In depth

A vanishing breed

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I am one follower away from 190, how???

This is great. Thank you all for your support.

As a little detour today, I thought I’d take you on a trip inside my world, from an imaginative perspective.

That is to say, I am one of a dying breed in my country and generation, so I think I ought to be documenting myself, you know for posterity.

All joking aside, I’ve slowly realized I have a very unique perception of life, thanks to the very mixed and assorted influences in my formative years, and current years, and it’s given my an ability to exist in multiple settings with a sense of belonging there.

You see, on the one hand, I am exposed to pop culture, the news, and the influences thereof. I can quote vines and memes and songs like most people my age, and use the lingo of the West Coast that has permeated the internet thanks to those sources. Not a big accomplishment.

I actually have to study pop culture, weird as it may sound, because I write characters who are supposed to be savvy in it, and they know more than I would know. Oh, the trials of a writer that we willingly inflict on ourselves!

On the other hand, I was raised with no TV for the first 10 years of my life or so, and limited access to movies for almost as long, I didn’t go on YouTube frequently till I was 12 to 13, and I don’t have Social media to this day in any significant form. So, I get references from books, old movies, old shows, and old songs that mostly “Boomers” are supposed to get.

C. S. Lewis wrote a book “Surprised by Joy” that described how his moral and imaginative life formed, while G. K. Chesterton wrote a good deal in “Orthodoxy” about how his imagination and passion led him to Christianity, and how they were shaped by fairy tales, and fiction, and nursery rhymes.

Reading both these accounts, and others, led me to realize I may be one of the only people in my age group who could even understand what an “imaginative” life in their sense of the word even is, they don’t just mean fantasies, like we mean “wish fulfillment” “sex fantasies” and all that crap. They mean fairy tales, and romance in the older sense of the word.

Romance used to mean, and still technically means, a way of looking at life, that focuses on the feelings associated with certain ideals, and actions, and beauty. It’s dramatic, often nonsensical, serious, playful, and powerful. It’s also virtually unheard of in modern fiction, shows, movies, etc.

If I had to pick a modern example of Romance writing, I couldn’t even think of one more recent than Madeleine L’Engle’s science/supernatural fiction stories, A WRINKLE IN TIME, A WIND IN THE DOOR, and A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET. I think those are 20 years old at least.

Perhaps more exist, I just can’t think of them. “Beauty” by Robin Mckinley, is like it, and this other story I once read that was a retelling of “The White Bride and the Black Bride”.

The point its, I actually read the old classics, not all of them, or I read books that explained the classics, or imitated their style, so that I was introduced to it in way I could swallow, since like most people, I find classics hard to follow with their older language.

I have read actual Shakespeare though, and it’s not as hard as people think if you have a good vocabulary, as I always have. Thanks to having parents who read to me and had big vocabularies themselves.

And the best preparation for understanding classic is of course, the Bible, as most of the classics of European literature heavily involved biblical imagery and language.

It helps that I stick to the NKJV of the bible, (sometimes I read others, I just like the language better).

All this to say, I have very diverse influences in my life, and I am still adding to it. Being 22 now, and in college, I don’t read as much for fun as I sued to, but I still reread my favorite books at least once a year, and try to check off one or two new classics at least, plus other books I can find. So slowly I am still building my store of knowledge and experience.

I didn’t understand this until the last few years, but I have been very lucky to have that path. Funny, it wasn’t one i chose initially.

When I was about 7 or 8, my mom had already read The Chronicles of Narnia to me and my sister, all the way through, The Little House series, and some other books, and she set me on the path of classics when I asked her if we could read those books again,and she told me I should just read them myself. They were above my age reading level at the time, at least by school standards (flip school standards), and I wasn’t confident in myself yet, I’d never read a chapter book, but that was the day I started. Soon, I could go through them as fast as my mom had read them to us, I am now the faster reader in my family, I’ve read a 300-500 page book in one day, and can read a 150 page book in a few hours, if it’s an easy read.

I could read a 30 page textbook chpater in the hour and a half before class I somtiems left myslef (too little, but I could get away with it).

The experience of a child with no TV and a large library is so different from what’s normal now, that most people, I bet, can’t even fathom what it would be like.

It really wasn’t bad. I feel like I missed very little. i don’t think I’ve ever once expressed regret, even internally, or not being able to watch a show when it was on TV, all the shows I like are usually ones that were out years before I saw them, and the great plus of that is I never had to wait for a new season. Plus, being older, I understood the shows better than a kid would have. I watched the Justice League animated series when I was 10-14, and it was much better being able to understand the harder stuff in it, though I still appreciate even more now.

The idea that you watch a show one time is ridiculous to me, I always reread any book I truly loved. Reading or watching something once seems flaky to me, like a one night stand. You don’t really get intimacy with the material like that, and it seems flippant, like saying you could understand it all the first time. (Bad books, on the other hand you should never reared, understanding more of it is just further punishment)

I think TV shows foster a one night stand attitude in children because they are released episode by episode until it’s exhausting to finish it, and you don’t want to go back an repeat the experience for years to come. Though, some shows are exceptions. Children tend to like repetition more than adults, however, but the habit starts in childhood.

The reason I am laying all this out is to explain why it was different for me. Without TV, getting new entertainment was hard so I reread, or went to the library. I always preferred to read stuff I knew I liked already, so I tended to stick to one author, one series, and one book. Even now, I’m still reading new stuff for the first time from old authors because I liked familiarity so much.

As a homeschooler, I read what was age appropriate from a moral standpoint, my mom never told me a book was too hard for me. I could stop reading it if it was, but I usually didn’t. Up till my teens, I finished almost every book I started, because I had nothing to distract me from them. I now finish only half the books I start usually, unless I give myself less to begin with.

It’s the opposite now. I was talking to my 13 year old cousin last week, and he told me about a book “In The Graveyard” he had to read, last year, I think, and he questioned if it was age appropriate because of the content, not the language, but books are more likely to be assigned based on reading level than content now. I can’t understand why “Diary of a Wimpy” kid is acceptable literature, but “Huck Finn” often isn’t.

I didn’t watch R-rated stuff till I was 20, mostly. My 8 year old cousin has seen more R-rated movies than I have.

It’s a different world, even int he last 2 decades, that’s for sure. But, being homeschooled was also just different.

It’s not being sheltered the way people think it is. I was exposed to hard subjects, sometimes earlier than kids now are, at least, I was exposed in a way that asked me to think about them, not just mindlessly consume them. The stuff I read, and later watched, used moral questions to kids, either directly or indirectly.

My mom never purposely planned that, she just had me read well known classics that would be safe reading, and watch old shows, and the rest was up to the material.

My mom was not a very involved teacher in most of my curriculum, if you could call it that, so I was self motivated. She’d buy books according to my interests, and I’d absorb it all.

In then end, I ended up with a vast array of knowledge about many subjects, even if it was only a little knowledge. I have the ability to join almost any conversation… unless it’s about something that just happened in the present. Go figure.

People tell me I ought to stay informed, I’m too busy delving into the knowledge of centuries ago to waste time on this current century’s unreliable news sources. Just give me the highlights.

I do think it’s important to know what’s happening, but you’d be surprised how much I can learn form getting the highlights, and putting them in a historical context.

I just last week learned that COVID was not the first epidemic in this country or the world that caused circumstances like this, the Media won’t tell you this, but there was a thing called the Spanish Influenza. Arguably, it was more dangerous than COVID because everyone was at risk from it, medicine was less advanced back then, so people dropped like flies. They had quarantine, lock-downs, churches closed, they even wore masks, and were told to get out to the country and stay away from other people.

Yep, it all happened before. I keep hearing people say it never has, and that’s just not true.

My homeschool plan was something called a Thomas Jefferson Education, or TJEd, for short. Basically it consists of teaching students to love learning, and having them read classics, and add disciplined study only much later on. I tied to explain this to my older cousin too, he said he’s never heard it put that way.

It worked for me, I was college ready and then some.

The effect classic fantasy had on me was that I see the world in two ways. I see the world as it is, sort of. As much as one human can see something as vast as the world. I also see the world through the lens of how others have seen it, or wished it to be, or even cynically claimed it was.

A student who lives the average life of a public-schooler now is informed by their parents, their school, and pop culture.

I was made aware of that difference when I was helping my younger cousin with her social studies homework. It was a good assignment, one I would have expected to find in college even, probably a little more complicated though. (You know what the difference between complicated and complex is? Mostly connotative meaning.) The book asked her to explain how people might use stories to tell about things.

In the context, it might be like mythology, we don’t know what happened, so we make up a story to explain it.

People who call Christianity a mythology are not entirely wrong, in that is has mythic elements in it, but if you read the Bible it is not written at all like a mythology, anymore than the Iliad is. It tells about God without using flowery language in its most serious parts, and it’s most poetic when talking about loving and obeying God. Interesting, since people often get that backwards if they get lost in semantics.

While trying to explain to my cousin what a myth was, since she’d had to read one to answer the prompt, I hit a wall. She just didn’t get it. I thought, how could I explain it to her? All the books I could reference, she hasn’t read. All the ideas I have about it is stuff she’s not heard much in her secular household. Finally, I broke it down to brass tacks and had her pick a thing in nature (a tree, if you want to know) and try to imagine what someone who didn’t know what it was might come up with. She said to me “I would know it was a tree.” I said “What if you’d never seen a tree?” She said “I’d ask someone who knew.” I said “”What if no one around you knew?” She said “I’d look it up.” I think she even added “that’s what Google is for.” or something like that, but maybe that was a different conversation. So I said “What if this was the first tree ever and no one had ever seen it before and there was no internet.” She thought for a second, then shrugged, “I don’t know.”

So, I fell on visual aid as a last result, I’m happy to report, after looking at an actual tree, and me suggesting some stuff, she came up with her own idea, and I think she even understood myth a little bit finally. She’s a smart kid, catches on fast.

But, I thought to myself, my little 8 year old cousin could have just summed up our modern approach to knowledge. We think, wither we know, or someone around us knows, or we can look it up. There’s a general feeling that there is not much left to be discovered in this world. And if there is, it’s too advanced for us mere mortals.

Thanks to the GPS and satellite, we no longer have any unknown continents or islands on this planet. Thanks to space tech, we now know what’s in the heavens far beyond our galaxy. Thanks to encyclopedias, internet, and media, we now can hear about anything in less than 5 seconds, if we type in or even ask a key word. There’s nothing done that hasn’t been done.

At least, it feels that way, doesn’t it?

Yet, as Lewis thought, when we get to where we seem to know everything, that is really where we must go back and rediscover the truths that are always there.

The great thing about Christianity, and the reason it has revived so many dying cultures (don’t believe secular history books, Christianity is what keeps cultures alive int he first place, all other cultures die out in a few centuries usually, or are not worth preserving even if they endure longer) is that it is always knew. No matter how many people have climbed up that mountain to find God, every one of us is still he first when we do it. What God says to us is different than what He says to anyone else. God is not repetitive. He never does anything quite the same way. Why would He need to? The course of all creative energy is God, He surely never runs out of inspiration.

Christianity, in my opinion, is the only dam slowing the flood of deadness in this culture, and that dam is never going to break, but people who choose to ignore it are going to get swept away.

Mental illness isn’t going to get any better as long as we cut off all the things that prevent mental illness. We really haven’t learned from history. History tells us that the rich and pampered are often far more given to insanity that the poor and humble. Living in the pressure of the spotlight and having to be both the servant of the people, and yet be served by them almost as if you were untouchable, has driven many rulers insane throughout the ages.

Now, all of us can maybe not be famous, but social media gives everyone who use sit at least the illusion of attaining that goal. It’s not anything like true fame, but it’s just close enough to create the same problems, with none of the potential benefits, unless people truly try to use their power for good.

We can’t all be rulers, but we ca all post our opinions into places where people will only echo them, much like a ruler. We make social media, the comment section, and likes our cheering crowd of peasants. We don’t know their names or faces, but we crave their approval.

You see? It’s not new, it’s just more widespread. And rulers cracked under that pressure a lot, and we’re cracking under it the same way.

I see so many artists and YouTubers owning up to poor mental health. The smart ones take breaks. Others push themselves to exhaustion.

It is what it is. We can’t get rid of this stuff, but not all of us have to rely on it so much.

You might wonder, though, why I think it’s really so important to read, and understand myths, is that stuff really worth the time and effort, it’s not real.

I will say most of it’s more real than people on the internet will ever be. Myths tell hard truths that people won’t own up to when they want likes or subs, or whatever.

But, more importantly, it would save us, if we let it.

I know other people besides myself who have drawn strength from stories when nothing else would help them. God often uses stories, Jesus used them all the time. Stories are powerful. They get inside us.

And good stories only come from the minds of people who choose to look up at the world around them.

It’s important that my cousin only got my point once she looked at a real tree. Just picturing a tree didn’t do it for her. There’s something about the REAL that inspires us more than anything else can.

I was raised on fiction, but it was talking about real stuff, in a language I could understand before I even knew what it really was about. Fiction is the equalizer that makes adults and children able to communicate without barriers. A story can speak to any age, any IQ, any language even.

I see the world through stories, and it’s made it possible for e to draw connections between things that seem unrelated, I have such a rich mental life because of all the way I can connect the dots. I can glean one thing form one book, and it helps me understand the next one better, or retroactively, a new book sheds light on an old one. I can’t say I’ve had that experience with TV or movies. it’s just not the same.

What I believe the difference is, is the TV is too easy, and yet too hard. You see, hear, and it’s handed to you. But it’s so colorful and intense, you miss little details. When it’s spelled out on a page, you catch things that you won’t normally. Your mind interprets it in a way that makes sense to you. You get drawn into the world of the book.

While you can be drawn into a film and show, it’s never as complete as in a book. A book also keeps you conscious of your own experience a way a movie doesn’t. We’ve been warned that our brains accept everything we watch as real while we are watching it, even if we know it’s not real. In a book, that does happen, but you are more aware of it while it is, and you can withdraw more easily.

In the end, I still watch movie and shows, and I believe they are important. They still give you something a book doesn’t.

But for the purpose of fostering a real imagination, you need books. The reason art is so bland and repetitive now is all artists are drawing inspiration from movies and shows. Which just can’t be diverse like books, partly because producers control too much of what gets out there.

Books, though still controlled, are wild cards. You never know where a really good idea will jump out at you even in a mostly bad book. You imagination has to work harder when reading, so of course it gets stronger.

One page of a Lewis book, and I’ll think of 6 different story threads I could write. That’s how good reading is. A show, I might think of one. not bad, if its the one I need, but, I can’t deny what’s better.

I usually turn to books when I hit a creative dry spell. A few chapters is usually all it takes.

The point of this post is , I guess, to read. But the bigger point I was getting at is that we need our imaginations back. They keep us from apathy, depression, and even from fear sometimes. I used to escape fear with imagination, before I learned how to do it with God.

God is still better, but often He has used this method, so, it’s all of a piece.

I hope you enjoyed this post, it was a little all over the place, but that’s kind of fitting. I noticed I lapsed into higher language a lot, I think this topic just brings it out in me. I don’t use a thesaurus when I write, that’s another thing book learning did for me. (And that stupid Grammarly app can suck it. Just read a dang book, don’t let the internet write for you!)

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha

Not a Place but a Way.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Well, 2020 is almost over, and I got my Christmas shopping all done already. Yay!

I’ve had a full month of feeling much better too, praise the Lord!

So, let’s talk about that.

What happens to someone when they are first taking the stumbling steps out of the hell of constant trauma symptoms, to the middle terrain of starting to break free, before really moving into their new life?

At first you almost don’t believe it. My first few days without gagging, I really wasn’t sure what to think, I’d had a respite before. Then after 2 weeks I began to hope. At 4 weeks, I think I might have weathered the worst of this problem.

But I’ve had a month or so of respite before, it’s still a daily choice much of the time if I will believe this is more than a respite, but actually a change.

Especially when a flare up of allergies can cause similar tightness and gross feelings in my body, and I can’t tell which it is.

For me this is physical, but many people have psychological symptoms exactly like this (I do too, they’re fun), a small problem for one person might be the harbinger of a huge relapse for another… or it might not, in the beginning you don’t know.

I’ve heard in Christine Caine’s sermons where she mentions A-21, that after you rescue a girl from sex trafficking (there’s a few boys in it too, but the bulk of the victims are girls) they don’t know whether you are just going to continue their suffering, or you are actually here to help. Some are hostile, others timid, all of them are scared.

Abuse it pretty much the same, as with any kind of bondage, you go through a really terrible time, and then you’re so used to it that if that time begins to end, you’re scared. You’d almost choose the dank dark dungeon over the open highlands, because you know how to survive in the dungeon (barely) but you have no clue how to thrive out in the open. Like an animal that has acclimated to one terrain only.

Perhaps God would like us to become animals that can migrate, thrive in multiple places, and transition easily between them, but would we really like that?

In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes a chapter titled “Counting the Cost” where he warns that we shouldn’t think that Jesus will solve only the problems in ourselves that we think are bad, he will take all the problems, all the ones we secretly like, all the sins we want to pretend we don’t commit, and he will get rid of those too. “Give Him and inch and He takes an ell” He commands us to be perfect, “You shall be holy as I am holy.”

Being holy for us is like being free is for a victim of abuse, unnatural, new, frightening. Oh, it may be better, we know in our heads, but it’s just so gosh darn painful, can’t we just be “okay.”

God certainly would be one to say “It’s okay if you’re not okay” but what He will add is “Because I will make you more than okay.” Far more than okay. (My sisters and I once named an imaginary band of characters we liked “More Than Okay” as a nod to how God goes above and beyond what we envision for ourselves–yes we are geeks who imagine bands for our faves. Everyone has weird habits.)

I think another good analogy for this is the difference between getting a message and going to the Chiropractor. I’ve had my sister massage me for a long time, she’s gotten pretty good at it, I like really hard massages too, deep tissue. Sometimes he’ll spend an hour on it.

And it brings relief, but no matter how good it feels, within an hour or so, I can feel my muscles prickle back into a strained place, or a few days later, I need it again. A massage just brings relief, it doesn’t fix anything. Massages really are just meant to be temporary solutions. But some people make regular appointments, and some businesses have in-house masseuse, because they want that relief constantly.

When you think about it, it’s a great example of how we spend a lot of money to enable our unhealthy life choices like sitting at desks staring at screens all day. I’m not against a massage now and then, but if you need it every week or even a few times a week, you’re probably doing something wrong, even if you have no choice about it, your body knows it’s not meant to move that way.

By contrast, an adjustment at the chiro feels a lot less good, I personally feel a lot less period when I get adjusted. It’s a relief, but the real difference is how you can move afterwards. I feel looser, more balanced, or less bunched up in certain places. A massage just doesn’t get the same effect. But, I can feel weird for days afterward, and it’s a step by step process, improving a little more each week, but full relief does not come everywhere at the same time. Plus, it’s hard work to walk the right way, to choose purposely to stand on both feet the same way, to sit up straighter and not strain my neck as much.

But, I’ve been reading “Get Your Life Back” John Eldredge’s latest book (at least as far as I know) and he talks about something very similar, the difference between relief, and restoration.

He pints out how all our distractions like food, TV, Social Media, or alcohol, provide a short relief from our pain, but they don’t provide restoration, and they can actually prevent it because it becomes harder to tune in to what we even feel anymore.

I’ve noticed it in myself, one reason I am stressed so much is I moved more and more off relaxing activities like reading, being outdoors, and using my creativity, to things that involved my technology.

I have gotten into some bad habits, but even so, I spend less time online than the average person, if I feel this tired and drained by it, how much more does everyone else? (In the West anyway.)

I didn’t realize till this year how much of my approach to negative emotions was about wanting relief. I might give lip service to the idea of deeper healing, but mostly just wanted to feel better in the moment. The same with the physical stuff, I don’t really want to think about my body’s alignment and my digestive track being messed up from years of anxiety, I actually hate thinking I have bigger problems.

It turns out God was after Restoration in my life. As the Word says “I will restore to you the years the locust has eaten.”

A locust is much like an abusive cycle, it devours everything it can get it’s little claws on, and leaves you nothing. Locusts are a plague, we have grasshoppers in America, or used to, did the same thing, no getting rid of them, you just have to wait till it passes.

No denying it, having a dad like mine robbed me of a lot in life, I’m beginning to acknowledge that loss and I learned new ways he hurt me all the time, it may go on for a while.

And, I’m not like those people who deny they lost anything. “I don’t need that jerk anyway! I’m doing just fine without him.”

There’s a speech from a popular show, I don’t know the name, where a deadbeat father fails his son again, and the son talks to his real father figure, saying at first that it doesn’t matter, he begins listing all the things he learned how to do without his father, like drive a car, and such. The other man just listens in silence. Finally the son ends it with the honest, upset question “So, why doesn’t he want me?”

And yeah, I have to say, that’s a question that never goes away. I’m not sure even God can answer it.

You see, God, He can’t imagine not wanting us. He lives to Love, He Is Love. If there’s one thing that puzzles God, (if I can speculate about such things) it is probably when we humans don’t want to love each other, even the most innocent people to us, our children. God would never beget a child He didn’t want to Love, yet we humans are foolish enough to do it.

My dad began rejecting me when I was an innocent baby, how do you reason with a man like that? When asked, he told my sisters “It’s just the way I am.” Yeah, but you shouldn’t be that way Dad, you’re seriously broken, you need to be fixed.

So, I am left wondering why my father doesn’t want me.

There are some questions that can’t be answered because they are beyond reason, some people simply are incapable of love. It’s hard to accept, but it’s true. They can change, but they have to want to. Becoming dead to love is a choice, but it’s often made long before the person even realizes fully what they are doing, when they do, they may choose to stay that way in order to protect themselves.

My dad decided I wasn’t worth it. That cut deep, and still does. But I know that humans cannot motivate each other to change, very often. There’s exceptions to that, but usually, it can’t be done.

Its really nothing wrong with me, there’s nothing wrong with you either. Even if you’re a bad person now, and you know it, that’s not why you weren’t loved. Humans are simply broken, often empty creatures. It’s rare we are able to become good parents without God’s help.

So, since I did nothing to bring this on myself, I also can’t fix it. That’s why it’s about restoration. I need to be given back what I lost. Security, Love, Joy, Self-Worth. Things that were ripped away from me, I do not exaggerate (I think people with good parents can’t imagine how cruel bad parents can be, and that’s probably a good thing for them, but sometimes Victims get dismissed as being over-dramatic about our lives by people who just haven’t lived it. So, let me just say, I try not to exaggerate, when I use strong language, it’s because I think it’s appropriate.)

I guess in closing, I’m trying to say that Healing is not always fast. In the church, we often talk and sing as if healing is one prayer away.

That’s a product of our instant relief mindset. If you read the Bible, both OT and NT, you’ll see deliverance often takes time and patience, and we’re even told to be glad when it does (working on that still). There are the big time miracles, but things like trauma just don’t go away all at once.

There’s a misunderstanding in much of the Church, though not all, that all problems are alike, just attacks of something at random, or when we’re weak. Some problems are that, but many stem from patterns and years of trouble in our lives. Especially like in my case where the church was bound up in the trauma of abuse, though it was unwittingly so. It’s sickening to me how people like my dad can use the church as a tool, but within any human group, there are blind spots. At least if you look for them.

We sing that God is just one prayer or song or moment away… but what about when God chooses to make us wait longer than that?

The Bible has lots of examples for us, but we seem to forget the context for them. It’s something I had to reconsider of late.

So, praying for relief, and singing about it, have not got me very far. My anxiety isn’t calmed when I’m still focusing on it.

But when I slow down, and breathe, and just let it be, I get a little bit of traction.

Which is why I think this Oh Hellos song sums up much better what many of us need right now:

At the edges of my fingers, never quite closing round it, that peace like a river always flowing, never getting. Seems like maybe it’s not all that much a place, as it is a way. And ways don’t ever seem to want to stay too still, too long./

Isn’t that what’s it’s all about? The slow trickling that sets the banks in half, the sweet melody it makes as the canyons crack. I want to give it all I got, and I want nothing, no I want nothing back./ Whatever kingdom come, it probably won’t come quick, no might clarion to announce it, no single use ark to discard in an instant. Like Theseus’s ship, we’ll fix the busted bits. Till it’s both nothing like, and everything, it’s always been. It’s a wonder we expect a thing to stay the same at all./

Isn’t that what it’s all about? We keep fixing what we know is only bound to break, what’s worth saving’s never worth letting go to waste. I want to mend what I’ve got instead of throwing it away./

Ain’t nothing comes easy, no nothing comes quick, it’s gonna hurt like hell to become well, but if we set the bone straight, it’ll mend, it’ll fix, and we’ll be well.

Ain’t nothing come easy, no nothing comes quick, but I want for you this:That you are well. I want for us this: That we are well.”

The Bible says Peace is like a river. Isn’t it odd that it does not say Peace is like still water? A lake or pool maybe? No, it’s a river. Seems more like something Pocahontas would like, because it’s always moving. It’s not much like the eastern idea of serenity is it?

But, with the help of this brilliant song, I began to understand why the Bible might use the image of a river.

I found that peace if I chased it, and tried to treat it like a place to camp out, was fleeting. What comforted me one day didn’t the next, what worked one day didn’t the next. I can move one way and feel better, the next day I might feel worse.

But my understanding of healing and health was off. I wanted to just lie down and be at peace. But if I lay down, my mind would dwell on my fears. If I held still, it would catch up.

But trying to move, to make myself think of other stuff, didn’t work either. Trying to pray or worship out of it didn’t work. I was often scared even doing that and my mind went right back to worrying (I still have this problem).

What started to change that was when I realized a little that this is a journey of learning how to walk differently, to walk with God step by step, as Rich Mullins sang, and walk in straight paths. It really is a way, and Jesus actually calls Himself The Way, not a place. God is a shelter, a strong tower, but Jesus, our savoir, is The Way. Being saved comes by learning to walk in Him. God bails you out, but Jesus changes you until you no longer need to be bailed out (of course it’s more complex than that, but I’m trying to give a vague idea of how it works here, not a whole theology of who does what).

How can I describe it? I think the song puts it better than I can. Peace and Healing is the slow trickling that wears down the banks and cracks the canyons, which you might see as our problems and obstacle to change, just like water erodes rock now. It happens so slowly you don’t notice, it’s not loud, it’s not announced with a clarion.

It’s not something you can pray once for, not like the reference to an ark, this isn’t the Flood, a one time disaster, it’s an ocean we have to keep crossing, a river we have to float down.

And when our vessel (which can mean ourselves, in the Bible, and also a ship) is fixed bit by bit, it will be nothing like it was before, because it’s new, and yet it will still be us, far more ourselves than we were before, so it is everything it’s always been.

I think when the song says that I want to mend what I’ve got, be cause what’s worth saving is never worth letting go to waste, it means that if we think we are worth saving, we must believe we are wroth healing. That we should not hate what we are, but be willing to be fixed bit by bit, and not throw out our whole selves. We are given this raw material to work with, what we let God make of it is another matter, as Lewis pointed out.

Finally, the song reminds us that a truly good person will want us to be well. and tells us that it is never easy or quick, that it hurts like hell to become well (and often physical therapy is more painful than the original injury, if you totaled it up) but if you set the bone straight, it’ll mend. In other words, you have to correct what’s been wrong, you have to be set on the right path, you have to be changed, and then you will heal.

I will only heal when I have been changed, but you could just as easily say, I will only change when I have been healed. Both are true because it’s a simultaneous process.

That’s why human cures rarely work for stuff like this, many people I know chase a healthy diet, exercise, and outdoorsy lifestyles, and many are still sick all the time with serious problems. But they are only trying to heal, they are not trying to change who they are. They probably can’t.

And people who try to change how they are by force, will fail even harder. The bone has to be guided and held back into place, you can’t do it yourself.

Which of course, is why you have to be careful when you think about that river. Remember that you can ride down a river with no effort on your part except staying straight. That’s how Peace is, you let yourself be moved as God moves you. Not by your own power, not trying to stay still. It’s more work to stay still in a river than it is to move.

This turned into an essay, but I kind of like it. Until next time, stay honest and get healthy–Natasha.

Another post about recovering from abuse and anxiety

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(Title says it all, you were warned. )

You know, when you’ve been abandoned and abused by your parent, it is real tempting to dull your pain by think there is nothing good about them.

It would be easy, I mean, all the stuff I’ve remembered, and experience, because of that jerk, I really don’t have any reason to like him or try to find good in him.

I am not one for sugarcoating. Not one for saying “he did the best he could” when I know, by his own admission, he didn’t really try. It was never that important to him to try.

I don’t want to miss him. Like Romeo, I want to cut out the part of me that belongs to my father’s bloodline, and be done with it. There are times that is a quite pressing desire, and I know my sisters have had it also. Like Todoroki Shoto from MHA, there’s a side of us all we hate and want to reject, even if it means rejecting our own selves.

I don’t know why I got to think of all this today, I’ve finally started to feel better, been eating more, I ate Thanksgiving dinner, Hallelujah! And I’ve eaten better since then, and felt far less sick, and no gagging has happen in nearly two full weeks if I make it through tomorrow, all this is reason to be ecstatic.

Yet, I also got to see some of the pain my other family members are in this week, the holidays tend to bring it out, I suppose. And I guess we all take turns having a crisis and breakdown.

Me, I’ve built myself a support system of friends, doctors, and counselors, as well as my own family, I can turn to a lot of people when I feel bad. People ask me how I am.

But not everyone in my family has gotten that far yet, and it’s rough on them.

I am slowly learning to let go of anxiety, but it’s nerve-wracking to know that at any time it could pop up again. I had a job interview today for the first time in over a month, my health has been so bad I didn’t even apply for several weeks, but now that I feel a little better, I decided to risk it, I’d like to earn some holiday cash, after all.

But I woke up and I felt he anxiety trying to grab me, my throat, which felt much better yesterday, tightened up. My stomach has been not really nauseous, but jumpy and twitchy, and though I ate, it remained nervous.

But I played my new Skillet CD in my car on the way to the interview, and sang out that I feel invincible, I’m undefeated, and I want to live (and if you know what CD has all 3 of those songs, congratulations, you’re a dedicated fan).

I don’t think I got the job, but I did good, and I am getting better at these interviews, plus my last one went very well and that’s a confidence boost.

Anxiety tends to whisper “well it might not have, you could have gotten sicker and not been able to do it.”

But the reality is I felt okay while working that job, and God gave me the ability to finish well, even if I only worked 6 days total, with kids that feels like a long time. I put my all into it, and that’s the important thing.

Reality versus Fear, isn’t that the constant battle of anxious people?

Reality? God did come through

Fear: That next time He won’t.

At some point, you just have to pick one. Either you try and fail, believing God will catch you, or you don’t try because you’re too scared you might fail even if nothing bad has happened yet.

It sounds ridiculous to people who don’t have anxiety, but to those who do, it’s like facing a dragon every single day to get up in spite of your fears and do what you need to do.

Id o believe it will be easier for me one day, I believe one day, I ‘ll wake up and the idea of gagging or being sick won’t even cross my mind. It could take a year, but I believe it will happen.

But until God has fully healed me, that’s not the case, and I have to choose.

The secret to Christian life, as far as will power goes, is that we choose something over and over until it cease to be a choice because God has made it part of our nature. Scientists call it forming a new habit, but a habit is something you can change without too much concern, this is a character trait that’s essential to who you are.

Right now, being a healer, being a brave warrior, feels like it’s not who I am. But one day, it will be indispensable to me, I won’t be able to not be that way anymore. That’s my idea of success, who’s with me?

Of course, Love is all that will enable me to do that.

For one of the first times ever in my life, two nights ago, I cried for someone else’s pain. Someone close to me. And I have never, not in my memory, ever been able to do that, much as I wished to. I was so out of touch with my own sadness, it was hard work to even cry for myself, forget someone else. Some women are so empathetic they can cry for a fictional character’s sadness, me? I rarely cry unless it’s a bittersweet ending, that gets me.

So, I knew that somewhere in all this pain and chaos in my life, God has made me more compassionate. I’ve gotten more in touch with my own feelings.

This morning, I acknowledged it, I said “God, I am nervous.” But I gave that to Him, and I was able to get up and not feel sick.

I’ll tell you all right now, I am still nervous about the job, I am nervous about my health going back downhill, and I am scared of the uncertainty of the future. Since that is what is really is. I don’t know what will happen, and that is what frightens me.

God has not tol me what wil happen, only tht I will be oaky.

And to bring it back to what I started with, I started thinking about that, as I remembered how my dad used to sometimes have a tender, soft look in his eye. Rarely toward me, unless it was mixed with a kind of pleas for pity, but with movies, books, and stuff that we aren’t as guarded about. My dad used to cry watching Hook, or A Walk to Remember, or Fiddler on The Roof.

How do I reconcile that with the cruel, spiteful person I know him to be the rest of the time?

It’s the hardest thing about coming to grips with abuse, the knowledge that your abuser, however bad, is still human. It’s easy to forget about a demon, if you believe in those, you might know that. When you’re dealing with a purely evil being, you don’t find it hard to distance yourself from what they do, you can’t possibly sympathize with them. People who try are fools putting human emotions on something that is not human. It never will be. (Paradise Lost is bull, if you’ve ever head of it. The evil would never be so noble as Milton makes him out to be, it’s ridiculous.)

But even the worse of humans were once human, and can by sympathize d with. It’s terrible to remember that humanity, a little. Because I remember how I wished it was something I could have access to. But I was barred out since I was born, and there was nothing I could do about that. I think my mom must have felt the same way.

The reason abusers have such a powerful draw on their victims is that glimpse of a soul that we have a sneak peek to, you see, abuse is all about deception, but the one part that isn’t deception is powerful the way a drug is powerful. When an abuser reveals their brokenness to you, they aren’t faking it.

They have the twisted ability so hateful to healthy people, to use their pain as a weapon. The pain is real, that’s why it cuts deep, but they can project in onto other people. It’s often used in anime, and it always gruesome when it is because it rings true to real life.

They use their pain, but it’s a farce because they don’t actually intend to let you help heal them, just to act as a pain killer, briefly before they take it out and beat you up with it again.

What stings is that they also have good qualities. My dad had them, but abusers use their good points as a weapon to. That’s whats so deeply twisted about it. It’s not just one or the other, everything becomes about ensnaring you and keeping you under their power. Their goodness becomes as hateful to you as their evil, worse even, because it tastes like honey, but like with that scroll in the bible, it turns sour in your stomach.

Still, I miss that part of my dad, I miss what could have been. The part of him that is still a real person, that he keeps locked up, even from himself. I know it doesn’t justify a thing, it’ just adds more regret to my memories.

And I thought of this, and of how all this has affected me, and how God has been there, and it make me think that maybe what an abuser really needs to hear might be what I’d like to tell my dad, if I could safely do so:

“Be glad, Dad, that we are not left to ourselves. That we do not have to live with the knowledge we drove someone else to suicide, or depression, or fear, because we can know that God takes care of His own, whatever we do. Be happy that everything is not about you, instead of resenting it, because no one really wants that who understands what it means.”

See, the really good thing is, other people’s happiness is not up to us. We can be part of it, for sure, and we should be, but we can’t determine it. However good we are, or however much we suck.

I think an abuser could only change, truly, if they knew that. They must realize it for themselves, in their lives, and then realize they don’t control the fate of their victims either (I don’t include special cases where they have killed them, clearly that’s not the same kind as I’m talking about.)

I wonder too, if someone might read this who has those kinds of regrets. For what they put other people through. Maybe you need to hear this, that even with all you do and don’t do, God is in control.

It hurts like hell to become well, as the Oh Hellos have put it, but if you really want it, God will do it, in some form or another.

I believe that both because I have to, or else despair, and because I am starting to see it in my life. Slowly.

It’s gotten bad, but here I am. It could get worse, but I think it will get better. As a friend told me, it will never be as bad as this again. Even if problems do reoccur later in life.

Anyway, even getting into all this can trigger anxiety for me, but I choose to do it anyway so that I will learn to let go. I can’t be afraid of my past if I want to heal.

And to all of you in the same boat as me, hang in there.

I speak as a person who has anxiety, who has had it, like an unwelcome visitor in my life, but who does not intend to keep having it.

No going back, only going forward. Yes, and Amen.

I encourage you to make that decision for yourself. That, whatever you’ve had your whole life and have now, you will not spend the rest of your days with it. You will get free, no matter how long it takes.

And if you’re like me, you will then go on to make the enemy regret the rest of his days that he ever gave you fuel for the fire of your passion to help other people get free also.

I think we have to get free for our own sakes, but once we are free, we can’t help but want to see others free also.

Anyway, until next time, stay honest and get healthy–Natasha.

Curing Anxiety with the Cosby Show, and other things.

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Sorry it’s been so long, I got kind of busy last week.

Whew! I may keep this short (which for me is less than 1000 words, of course).

I am starting to do a little bit better with anxiety, and I thought it might be a good time to share some of the ways I deal with anxiety, some are light, some are deep and heavy, but if I’ve learned one things about mental problems, it’s that you have to take a holistic approach to them, it’s never just one change, it’s a lifestyle.

The fact is, people who are anxious live an anxious lifestyle until the symptoms become indistinguishable from the cause. For example, not getting enough sleep causes anxiety, then anxiety causes you not to sleep enough, thereby creating a viscous cycle.

In my case, I have led a love deprived life for so long, it’s become hard to even recognize that as the source of my anxiety.

Lately, the anxiety has gotten worse with me trying to resist it, going so far as to have an attack, because you get anxious about being anxious. (Sanders Sides anyone?)

Anyway, let’s get to the meat of it.

1. Prayer

Praying Hands Free Stock Photo - Public Domain Pictures

Before you do anything else, you have to prayer. Some people say meditate, I say that’s hogwash. Perhaps it can help some people, but for me, left to my own thoughts, I find no peace. I have to get outside myself, focus on a Higher Power being able to help me.

I will say, it hasn’t been easy. A lot of times God has felt blocked from me, by the heavy cloud of dark feelings I have. I don’t think He was ever gone, or even really silent, but my receptivity tends to wane with the more fear I feel. But prayer is still indispensable, especially if I am alone.

I do find it’s better, if someone else is around, to ask them to prayer for me, hearing them say it aloud builds my own faith. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing the word of God.”

2. Physical Touch

On the note of asking people for help, something that’s been doing wonders for me is just being hugged when I start to have an attack of panic or fear. Even when I feel sick, as I do a lot when I’m afraid, if someone hugs me for 10 minutes or so, I feel calmer, able to deal with it.

Sisters Hugging Images, Stock Photos & Vectors | Shutterstock

This is part of my story, I was touch deprived as a baby, briefly; and then i developed a hypersensitivity to being held, kissed, or touched at all, and I started hating it, as a result, my family slowly stopped touching me for several years of my life, except every so often, or if I initiated.

I had no clue this caused deprivation and a lack of feeling loved, I began to feel the loss as a young teen, and reach out more for it, but my ad, as if in some kind of punishment, then said he’d respect my wishes about not liking touch, after ignoring them for years when I said I didn’t like it, as soon as I said I needed it, he wanted to “respect that” he’d already stopped touching me, but you’d think he’d be glad to get a chance to work with me on this, and figure out what I’d be comfortable with, y dad was never one for subtly.

The rest of my family really didn’t get it either, and up until the last two years, it stayed that way, I wasn’t hugged very often.

Now, they are starting to realize I need this, and reach out and do it, I still have to ask a lot of the time, but I am learning not to be embarrassed about this too.

Note: I am not saying you should push an anxious person to let you touch them a lot, even if they do need it, that trust may not be there to let you work with them on it. I recommend asking them what they are comfortable with, and starting with very small touches and if they don’t respond negatively, try hugging lightly. I’d say never do a bear-hug or full-frontal hug with someone who still acts nervous when you touch them, it’s just too rough. That’s just my experience though, not professional advice.

3. Moving

My sisters actually found out about this technique, and have been employing it longer than me, but with their encouragement, I’m starting to do it more.

Getting out of the room you’re in, especially if you can get outside, is a great way to stop anxiety, especially if you are having an attack where you can’t breathe. That time you feel so trapped, being out in a wider space makes it better.

Also, for me, walking, even if it’s just in circle, up and down, helps. When I get anxious, especially early in the morning, my body is stiff and tight and I carry tension in my back, throat, and shoulders. So walking in an upright position, stepping lightly, and trying to walk the way my chiropractor says to to practice stretching out the right way, relieves some tension. It seems to decrease the chances of a nervous reaction to food, or stress.

Pacing a Trench - TV Tropes

Walking outside is the best combination.

4. Drink Water

So many things feel worse when you are dehydrated, my appetite gets worse. When I feel anxious, my instinct is often not to eat, but also not to drink, to just hold still and try not to do anything to make it worse, which is the worst thing to do.

Here's how drinking water can help in reducing diabetes - Times of India

When I can’t eat, drinking lots of water keeps the nausea down to a more manageable level, and usually helps bring back my appetite. It’s important to stay hydrated after being adjusted too.

5. Relaxing Entertainment

This won’t be the same for everyone, but I find that watching a lighthearted, wholesome piece of media while I eat helps me feel less anxious while eating. Playing music will help too, but the more my focus is taken off myself, the better.

One show I’ve been watching everyday while I eat is “The Cosby Show”. say what you will about the actors, this had to be one of the purest, best, most wholesome shows ever made for TV, at least at that time.

Where Is the Cast of 'The Cosby Show,' 26 Years After the Sitcom Ended? | Inside Edition

I can’t even describe how good the writing is, subtle, heartfelt, true to real life, without disrespecting a particular race, gender, or age group. Most of the episodes don’t have a “lesson” per sec, but are just about a family loving each other, doing kind things for each other and other people, and spreading that love around. Weathering life with each other.

Perhaps it’s because my home life was not like that as a kid, though it is becoming more that way now, that I like watching this. It shows me what could be, and reinforces the changes I am trying to make. I don’t have to roll my eyes and say “that’s such a toxic way to handle it” like with most shows.

There’s some movies I go back to also, when I need to be uplifted. Usually it’s not inspiring movies for me, just movies about family, and getting through life while finding meaning in simple things. Perhaps what I most need encouraged now.

Inspirational stories are great, but at a time like this, they can put pressure on me to heal faster than I can really heal. We are in such a hurry, as a generation, to outgrow our problems, and overcome, but we don’t want to learn patience in order to do it. We just want to be better Now.

And we can get better, quickly, or slowly, depending on God’s will, but what everyone needs to hear is that you will do both, if you life to adulthood and face struggles.

Sometimes healing is like getting surgery, you go in, it’s done, and you just have to recover afterwards.

Other times healing is like physical therapy, months and years of work and reinforcing and changing how you do things until you’re on the right track.

And if one thing gets to be quick for you, something else will be slow. It’ll be different things for different people.

Mental illness is often a long process, I’ve heard of people who got delivered of it in one go, and that’s great for them. God can do anything, but the majority of us have to walk a path. God is glorified whether it’s fast or slow, because it is still by His grace anyone recovers.

I believe even non-Christians owe their healing to God, who else gives us the things that cure anxiety? Most of them are God created things, Nature, Music, Love. Even art is just reflecting God’s creation.

Perhaps it’s even good to notice this stuff while you are still young, because if you walk it out for a few years, and get through it, you have the whole rest of your life to be free.

I may not like having this now, but when I’m 30 or 40, I’ll be glad not to have waited till then to realize all this, by then I’ll have been practicing living without fear for a very long time, maybe when I’m 80, I’ll have forgotten what it feels like to be anxious.

I don’t think anxiety is a permanent condition. The people who say it is usually have only been dealing with it for a few years, and usually without God, even therapists and counselors tend to deal with the same patient only for a few years. how do they know it wasn’t eventually possible to kick this stuff completely.

It may always be a part of your personality to be tempted by anxiety, but all us anxious people know the difference between being tempted, and actually becoming afraid. The suggestion flashes before your mind, and you either latch onto it and sink, or you ignore it, and swim ahead.

I have been anxious since I was a kid, but not all the time. If it can go for a season, surely it can go for a lifetime.

I may not be out of the woods yet, friends with similar problems to me say it’s taken them a few years, or longer, to get free, some are still in the process; but they did get free.

It probably takes 2 years on average to change your lifestyle enough to not encourage anxiety, and it may take 5 years or more to not be tempted by it hardly at all. If I had to guess, assuming you were working on trusting God, and building up better habits all that time. For those of us who give up on it, of course it takes longer.

My dad has had anxiety since he was born, pretty much, and is now almost 60. I have come farther in one year than he has in his whole life. Though I think there were times he did better, but from his stories, he’s never been rid of it.

But my father doesn’t try to be rid of it. He prays, but makes no lifestyle changes with that prayer, and doesn’t seek the kind of counsel and reassurance that would help him, unless a lot has changed since I last saw him.

Me? I’m changing everything, one step at a time, and my life is becoming the kind of life I wanted for so long. It’s far from finished, and it will never be perfect, but what is Possible in my mind had expanded a lot.

I think that’s a good place to stop. I hope you found some of this helpful, or enlightening, or fun, and that you are continue to fight your battles. If I helped even a little, t was worth it. Until next time, stay honest–Natasha

When you can’t understand…

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Well, my last post was one frustrated rant…but back to the usual today.

I’ve started what may be one of the worst anime I’ve seen, but I won’t say what it is yet, I’m going to wait till I finish it to review, but it’s like 30-40 years old, so… (don’t start guessing, you’ll never get it).

Meanwhile, I am still feeling better but not great, and now I have to face going in for my next adjustment, I’m afraid to tell my chiropractor how much worse I felt after the last one, I’m afraid he’ll try the same thing again and make it even worse…

There is always the possibility he is dong something wrong, but nothing he’s doing should be causing any real damage, even if it doesn’t help, so I’m hesitant to come to that conclusion.

And I’ve been thinking that I may actually be more afraid that this is working, that I am getting better, and that the recovery just feels awful. Or ultimately, this problem is more psychological than it is physical, which is the general consensus.

People don’t understand why I am so stressed and anxious, and I have a hard time understanding it myself, especially since often I don’t feel like I am. I’ve been told it’s like I’m carrying something someone else put on me.

It is very much like that, like I’ve just shared my parent’s problems without ever wanting to or choosing to do it myself.

I feel like I believe deep down that this is somehow my fault, and the problem is with me, and I can’t change it. Like Shakespeare’s Romeo, I wish to cut out the part of myself that belongs to this lineage of death and suffering.

Of course, I believe Jesus has already covered that bloodline, Ps 45 says to forget your own people and your father’s house, but it’s easier to say that than it is to really believe it.

I was thinking today that my worldview seems different since my dad moved out, I expected to feel relieved, to see the world as a righter place full of new possibilities. But even in the initial relief, it was much harder to feel that way than I thought it would be.

And then later, I started feeling more grim about the world. Teenage angst started making sense to me, a lot of songs I never liked because of the negativity started to feel like they fit how I felt. In a way it felt like it wasn’t me, but it was me now. I didn’t recognize myself.

I really don’t recognize the person I am now, with so much anxiety, negativity, and temptations to give up and to hate myself, I never used to think I hated myself, but I feel like I do now. I don’t even know myself anymore.

I feel loathing at even having gone through something like this, and slipping, and I feel angry, like it’s just not fair, and why am I the only one who feels like this (though I’m not)

I guess it’s normal for a victim of abuse to feel self loathing. To almost hate yourself for being abused because if you hadn’t been there, this wrong couldn’t have happened, and you were helpless to stop it.

Abuse messes with your head because in a way it doesn’t feel personal, it feels like you triggered a terrible thing in the perpetrator and if you just weren’t there, or were a different sort of person, they wouldn’t have acted in such an ugly way…or at least you wouldn’t have had to see it.

You feel your own existence is the problem…and my dad used to say things like that to my face, and never bothered to retract any of it, claiming it was a joke, I wasn’t laughing.

The wrongness of abuse is like a separate experience from the pain of it to yourself. It’s like looking at an ugly painting, or a twisted, warped, tree. Something just shouldn’t be that way, and to see it makes you feel wrong inside.

Love is a terrible to thing to see twisted in that way, deeply scarring.

It is hard for me to like or accept love, after seeing it made so ugly by my dad and the people around him.

And while that was not something I could have prevented or caused exclusively, the personal connection gives me a disgust with myself.

If you have been bullied or abused, you know this feeling, if you haven’t I don’t think you could really imagine how deep it goes, people rarely talk about it, it’s an aspect of abuse we just don’t understand very well.

In fact, it’s a sneaky side effect I’m not convince ever goes away on its own, I think it has to be confronted directly. People can be loved out of the pain of abuse, but the horror and disgust of it takes another layer of healing altogether. It takes choosing to take up the gauntlet yourself, and face what it did to you.

This ugliness has begun to color my view of life. It didn’t help reading a lot of twisted versions of history, and watching some bad shows, and encountering how sick people really are via the internet.

It’s disgusting what gets justified, the Naruto fandom taught me some bitter lessons about what people will accept in order to like a show, long after it’s become too corrupt to support if you looked at it objectively. (By the time we finished Naruto, we no longer supported it, we just wanted to see the end, we’ve never been stans, and don’t defend or praise it now, but plenty of people do, that’s what I mean by accepting it.)

I realize I’ve gotten more cynical this year, and it has nothing to do with the crisis, the process began before then. My dad leaving has just left a void of optimism in my life.

Partly because I realized he was abusive, but also because I couldn’t fix it or get answers from him about it. It’s not safe to be around him right now, but I also lack closure.

My certainty about some things got shaken.

I always used to think that bad things were somehow preventable, and avoidable if you did enough right. You could preserve yourself. This idea is popular in the church to, “name it and claim it” and so on.

My dad’s exodus from our house was like a huge case-file of proof that not all bad things are avoidable, or fixable by us. I couldn’t make it work with him after all, I don’t regret making that choice.. but I hate it.

Maybe you know what I’m talking about, huh?

So, I lost the illusion of control about anything outside my house. And I’ve begun to see how futile it is to talk about things like that as if we can really control what happens…we can make changes, but we don’t always make the changes we intend to.

I can’t simply choose to be better, can I? We can’t make the problems with the world just go away, to be blindly optimistic seems foolish to me.

I used to be much more of an idealist, and I am sad to have lost that, but I can’t logically go back to it, idealism seems to be only man’s imperfect solutions to me, good as far as it goes, but not the ultimate truth people treat it as.

I’ve learned a lot about God, I think, but I’ve stopped liking people so much. Even the people I like, I don’t see the same way.

I know it’s not fair to them, and that believing the best of people who deserve it is important to do. But it’s much harder now.

Once I tried to believe the best of my dad, and that ended up being a nightmare, so now how can I be sure anyone else is worth it? Or myself.

What if everyone can turn into a manipulator, abuser,or a neglecter? How can I be sure they really care about me… and do I really care about them?

Now that I’m writing it out, I think this is probably only a natural part of the process. This is the part people get stuck on for years though, if they don’t acknowledge it.

First, there was Shock, then Denial that I was really having a problem, then Fear and Anger that I was, then the Frustration of the cycle and trying to break it, and the Guilt of feeling like i just repeat the same mistake, and this is just not happening fast enough.

The phase dangerously close to Despair is the one I dislike the most.

And Disgust, that phase is not fun. It’s kind of an intermittent part of it, disgust accompanies pretty much every phase of abuse recovery, at least for me. It’s just so ugly to think about what happened. How people can be so terrible to each other.

Then I hit this Wall: God, how can I love people if they can be like this? How can You love us? We hurt each other over nothing, and we twist your most valuable gifts into terrible shapes and use them as weapons., how is there grace for that.

Yet, somehow there is, and I don’t want to be the Jonah on the edge of Nineveh, railing at God for being so merciful.

I guess the only way I can understand it even a tiny bit, is if I think of children. Who can do manipulative things, and deliberately be mean and cruel. But I still love them and want to see them become better. That must be how God feels.

Perhaps to Him, the crimes of a 50 year old perp are not really that much more serious than that of a child who shoves someone else on the playground just because they can. We see a difference, but the intent of the heart is the same, whether it’s a child or an adult. In fact, we attribute a lack of conscience more to kids because they don’t realize how damaging their actions are.

Children can be more pure than adults, but in my experience, it varies just as much as with older people. It’s just that the cruelty and kindness of children are both far ore open than adults, they are not more or less common.

But to God, all our sins must seem completely and utterly foolish and immature, as well as evil. While He must punish them, perhaps He can no more take them as serious threats to Himself than we can with kids. As always, the greater concern is how it affects us and each other.

I am getting at an idea here that I really can’t express well without sounding like a fool, even if it has a grain of truth in it, so I should probably move on.

The point is, God is so much bigger than our sins that He can see how to overcome them, and I can’t. Not the idea of it, nor the actions of it, nor the damage left over. But that’s me.

I’m well aware it’s not hard for Him. It’s hard for me to receive that.

I was saying last night to my family that I don’t even know what to ask for, but maybe that’s okay, maybe God knows, and I just need to ask for that. Maybe the ultimate trust is trusting God not just with what we know, but what we don’t know.

Corrie Ten boom wrote of that in “The Hiding Place” when we can’t unerstand cruelty, and suffering, will You carry this too, Lord Jesus?

Perhaps we cannot understand suffering because it is an experience we share with God, and we can’t understand any of those. Love, Joy, Perfect Peace, those are the nice experiences that are beyond our understanding, but Suffering is too. God suffers, and sorrows. We do so because we are like Him, that’s all there is to it.

God cannot give us less than Himself.

It’s an interesting thought too, that He suffers when we do, meaning that whenever He allows a sorrowful experience in our lives, He is allowing it for Himself.

God isn’t afar off watching us, but He feels it with us,

God is like a surgeon who operates on Himself at the same time as the patient, feeling all the pain the patient does, or more, because God is also like the anesthetic.

God does not spare Himself pain, we tend to think He cheats somehow, that He suffers less because He knows when it will end… but I have never found that knowing when something will end makes it less painful, it only enables me to endure it more patiently…sometimes, but even that is a choice. It must be for God too.

I think if anything, God is just Perfectly able to have Joy even in Sorrow, and have all true feelings at the same time. Maybe it’s just us who cannot hold more than a few feelings at once in ourselves…and indeed, the older I get, the more I can feel multiple things at once (like the Inside Out movie showed.)

109 Inside Out HD Wallpapers | Background Images - Wallpaper Abyss

Anyway, I think that’s all I got for now, until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Stop it (both a rant and a reflection on current attitudes)

/ toseealife / 1 Comment

You know I think I’m finally getting the hang of this new editor, yay!

Well if you were curious, I am better today, have been for a couple days, starting icing my inflamed muscles and taking Prilosec (for acid reflux) and I’ve been eating much better.

And another great thing that happened this week was the Oh Hellos (that band I keep leaving links to at the bottom of my posts) dropped another EP, liking it so far. Musical genius. I am actually listening to them as I write.

Plus a friend I have not seen since the lockdown began finally came to Youth Group again.

So, with some good things happening, what should I write about?

How messed up the world is right now? Yeah…

You know, I try to refrain from ranting about it and getting into politics a whole lot, because that’s not really what I want to write about, and I think too many people complain about the world in their blogs, I won’t start naming names because I still like those bloggers, YouTubers, and others, but…seriously?

Here’s a thought that keeps coming back to me over this year.

Stop. Just… stop.

Why do you bother?

I really don’t get the appeal of being “woke” about stuff, giving the hot take on the events of the world like you are some kind of expert on it. Like you really have such a great grasp of the global climate and the suffering of other people.

Now, I am all about Free Speech, I believe that the right to give our opinions in public is the only protection from tyranny we have.

And I believe that even the idiot’s right to free speech must be protected. after all, if the fools don’t speak, they will not expose their foolishness, as Proverbs assures us they will.

My issue with how it currently is is that the fools are the only ones speaking, most of the time, and people of true wisdom simply stay out of the quarrel.

Like the anime movie title, there’s a Silent Voice in both America, and other countries in political trouble right now. There’s the people who just go quietly about their lives, thinking more wise thoughts, and they won’t let on.

Proverbs also tells us that Wise men will guard their tongues and not speak unnecessarily. Which is not really talking about small talk and humor, as some people have been taught by too strict churches, but talking about saying what is better left unsaid, or saying something at the wrong time.

Proverbs says “a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” Meaning there’s a right time and place to speak, and a right manner.

JAmes says we should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

Doesn’t sound like our modern social world does it?

Well, newsflash that the media won’t ever tell you: This is nothing new. People have always been prone to petty arguments, talking over each other, and throwing insults more than reasoning.

It’s hilarious to me when people bemoan how free thought and reason have fallen out of popularity…when were they ever in popularity? There have been a few golden ages in the history of the World where Wisdom was perhaps sought after and respected by many people, but those times were decades at most usually.

When church leaders (not just in the church, it’s all over, but I hear it most there for obvious reasons) say we need to get back to being kind, and need to remember that, and not drift, I want to laugh. They mean well, but I always think, “have you read the bible? This isn’t new. Tell us to be better by all means, but don’t imply that we ever didn’t have these same problems. These are just human problems. They have existed since the fall. They will exist until the new kingdom comes.”

The real wake up call anyone reading this needs, if they haven’t had it already, is to realize this is not something that happened because humans have changed, but because they haven’t and won’t.

This is not unusual.

2020 as a whole has been a weird year, to be sure, but the problems it exposed in our culture are not really Racism, Intolerance, or radicalism to unhealthy amounts on both sides of our political spectrum. It was not arrogance, pride, or pettiness.

Oh no, if you didn’t already know all that existed, boy were you either stupid or sheltered way more than a homeschooler ever is. Read a book, seriously, I’ve known about this stuff since I was a kid, just in varying forms.

But I’m sure you did know. I don’t care if you don’t even live in the USA, it’s the same everywhere. You cold live in a remote African village, or in rural China, (though I doubt you’d be reading this if you did) and you could tell me the same crap happens there as I’m describing, it’s just undocumented.

You know what 2020 really revealed to me, I knew it already, but I never saw it so clearly before:

Just how Self-Aggrandizing, Whiny, and Anxiety obsessed my country is.

And it’s not just the young people, though it scares me how prevalent it is for them, at least in my state.

But, oh my gosh, have we gotten delusional.

I hear people say constantly that the world has never been through this kind of thing, the country has never been through this kind of thing, and we are in something new.

I mean, seriously? None of the other crisises in history came close to this one? This one that was made much better by having tech we could connect with each other through, and keep our businesses running with, and our churches. For a national or global crisis, this has been remarkably cushy, the psychological effects are far worse than the materiel ones for most of us who have not lost someone to the virus, or lost our jobs, but even those of us who did suffer that had more resources than the average Crisis victim in any past tragedy would have.

I got handouts I didn’t even ask for from my school, lots of people have.

And the political corruption line? Really. That’s been every single election since Washington stepped down and Reagan served his 2nd term.

I ask you Americans who read this, what do you think we deserve, anyway?

If you are on the Left, what makes you think we are so entitled to social justice?

Your side promotes murdering innocent children, pushing ideologies in schools that many parents don’t like, and pushing secularism and Evolution, a worldview that has absolutely not a shred of evidence.

If you are on the Right, why are you blaming the Left for ruining this country?

Who has sat back and done nothing, for decades? Or at most, protested and petitioned in weak ways, but not gone to the real battleground and taken back our schools and counties, and gotten social media savvy, and tried to understand what kids are up against now, instead of blaming them fro being brainwashed when no one tried to stop it.

I mean, I’ll give the Left this, they make themselves heard, they have popular platforms, they know how to appeal to kids.

The Right often to me does not even try to understand what we like, they just tell us what we should like. In my personal experience, it’s gotta be old music, old fashions, old ways of doing things. And anyone who doesn’t like that is just a snowflake wimp.

So much for being the trendsetters.

No, though I support Conservative ideology, the actual actions of Conservative often fail to impress me. There’s some very cool ones out there, but many just sit on their duffs and complain and say it’s all wrong, and do nothing whatsoever that will ever be remotely useful in the long run.

So, I ask, what ecactly do you expect?

You can call this years election a joke, but this is exactly what you asked for, and you know how?

Because you fall for the click-bait, you start the arguments, you rail at people who don’t agree with you.

You demonize the other side, and you worship any leader who echoes your opinions.

But what’s worse than all that, is you actually have the audacity to feel sorry for yourself. To feel you’ve already lost, and that your life will be forever ruined by forces you cannot control.

And that absolutely can and has happened, in the past, but you take it on before it’s actually set in stone, and live your life afraid of the future, and what the opposing side will do to you.

(I don’t mean all this as necessarily someone who is reading this does that, though it’s possible, I mean to the grander audience of people who complain in general)

Now, it may be no one knows what to do. But why not just admit that and start praying? Why must me insist on being so arrogant that we will deny just how clueless we really are, and refuse to seek wisdom, to study how it was done in the past, and how real changes were actually made.

I am so sick of the Self Pity. How dare we feel sorry for ourselves when we have the most freedom to control our fate, and people would kill for that in oppressed countries. And they must look at us in amazement at how scared we are.

Believe me, I get scared by the corruption too, but I have not yet been convinced that I am helpless. There are measures still open to me, and at the very least, if I can change nothing, I can at least choose not to compromise.

We asked for this. We really did. And we didn’t try to stop it. Why? Because we decided we liked anger, we liked hatred, we liked ignorance.

And I am not talking about racism or bigotry as the media defines it, I mean the pure corruption in this country that people can’t stop whining about, just as if they didn’t all contribute to it.

It’s like the Hunger Games, if nobody watched it, this gruesome, sick, charade couldn’t keep going.

69 The Hunger Games HD Wallpapers | Background Images - Wallpaper Abyss

So why do we watch it?

Part of the point of that saga is not that people will necessarily force kids to fight for food in a post apocalyptic future, it’s that people will accept evil that they do not have to accept, if it’s entertaining. That people will be fooled into thinking they can do nothing about it, if they are shown something as normal, and as supported by rich, privileged higher ups. Who in turn think they can do nothing, because people pay them for this.

That’s why things are this way this year.

And all the whining about how awful it is is not going to change a thing, that’s part of the problem. You do realize that the facade literally depends on us complaining about it instead of actually trying to improve our own lives.

I’ll tell you, if we all tried to improve our own lives alone, we’d have changed this country years ago, let alone if we tried to help out others.

That’s what Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness means, guys. The freedom to pursue the best life for yourself possible, whatever the confines of your situation are. People cam to America with nothing and became rich, not because they had “privileges” but because they believed they could change their situation.

Despite many bad legal decisions in the last few decades, that is still true and has not yet quite disappeared, though many foolish people are trying to remove it.

I don’t have a plan to fix this country, nor do I necessarily think it will be fixed, because I am much more concerned with individuals and how they think, and feel.

I am just using politics as an example because it’s an obvious one, but what I’m saying applies to all areas of life.

Just stop. Stop commenting on everything. Stop complaining about everything.

Stop talking about how corrupt our leaders are, you’re the one who even watches the news to get told who to vote for, why are you surprised when they make a sensation, that’s what you asked for, because you like feeling stirred up (nobody who doesn’t like that watches the news, trust me.)

Guess what, there are other candidates who dion’t get coverage at all, do you bother looking into them?

Stop trying to sound smart.

Stop trying to diagnose the problem.

Stop thinking that talking about it is a solution.

Like, raising awareness, what is the point of raising awareness? It stops nothing. It only intimates people who might actually do the right thing if it wasn’t shoved in their faces how terrible they are for not doing it.

But, hey, no one has to listen to me. I know that. I know that I am talking to myself here as much as anyone. But this is the best advice I could give myself. Like Portia and Alice, I don’t always follow it, easy to say, not easy to do.

But even so, I am learning.

The real reason the Bible advises us not to get too concerned with world events is because Jesus knew just how much of a trap it is, trying to fix the world that cannot be fixed, and getting sucked into the void of trying to find the perfect solution that doesn’t exist.

Because Jesus is and always will be the only Perfect Solution to anything and everything. And he cannot be controlled by us and our efforts, though he may use them.

I think, in the end, many people my age wouldn’t even argue with me that there is no real answer in this world, they just lack the hope that there is a better world with the answer that we can be a part of.

Which saddens me. The only real way to prevent despair is to hope in something that cannot be taken away by the world’s circumstances.

Christians get flack for focusing on what is unseen, and what is often vague and hard to understand, on a distant Heavenly future instead of solving the present problems.

But remember Christianity was founded under a wold dominion, a time when a human solution to the problem seemed impossible. That was why it was so clear why Heaven had to be the answer.

Because God’s kingdom must be untouchable by man’s rules or ways, or it is weak and empty, just like our own. So it can’t be an earthly kingdom. No earthly kingdom is permanent, if you set your hope in that, you might as well despair now.

So, to wrap this up, my final thought it that I will hate to see my world collapses around me, and I hope it doesn’t for a very long time, but I now it will, sooner or later, and when it happens, I want to find the rock under my feet was always something that the world couldn’t take away from me, because it wasn’t o f the world to begin with.

And I encourage people to think about that, as this year draws to a close. You lost a lot more than you expected, but what did you find unshakable? If there was nothing, then maybe you built your life on the wrong thing to begin with.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.