my Grandma.

In the days, if not minutes, before she passed away, I wrote some words down that resonate quite deeply with me now: 

I’m going through the motions of going to work and doing my job and feeling like I’m a spectator of my own life. Certain things happen in slow motion because my mind is so preoccupied on what’s happening outside of the present moment that I forget to notice it. People talk to me and I miss what they say and sometimes don’t remember hearing them at all.  I’m told this is normal and that it will come and it will go. Then, for an instant, something triggers and I’m fighting tears, but just for a moment, until I return to my vacant mind of going through the motions.

Grandma wouldn’t want me to just go through the motions. 

It does not matter what loss one is experiencing, because loss is the one unifying factor of life. Maybe not loss, but the fear of failure realized, or the fear of loss realized, the fear, the very worry, and the edge of doubt you sat on top of, when it slips out, and it’s realized; we’ve all been there. Also, let me be the umpteenth person to say that sometimes loss is a blessing in disguise, we just don't know it yet.

It is the one thing everyone goes through and yet that does not make it any easier because of the circumstances and the people involved. It is really only being experienced in one unique way for each person grieving.

It hurts, because very few people understand, even though everyone can relate. 

I pray, one day, my children, whenever I do have them, I can share her eternal faith with them, so that they, too, might find a foundation and a hope for a future. 

Resilience, remember, is about accepting our circumstances even if they are different, or disappointing, or not what we thought they would be. We can do nothing, as Elizabeth Edwards said, but scream about what we have lost, or accept it, and try to put together something that’s good. 

Scratch that.

Great. 

Appreciate. Prompts at http://www.reverb10.com/

This year, I appreciate my friends, the many of them who showed up on the doorstep of my heart when I least expected it.

I love you more.

I appreciate the memory of my Grandma, and the lasting wisdom she instilled in me. Certainly, I appreciate the faith, and the gentle tugging of my heart, when she would rub the small of my back when I wasn’t feeling well, and gently squeeze me in a life-affirming embrace.

I Don't Want Worry Wrinkles

I also don't want to be a frump.

I’ve filled my face with worry wrinkles.

That’s what I call them. There’s this crease in the middle of my forehead above my left eyebrow, and I swear it was not as deep and as defined earlier this year as it is now. I can tell you exactly when it developed, and it probably will never go away.

I’d rather be noticed for my smile lines, my bursting red cheeks, and my sometimes apple-colored skin. I say that even though I find it, too, embarrassing sometimes.

The Reverb 10 project put out the word today as “Things.” What 11 things do I not need in my life in 2011? Certainly, I don’t need worry.

Worry never got anyone anywhere and fear and doubt don’t help either.

“Doom!” My boyfriend says to me when anything could potentially go wrong. For example, I have a paper due for a graduate class but I may not have time to finish. I’ll tell him my concerns, and he says the word “doom.” He says it with this deep, long, “ooom” sound that kind of makes me laugh and quiver at the same time. I love that.

I don’t want the doom. Yet, I have to understand that sometimes, I just can’t do anything about it.

Another example is having an unpredictable expense and putting it on a credit card. Instead of whining about it, I have to make the money I do have last longer. Or, I ask him kindly to donate generously to the Get the Frump Out of My Rump fund, and he pitches in, willingly.

What happens to you when you worry? When you are afraid?

I sometimes call it the “haunted house of my head.” It’s where all the negative ideas and thoughts are. There’s a difference between a gut instinct and rattled nerves. I believe that fear and worry manifest with a heart beat, and flushed skin, and sometimes the nibbling of fingernails. It manifests in the same way when I’m watching a movie that I know is not real, which is how I know it’s irrational.

Fear of failure. Fear of losing. It is the disenchanted wonderment that comes in asking, “Why?”

Doubt, fear, worry, they’re ugly. They are unattractive. Yet, the fact that we, as humans, have these feelings is real. Most of us, unless we are serial pessimists, don’t go through life looking for evidence to support our doubts, our fears, and our worries. Instead, if you’re like me, we choose to believe. We choose to trust and open our hearts to the positive parts of life. I recognize that life does not come without some sort of angst every once in a while, I just don’t like it.

A life that is worth living, and a love that’s worth loving, is what these experiences are all about. If we are lucky, we learn something along the way. Every morning that I wake up, I choose life. In that choice, I also choose to love the people I love, and who I know love me: Mom, Dad, Nathan, and so many good friends.

Resilience, I wrote the other day, is about the staying up and not in the falling down.

So, in answer to this challenge, as difficult as it is, I need not worry in 2011. I choose faith. I choose to celebrate in the joy while I am in it, and not wait for it. The minute worry ends, the best of my life can begin.

p.s. The 10 other things I could do without in 2011 are: doubt, fear, anxiety, confusion, debt, loss, weight gain, illness, car problems, and somehow not graduate.
How I'll work to prevent them? Believe, trust, relax, ask questions, save more, love wholeheartedly, eat and work out well, take my vitamins, take my car to the shop, and do the work and graduate.

UPDATED: DECEMBER 20, 2010

A Beautifully Different Community, in One Word

A Beautifully Different Community, in One Word

I stumbled across the Reverb 10 project over the weekend after discovering the wonderfully talented in-pursuit-of-happiness writer Gretchen Rubin was offering at least one of the prompts.

The beautiful part about Reverb 10 is that it allows you to choose when you take part, and how you take part, with just some subtle recommendations. The goal is to remember and reflect on what this year, 2010, has meant for each one of us, and manifest our destiny for the upcoming 2011. It is a fitting project for anyone working to get the frump out of their rump.  

One Word 

My mother came to visit me earlier this year. We watched some sappy movies, like “Marley and Me,” and went out to lunch and talked about family members and wedding ideas, should I get married. We also stayed up late and watched Elizabeth Edwards on “Larry King Live.” 

“She is an amazing woman,” my mother said.

“So inspiring,” I said. “I love that the title of her book is resilience.” 

Resilience for me meant different things at the time. Studying business continuity in graduate school, another name for that was in fact, business resilience. You see, resilience, in the business sense, is about the staying up and not falling down during a crisis. Come to find out, resilience means exactly the same thing when someone is battling internal demons or deep challenges of faith. It’s the getting back up and holding on, praying expectantly. It is hope. 

2010 has been a different kind of year for me, faced with change and challenges, some brought on myself, some divinely presented by choices, and others just dumped on me like a bucket of slippery slime. 

Elizabeth Edwards, a woman I did not know, exemplified some of the character traits I admired in my Grandma. The point is, she certainly allowed herself to feel what she was feeling and was unapologetic about it. Yet, she saw no purpose in staying angry or resentful, and she allowed herself the right to imagine a certain, if gradual, passage to happiness. 

Resilience is the word for 2010, and a year from now, it will hope. If we are resilient, we can hold on and pray expectantly. 

Community

The people who read this blog and who unite under the same goal of getting rid of the seemingly “yucky” part about being uncertain in life are part of my community. Those of us who want to visualize and dream-into-life a better tomorrow are the community members I find myself recently aligned with. Whether you are actively blogging or sharing your story, we are all on some sort of journey to find purpose so that we may live the best of our life. We’re a community of education-seekers, budget-minded shoppers, desire-to-give-back volunteers, and some of us are wine drinkers. 

Sometimes, I like to imagine myself standing in a room full of wine tasters and vintage bottles saying, “I’m a Pinot.”

Then, someone says back to me, “I’m a Zin, but I’m better after aging a few years

There is something perfectly beautiful about being part of a winemaking group, which my boyfriend* and I are. 

We are members of all ages, different walks of life, different hobbies, but we all have a taste for wine. 

Something else that’s funny, is when I think of Chelsea Handler’s book “My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands” I actually think of wine bottles, because they’re better stored horizontally. 

Excuse me while I laugh thinking of an alternate book cover. 

Beautifully Different

“You are unique,” my best friend would say to me during high school. “You have your own unique qualities that make you, you.” 

She certainly had a nice way of saying the fact that I was different, odd, or even eccentric. 

“Ughpf,” I’d say back. 

“Yay, Annie noises,” she would say to me. 

The cycle continues, and now almost every time we get together the first few minutes are filled with mutterings and sounds that I seem to always make, and some celebrated joy that I’ve made them. 

As I taper off my writing for this collection of Reverb 10 posts, I think of the things that each one of these topics has in common.

I’m part of a wine making group, which involves patience, and a resilience in case something goes wrong. Each varietal, each bottle, is unique and has its own qualities. Each person who tastes the wine explores it differently, identifying parts that not all of us may experience. And, these experiences we have, whether in tasting a wine, or living our lives, may instill in us the same resilience and hope we admire in people like Elizabeth Edwards.








*UPDATED December 28, 2010: Boyfriend is now an ex-boyfriend.