changing.

The past 5 years or so have been a blur of appointments.  Therapist’s appointments, nutritionist’s appointments, meetings with my nurse practitioner, doctor’s appointments, support group meetings…  I am on a first-name basis with all the ladies in the local phlebotomy lab, because my NP’s been sending me to get blood work done on a monthly basis for as long as I can remember.  I have grown used to this schedule.  My whole life has altered itself to fit around this disease, simultaneously being treated for an eating disorder and doing my best to keep it a secret from everyone around me. 

It’s scary to be getting better.  Exciting, but terrifying at the same time.  What will my life look like if I’m not seeing Robin once a month?  If I’m not sitting on Joyce’s couch on a bi-weekly basis?  My relationship with Susan has changed because I’m no longer “sick”, and it completely and totally sucks… Can I handle my relationships with everyone else changing as well?  These women have been a part of my life for so long – I have depended on them for so long – that I cannot imagine not having them there. 

In some demented, twisted way, a part of me wants to stay sick just to hold onto those relationships. 

Is it normal for people to miss the parts of themselves that aren’t there any more, even if they know those parts of them weren’t healthy?

Slipping Back.

Why does it seem like life is just one giant transition?  As soon as you get into a place where you feel settled, comfortable and familiar, things change and everything becomes tumultuous again. 

School starts up again next week.  This is my last year of undergraduate school, but I know that this won’t be the last time I feel these sorts of feelings.  They come up every time life changes.  And so, life being what it is, these feelings come up a lot.

I hate the way that anticipation makes me feel both excited and sick at the same time.  There are so many things I’m looking forward to next year, and so many things I know I’ll need to work to adjust to.  New living arrangement, new roommates, new classes, new job, new leadership positions, new routine, new expectations…

This afternoon, I stopped by to see Sharon, who is one of my favorite professors.  I’m working as a tutor for two of her courses this fall, and also working with her as a president of the Nursing Club, of which she’s the faculty advisor.  Chatting with Sharon in her office, exactly the way I’ve done countless times over the last 3 years, I became aware of just how easy it will be for me to slip back into all the roles I filled before this summer…  Melissa the smart one.  Melissa the organized one.  Melissa who’s always polite, quiet and well-mannered.  Who’s always cheerful.  Who’s always put-together, always juggling a hundred different things, and always willing to take on more.

Maybe that is what I am the most afraid of right now.  Slipping back, somehow. 

This summer has been so wonderful.  Beautiful and perfect and fulfilling.  I have grown this summer.  Relaxed and slowed down in just the tiniest of bits.  And I like that. I like that a lot.  And I’m terrified that, when I go back to school and classes resume, it will be like this summer never happened and I will go back to being that girl that I was before…  I’m worried that I will disappear.

It makes me angry that I worry so much, and that this is still such an issue.

Home.

I feel a little like I am homeless.

Maybe this is a typical feeling among college-aged young adults. Maybe it is not. I don’t know; I’ve never really talked about it before with anyone my age.  I’ve never really talked about it with anyone, to be honest; I’ve only just realized that I feel this way.

Coming back from vacation, I realized that I’m not really sure where Home is anymore. My mother lives in one city, and my father lives in another. Their houses are just houses, and aren’t really places I’m comfortable enough in to consider Home any longer. I’m comfortable at Susan’s house, but the unspoken rule is that I’m only allowed to pretend it’s my space when she’s away on vacation. I’m comfortable at Ed and Gloria’s, too, and it feels Home-like. But it’s only a temporary Home, until classes start again at the end of August. After that, I’ll live in a dorm room for a year, and, after that… I’m not really certain.

It’s not so much that I want a place of my own as it is that I want someplace where I belong. Someplace where I can be me, and where I can be healthy, and where I don’t feel like I’m being selfish for trying to take care of myself. Someplace where I can run to when the bottom drops out and everything comes crashing down around me, and where I won’t feel guilty for taking up anyone else’s time or attention.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. –Psalm 46:1

I feel like, until I figure that out and really believe it, I could live in a hundred thousand different places and never find Home.

Bigger Bugs.

There was a bug in the shower this morning. One of those centipede-type things, with a ton of legs and twitching antennae. After suppressing my initial instinct to shriek, I smashed the wretched thing with a wad of toilet paper and then flushed it down the toilet. So long bug.

At one point in time, there was no way I would have been able to do that. The sight of a bug in the shower – especially such a creepy looking one – would have rendered me immobile and helpless, and I would have had to yell for someone else to come and rescue me. Creepy-crawlies used to have that sort of effect on me.

Thankfully, I’m no longer that afraid of insects. Somewhere along the line, I grew up a little bit. While I still don’t necessarily like them, I’ve realized that being terrified of something that is only a small fraction of my size is slightly irrational. Through being exposed to them, and through dealing with them in countless situations, I’ve been able to pretty much tame my fear of insects. I’m a now very efficient bug-smasher.

What if I could deal with all my other fears in the same way?

That’s what I’ve been thinking about this morning… I have rather a lot of fears, and I tend to worry a lot more than necessary. I’ve been told I’m a catastrophier, and that I tend to blow things up in my mind, usually thinking of the worst possible outcome for whatever situation I happen to be in; I’d agree with that. I’m wondering what life would look like if I didn’t do that any more, and I stopped being so afraid.

I will readily admit that most of my fears and insecurities are irrational. I will readily admit that worrying and fretting the way I do is a massive waste of my time and energy. I’m getting tired of it all.

I want to smash bigger bugs.

Imperfect.

A friend told me that I’ll make a good wife someday.  She said that she can envision me being the type of wife who’s awake, showered and looking like she could head out to the country club for brunch before the rest of her household’s out of bed.  She said that she can see me being the type of wife who has a gourmet breakfast ready for her husband every morning, who keeps an immaculate house, and who’s on the PTA. 

My automatic response was to get angry.

I have this day-dream… In it, I am married.  My husband and I have just bought our first house, and we’re thrilled.  It’s a warm, sunny day, and we’re out in our yard and putting in a garden.  We spend the entire afternoon ripping out shrubs and turning up the dirt around our house.  We pour on bags of topsoil, line up stones around the edge of the garden to create a border, and dig holes to plant the flowers I’ve picked out the day before. 

When we are finished, my husband and I are exhausted.  We’re both a mess.  We’re covered in dirt and sweat.  We’re both happy though.

I stand, trying to catch my breath and wiping the sweat off my forehead.  In the process of doing so, I inadvertantly smudge some dirt on my face, since I never wear gloves when I garden and my hands are covered in earth.  The knees of my jeans are caked in brown, and my blouse is not nearly as clean as it was when we started the garden project, hours before.  There’s dirt under my fingernails.  My hair has taken on a life of its own, with tendrils escaping from the pony tail I pulled it back in, and pieces of it plastered to my face and neck.  With arms akimbo, I turn to survey the garden.  “It’s beautiful,” I say. 

In my day-dream, my husband agrees, “It is.”  But when I turn to face him, I realize that it’s me he’s looking at and saying this about, and not the garden.

I.don’t.want.to.be.perfect.

I’m tired of feeling like I need to be completely put-together, all the time.  I want to get to the point where I can trust someone enough to honestly believe that they will love me if I’m a mess.  Not even a husband or a guy, just someone…  I want someone to love me because I’m not perfect.  And I want to be okay with that.

In the next 365 days…

Because it’s New Year’s Eve, I feel a little obligated to post my goals for 2009.  I’m calling them “goals” and not “resolutions” because I’ve always thought that making New Year’s Resolutions was dumb… no one ever keeps them.  So, maybe I’ll actually accomplish something in the next 365 days if I just label my list of aspirations with a different name…

It’s a short list.  But it encompasses a lot.

1.       Be healthier.  Physically, emotionally, spiritually – healthier in every sense of the word.

2.       Worry less.

3.       Have more fun.

4.       Be more social.  Facebook does not count.

 

Those are all do-able things, right?

A New Meaning.

I love when a story takes on a new meaning to you, especially if it’s a story you’ve already heard a hundred times before and you’re not expecting it.

Last Sunday, one of my pastors spoke about John 9.  He went through the story, step by step, telling it from the blind man’s perspective.  He talked about how the man must have been escorted to the temple every day, and heard people talking about him as they walked by.  He wondered about how the man must have felt when he heard the sound of Christ spitting in the dirt to make mud.  Did the man think Jesus was spitting at him?  And what did he think when Jesus began to spread the mud across his eyes?

I’d never really thought about this part of the story, nor tried to see it from the blind man’s point of view.  What struck me even more, though, was what happened in the story afterChrist puts the mud on the man’s eyes.  “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam.” 

The man was blind.  He had to get up and walk to the pool on his own. 

It was interesting to me to realize that the man had a choice to listen to Christ.  Jesus had initiated the healing process in him by placing the mud on his eyes, but the man still needed to make a choice to obey Christ in order to bring everything to completion.  Christ’s actions, and the method he chose to open up the blind man’s eyes, seem pretty illogical.  I’m sure they must have seemed that way to the blind man, as well.  And yet, the man chose to obey and was healed as a result.

How many times in my life have I cried to God, asking why I am still the way I am, and wondering why he hasn’t helped to change me more?  Maybe… 

Maybe God has laid out the steps for me, and told me what I need to do, and I’m just not listening.  Maybe he’s set things up, provided the people and life lessons I need in order to change, and I’m still not going anywhere.  Maybe I’ve not been trusting God enough to look beyond his seemingly illogical plan for my life, and to just go when he says, “Go.”

It’s something to think about…

Aspirations

 13Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

James 4:13-17

I have always struggled to completely understand this passage.  I understand that it means God is sovereign and that he has control over everything.  And that we shouldn’t always expect to carry out the plans we make for ourselves, because they might not be in line with what God wants for us.  But does it mean that we shouldn’t make plans in the first place?  Or that we shouldn’t have any goals for ourselves?  I guess I just get confused when I read this, because I struggle to imagine that God wouldn’t want us to have any aspirations in life, or anything to work toward.

I’ve been making a lot of plans for my future lately.  Or trying to, anyway (I keep thinking myself in circles).  After this year, Sara will graduate, and so I’m trying to decide whether I’d like to stay on campus with a different roommate, commute to school from my mother’s house, or find an apartment off-campus.  Also, I’m starting to think about what I want to do next summer; should I go on another mission trip, do a summer study abroad program, stay home and work in the office like I’ve done for two years, or find a job in a hospital?  And then what do I want to do after I graduate?  Would I like to work in a hospital or a clinic?  Stay local or move away? 

Do you see why I’m thinking myself in circles?  One question leads to another, and all of a sudden I’m trying to plan my entire life out when I really need to just get through today.

Maybe that is what James is trying to get at in the passage above.  It’s not that we shouldn’t have goals and dreams (because otherwise we’d all sit around like slobs), but we shouldn’t get so wrapped up in our plans for tomorrow that we forget about today.  Especially since we’ve no idea what the future will bring, and whether or not something will happen tomorrow to change things and make all our planning and worrying completely pointless. 

What do you think, Bible scholars and blog readers?  Am I on the right track with my reasoning?

 

How will we know?

My great aunt Maxine lives down in the southern part of the state.  I don’t get to see her that often, and so I send her letters periodically.  I was writing her one this morning, and after I’d finished writing half of it I realized that it’d make a great beginning to a blog post.  I was telling my aunt about a couple I’d spent an entire Saturday with, a few weeks ago; they’ve known one another since the sixth grade and have been married forty-five years, and are still completely crazy about one another.  It shows, too.

“I can’t imagine waking up next to the same person for 45 years and not getting tired of him.  I want to be able to do that, though.  It must be incredible to love someone that much, I think.

                Sarah, Racheal and I talk, every once in a while, about how afraid we are to get married.  We’ve never really had a good example of what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like, or how a husband is supposed to treat his wife.  None of us really want to get married, and we all say that we don’t want to have children, because we worry we’ll just end up divorced.”

 

There was a couple who came to my college this week.  They call themselves “Acts of Renewal” and they’re actors.  During chapel, they put on a skit for us about a dysfunctional family.  Some people come from really loving family backgrounds, and some people don’t, and the couple recognized this.  They said that the purpose behind performing that particular skit was to help the students with close-knit families better relate to the students who come from families which are…not. 

Somehow, they made the skit humorous and illuminating at the same time.  It was about a student who comes home from college for his first Thanksgiving after his parents have gotten divorced.  In an attempt to keep up tradition, the entire family is at Thanksgiving dinner, even though his parents are no longer married.  The father had had an affair with a coworker.  The mother was angry and bitter towards her ex-husband, and made the kids feel guilty if they didn’t think their father was less than the scum of the earth.  To cope, one of the kids had an eating disorder, one of them was into drinking and smoking pot, and another one just never came home from school.  I sat in the audience and wondered how this couple knew so much about my family; had they been to Thanksgiving at my house before, and I’d just missed noticing them somehow?

In the skit, the son and his sister realize that their family is terribly unhealthy, and then make a vow to each other that they will make better choices.  They realize though, that they’ve got no one to show them how to be different.  I guess I sort of feel this way, to some extent.  Like there’s no one to show me and my sisters how to be healthy. 

I do not want to repeat my parents’ mistakes.  I don’t know how not to, though.  How do you know what to do, if no one shows you?  I want someone to teach me how you’re supposed to love someone.  I want them to teach me how to love someone the right way – without using love as a tool to manipulate the other person, or to make them feel guilty.  I want to be taught how to argue with someone in a way that’s not hurtful.  I want to be shown that it’s ok to tell someone I’m angry with them, and that I don’t need to worry that the other person will leave me as a result.  If someone could show me that it’s possible to work through a conflict, and that problems can be addressed and not ignored, that would be fantastic. 

I need to know these things. 

All Grown Up.

Someone called me “ma’am” a few days ago.  It sort of caught me off guard.  Adults are called “ma’am” and I do not consider myself to be an adult.  To some people, I realize that I must look like one.  To some people, I must act like one.   But, on the inside, I still feel nearly the same as I did when I was twelve years old. 

What is it that makes someone grown up?  Sara and I were discussing this last night, before we went to sleep, and we couldn’t come up with a definite answer.  I used to think that having children made someone an adult.  But what if you don’t want children?  Or, what if you can’t have them?  What then? 

Does not living at home make you an adult?  Do you become a grown up when you’re no longer financially dependent upon your parents?  When y’all accept one another as you are and your relationships become based on equality and respect?  When you start accepting responsibility for your own actions?

I want there to be a switch.  I want to wake up one morning and have something click.  I want to feel like an adult.  Is that what’s supposed to happen?  I guess I’m just worried that I will spend my entire life feeling like I’m twelve.  I don’t want to walk around feeling like I’m a little girl trapped in a big person’s body.  I don’t want to have to pretend to be strong and competent when I really feel anything but.