Encouragement from Sunday

I continue to feel deeply sad for my friend and her family. But yesterday we went to church in the evening and I found the message encouraging, you can listen to it online here.

The best part was Karen, from IAmSecond.com, who shared the story of how God answered her prayers for help. If you know me, you know I'm not a big fan of "Christian-y" type things, and I really still don't know much about IAmSecond.com except that it seems to be some kind of trend. I am not into trends, but I do know what it's like to be at the end of the rope and I love, love, love hearing people tell how they were rescued from that! It was also helpful in getting my mind off the sadness of the death and the book "Beautiful Boy", as I mentioned in yesterday's post. The contrast between Karen's story and the story David Sheff told...so completely opposite. Karen's story is what I love to hear. Maybe I will just listen to a few more of the stories on that web site...

Heavy

I got a call early Friday morning that has made it difficult for me to post as I had planned. A good friend's niece died suddenly and unexpectedly, she was only 8 months old. I knew her parents through my friend, but had not yet got to meet the new baby and now she is gone. This juxtaposed weirdly against the baby shower I helped host yesterday for another friend. It's been difficult for me to wrap my brain around the birth of so many new babies lately and then this sudden death.

I guess I've grown accustomed over the last 2 years to celebrating life, with upwards of 10 babies being born to our friends and family, in addition to the 4-5 more that will be born this year. The death is just so incongruous and sad. It's easy for me to say that I still trust in the Lord because this was not my child. Obviously, I can't even understand what they are feeling because I've never even had a child at all. Today is the visitation and we are getting ready to go. Please pray or send positive thoughts toward everyone if you think of it.

I don't think it has helped that I have been reading Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff. I've read a lot of stories about addicts and recovery, and heard a lot of my friends' personal stories in Celebrate Recovery, and even stories from parents of addicts in the past. What I never realized was how all the stories I've heard included God. At the very least, the 12 steps require a Higher Power. I've been blessed to have seen God in all the stories I've heard so far, so that even when there is relapse, there is always a hope and a peace. That is how this one was different, and why reading it has also been very hard for me. The author doesn't believe in God, and you can really see and feel it in the way he reacts to tragedy and heartbreak. He is terribly, utterly alone in his mind and his emotions. He is full of fear and panic. There is none of the "peace within the storm" that I see in families of addicts, addicts, or even people going through horrible trials that I have seen in the Watermark family. It was hard for me to read this book, knowing that without some kind of outside help, this man and his son were truly, truly alone. Even in the end of the book, no real peace, just a resignation to chaos. It was a painful book to me.

When I told another friend about the book and the death, she said "I am sorry, this is all very heavy". I think that is a good description. I feel heaviness.

This weekend

So, this weekend I am headed to a Celebrate Recovery Leader's Retreat and Christian is headed to Austin for SXSW Interactive. This is the conference he attends every year and then tells me that he is never going to attend it again, because it is no help at all. But, then it's free so he goes anyway.

My trip is really only overnight, so I will have time to be a little lonely on Sunday. Although I have some massive cleaning planned. I am OK with the CR retreat not being very long because I know it is mainly going to just generate massive guilt for me when they ask me to do more, when I know I am already maxed out. However, it is progress for me to be able to admit that I know this will happen and to know that I am maxed out.

We do have things going on over here with our family, but they aren't the kind of things I can really blog about. Mixed audience and all that. I've sent an email to those of you who need one. Thanks for praying!

Tomorrow is my birthday!

Yep, tomorrow I turn 30! Hooray! I have been looking forward to turning 30 for quite some time. I have read somewhere that by the time you turn 30 you are more OK with who you are than you were in your 20's. At first I thought that was kind of hogwash but I have hoped that it would be true.

Maybe it is going through Celebrate Recovery for the second time this year, or maybe it is indeed just my age. But I do think that I feel a lot more settled and OK with things than I have at other times in my life. I certainly don't have the amount of worry about what people think of me that I might have had earlier in my life. I can see patterns in life more, and have less of a need to react and more of an attitude of "wait and see". I am sure my husband would tell you differently, because he is on the opposite end of the scale. In comparison to him, I am still very high-strung and neurotic. But, you can only compare yourself to yourself, not to other people. And for me, I feel more settled.

I'm looking forward to having a wonderful dinner this weekend with a bunch of my favorite people! If anyone is reading this, I want you to all bring cameras and take plenty of pictures!

7 Quirks

So, I am going to participate in the 7 Quirks thing that Interstellar Lass put on her site. I know the rules are to "tag" 7 other people, but you readers don't have blogs, you just read my site, so I don't have anyone to "tag".

The rules are to list 7 quirks about myself.

1. I love to clean. Seriously, sometimes I have to restrain myself from cleaning or tidying things in public. I get some kind of weird enjoyment out of it. I realize most people think this is sick.

2. I am a people pleaser. This is not a positive thing, and that's part of the reason I'm in Celebrate Recovery for the second time. If I don't go through Step 3 about every single second, the people pleasing will eventually control my life.

3. I have to closely monitor my tendency to over-commitment when it comes to social activities. At this point in my life, I realize and admit that I require down-time in my life or I start to go postal. But because of #2, I feel guilty for saying "no", and will instinctively say "yes" even at the expense of my health or sanity. There was kind of an awkward moment this week where I had to have my husband re-neg on one of our commitments because I had scheduled things back-to-back for 4 days in a row and I was going crazy just thinking about it.

4. I will not knowingly eat anything with partially or fully hydrogenated oils in it. I will not buy anything and allow it in my house that contains PHO's. I also do not believe in feeding anything with PHO's to children.

5. I did not grow up wanting to get married and have babies. This is quirky because I live in the South and apparently every little girl here grows up with that desire, but I didn't. I am married now, and I love it, but we still don't know about children.

6. I think Asian children are much cuter than Caucasian children. Part of the reason I am not sure I'd want to have a child is because it will never be as cute as its Asian equivalent. It makes me sad that neither my husband or I are Asian so I can't have biological Asian children.

7. If someone grabs my big toe unexpectedly, I cannot breathe.

Feel free to write your own 7 Quirks in the comments, or email me!!

Living in Dallas

I was having a conversation last week with some friends, all of whom agreed that they would not be in Dallas if they had not felt God specifically leading them here. When you take into consideration "the way Dallas is", this is not surprising. Who would want to live here? It's a hard city to live in, from a mental aspect. Most of us are here because of work or marriage or ministry.

Dallas is one of the most materialistic cities in America. One of the most conspicuously consumptive, the least environmentally friendly,and the most isolated - people live gated, and try to avoid talking to one another on anything but a very shallow level. Looks are everything. I learned this the first time I attempted to go to the grocery store in sweats. That is not considered acceptable in Dallas, and you better have some makeup on as well. I have friends who teach in schools where children get plastic surgery before they are 18, and this is not considered shocking or unusual.

Sunday at church Todd spoke about how Dallas, as a city, has no reason for being as affluent as it is - no major port, never had any major trains coming in, no natural resources that would cause business to be so financially successful here. Just a lot of people who are hell-bent on making a ton of money and they want to make sure everyone knows it. What's addictive here is the lifestyle - when everyone around you has that mindset, it can be hard to see reality sometimes. It's hard to get past the way things look, it is so integrated into everyday life. You can imagine how hard it is for most churches to survive, when no one feels comfortable telling anyone else what's really going on, because it might shatter the facade, take away their credibility, their career, their reputation as someone who "has it all together". In Dallas, individuality is not honored, affluence and power are.

We are so blessed to have Watermark in this city. For a lot of people I know, including Christian and I, it's the only reason we can stand to live here. As a group of people, this community is an oasis of authenticity in a city where everything is fake. We get together in different sizes of groups throughout the week and talk about our "stuff". I have seen businessmen who make millions stand up in Celebrate Recovery and introduce themselves as someone who struggles with pornography. I have seen well-known mothers and leaders in the community talk about their eating disorders and how they struggle to honor their husbands in their marriage. In the people of Watermark, it's the opposite of Dallas - the ones who lead are those who are willing to be the most vulnerable, to admit their problems and talk about how God is changing them.

I have seen this approach of opposites be proved very true in Celebrate Recovery - every time I can tell my small group of girls honestly about the ways I am struggling that week, confess the areas I need God to work on me, I can see that this authenticity inspires them far more than if I were preaching or explaining some kind of recovery theory from the perspective of someone who has it all figured out. That would be a lie anyway - no one is ever finished recovering, it's an ongoing process. God uses people and His Word, and I am really thankful that we are in this community where those 2 things are so important. Even if we are in Dallas...

I've been blogging...but only in my head

Does anyone else do this: I write blog posts in my head that I never get a chance to post. It just seems like things go really fast in life and I don't get to stop and record it much lately.

Right now we're in the middle of the last scientific conference I'll have to work for the Association before my last day on Wednesday. It's one of the 2 times a year I have to work in evenings at this job. So I'm sitting in the coffee shop of the worship center of our church using the free Wi-Fi, hoping that the email will be approved to send before my Celebrate Recovery small group starts at 7:20. I hope that I get to make it into group tonight, but at the moment it's not looking promising.

It's weird to be at work while everyone is in Orlando at this conference, knowing I'll be gone when they get back. I really will miss a lot of the people, and it's been a great environment to work in, other than the fact that I've had to spam people for a living.

I am taking Thursday and Friday off and then starting the new job next Wednesday. Christian has taken the same days off work to use up his time off that he'd otherwise lose at the end of the year. During the week off, we are going to East Texas to babysit my niece on Thursday. Friday we are going to spend an entire day (9 hours) watching all 3 of the Lord Of The Rings movies back-to-back. Sunday and Monday we are going camping at Enchanted Rock. Somewhere in there, I need to learn SQL for my new job!

Serenity Prayer

Not much to say today because I have such horrible allergies. Tonight at CR I get to do the Serenity Prayer, which is one of my favorite (and shortest, and easiest to remember...) CR traditions:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is;
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
AMEN

- Reinhold Niebuhr -

We named our Wii "Neti"

Two fun things! First, my friend told me about this amazing thing called a Neti Pot. Apparently it has been on Oprah but I am never home during the day so I wouldn't know about that. All I know is that I had a terrible allergy sinus headache all day yesterday and it really impaired my ability to do anything. She told me about this thing that washes out your sinuses and I literally drove straight to Whole Foods and bought it. It is SO AMAZING! My sinuses felt better right away and I did it again this morning - so far no headache! You have to check out this video that shows how to use it. OK so I did not do the weird yoga bends afterward but it worked great anyway!

Secondly, while I was discovering this amazing thing, Christian was playing with our new Nintendo Wii. We have been saving for it for a while now - it's his birthday money from last year - but just now bought it. I didn't get to play it much last night because I was at CR and afterward was busy pouring water through my nasal cavities. However, you do get to name your Wii when you first log on, and I was so in love with the Neti pot at the moment that Christian named ours "NetiWii". Isn't that sweet? I think it is!

Thank you for commenting about the housing! We did take a look at some townhome type apartments this weekend and were all ready to fill out an application and talk to our community about it, when we took a look at our budget. Then we realized that we need to stay the course where we are for a few more months. It made me really sad, because now I really want to have people over to play our Wii, but we have a goal of paying off debt and we need to reach that before we can make any housing changes. The good news is, we were able to shorten the length of time that will take, so we are hoping to be in the position to look at new places again at the end of the year. Feel free to send any good info our way between now and then!

It's a re-branding

So, I have decided to scrap all the posts I've made in the past 6 months when I was attempting to create a work-focused professional blog and turn this into a personal blog about myself and our family, here are the "kids":
I've been blogging on Xanga for over 3 years but feel that it's getting a little to "young" for me. I like the way people participate in things like tagging and meme's and things on real blogs like Blogger. I don't know very many people so I'm not confident that will happen for me, but I think it would be fun.

For more blogging fun, check out my brother's family blog - very soon they will have pictures of my niece!!

The most exciting thing that is happening right now is that I have committed to another year of the Celebrate Recovery at Watermark Community - this time as the co-leader of a group. Last time I went through the 12 steps in 2004-2005, I was a group member and it was amazing. I am so excited to be walking through the 12 steps with these women who I have not yet met! I know that all our issues will be different but that there is just one God in charge of them all, and if we are committed to doing the work, He will bless us!! Of course, Celebrate Recovery is a completely confidential ministry, so I won't post about anyone in my group or what goes on there. I would only share what I experience personally, if at all.