The Voices In My Head and YOURS!

Friday morning, I was up at 5:30! I haven't even seen 5:30 in years and years - except when I had the flu and was recovering from surgery.

By 6:15 I'd had breakfast, packed my car, filled my coffee cup - making 5:30 almost civilized – and was heading for Nashville.

Over the weekend, I was 'discovered' and will be singing duets with country stars by next week. HA! No, I was heading to Jon Acuff's Quitter conference. Jon writes the blog StuffChristiansLike.net. He's written a book of the same title as well as one titled “Quitter.”

The overall message of the conference, as I experienced it, was don't be ashamed of the dreams you hold that bring you joy. Pursue them, develop them, and understand that your dreams aren't only for you. You are the caretaker of your dreams. (By dreams, I don't mean when you're a ninja conquering the bad guys at the court house in your sleep. At least, for most of us that isn't what I mean – who am I to judge your dream?)

All that was wonderful. I took notes, networked and bought a poster. I go to every conference with a prayer for God to reveal His plan for my next step. Most times it's a glaring spotlight impossible to miss.

This conference had some solid information and direction for me. And then there was the “reveal”. It wasn't shiny and bright, but more a warm glow of companionship in those places of our hearts that we don't talk about. The party we throw then fear that no one will show up and they don't, or the voices we hear in our heads that remind us of who we “really” are. (This would be the kind that no medication c an help.)

Each of us have this cruel inner voice intent on speaking a message of doubts, accusations and hurtful memories until we sit down and shut up. Until we quit. Each of us. All of us. When we do, the voice becomes softer – just a whisper that keeps us in our seat. This weekend, we shared the message of our voice in public. Around the room of about 400 people, voices raised and we heard...

       “That's selfish!”

       “You aren’t smart enough.”

       “It didn't work last time.”

       “You're too old.”

       “You're too young.”

 laughter - we began to see the reliability of this "voice"

       “Who are you to think you have something to offer?”

       “That's already been done.”

       “Something that obvious doesn't need to be shared.”

If more people listened to that voice and responded by sitting down and shutting up – we wouldn't even be getting water at the well in the yard, reading by candlelight or riding to town in a horse drawn cart. All the dreams that brought us indoor plumbing, lighting and motorized transportation were fulfilled by people willing to be caretakers of their dreams. Willing to share their dreams with the world. They refused to be neutralized by that voice. Because of that, we're aware of need and injustice in our world and able to help people half a world away.

I believe we serve an outward enemy when we allow ourselves to entertain that inner voice. An enemy who wants our feet trapped and slowed by deep mud, hands tied behind our back, mouths covered with sticky duct tape. He promises us no rewards except the drudgery of nothing unexpected, no adventure, no risk, no faith and yet with that horrible voice speaking to us we sign on as accomplices.

I believe it's the opposition of the One wanting you to step onto a path he lights as you go. He has gifts for you and you must hold out your hands to receive them. He's placed a song in your heart and expects you to not only sing it, but live it.

My voice tells me, “You should've started 20 years ago. You'll never get past the learning stage. No one will take you seriously. Just look for ways to enjoy your life.”

So, what is the voice saying that threatens to make you sit down and shut up? 

Since You Aren't Doing Anything Important...

“Since you're home all day, could you...?” “You don't have kids holding you back, so you can do whatever you want, can you....?” “Well, I knew you'd be off today so, can you...?” “They always say busy people get things done, so I thought I'd call you – you're one of the busiest people I know...”

I started a computer services business in 1993, working from home. I had unrealistic expectations of what working from home entails.

Fantasy #1. Wake up, have a relaxing coffee, make breakfast. Get my work done. Go to the bank and deposit the amount of money that covers 150% of my household needs and wants. Have lunch with a friend or my mother. Buy some office supplies. Straighten up the already tidy house. (Pffft!!!) Cook a nice dinner and relax for the evening.

Fantasy #2. The entire family works together on keeping the house up. My work day is 8-4 with regularly scheduled breaks where I would smile at my family members who are all doing their own thing quietly in some other area of the house during my work hours.

The Work At Home Reality – You want to work from home for the freedom it will give you! Your children, regardless of age, are unable to quietly do anything – pour a bowl of cereal, find their socks, dress themselves, pick up the remote control, locate the milk. The amount of errands that need done has multiplied, since you're home. A friend calls you at 10:30 in the midst of a bawling meltdown because she's maybe getting a divorce and everyone else is “at work”.. and she knew you'd be home. A relative and another friend also call daily during your work hours and just have to tell you "one thing" before they'll let you hang up... one very long, emotionally exhausting thing. Your mother wants to go to lunch once a week, because you need a break honey! You spend Tuesday morning at the pediatrician with a child exhibiting signs of strep throat, then pick up the prescription and special foods and spend the rest of the day running to their assistance because apparently the strep has disabled their legs and they can't reach the remote control, a glass of juice, a blanket, a pillow, their stuffed animal or a new roll of toilet paper. At 3 o'clock you vow to at least return phone calls from your business voice mail. At 3:30 the rest of the crew gets home and bursts into your office. You hold the phone to your left ear and wave frantically with your right hand to shush them. They ignore you and continue yelling their news to you through the closet door where you finally retreat – plugging one ear with a finger and getting into the corner farthest from the door. Your potential customer thinks you're an amateur. A lonely client keeps you on the phone for almost an hour while your family eats dinner without you.  You want to go back to work to escape.  Everyone thinks you are "living the dream!"

People didn't respect my boundaries, because I had none. I felt compelled to juggle it all. After all, I wanted to work for myself so I could be there for the important things. I just had no idea there would be so many!

After a day in my “reality”, I wasn't creative enough or energetic enough to market, run and grow my business. I worked into the evenings, but it wasn't my best work. I was angry, frustrated, exhausted. I wanted to “get it done” with the least amount of personal investment necessary because I was tapped out. I no longer had the ability to say no without a reason, or justification that would be “acceptable.” I felt that way for years after the business closed. It had a numbing effect. I expected myself to do MORE with less... always. 

If you won't prioritize and control how you spent my time, others will. You'll feel powerless and resentful. I wasn't my own boss... I had 4-8 bosses spending my time and energy between them. 

Years passed and this Superwoman role became a part of my identity. So had the stress of feeling out of control and on call for emergencies both real and imagined. Some days it became an effort to breathe.

After a panic attack that felt more like a heart attack, I promised my husband things would change. For a time, I avoided people since I didn't know how to say no. I'd led everyone to believe I'd always “be there” for them. I started to say no to everything, but I felt I needed an excuse to say no. 

I knew I had to find the power to make my own decisions. I stepped out of the hub of this wheel and tried to connect all those people to one another – encouraging them to lean on each other for a little while.

Eventually most people forgave me for this, but some have had hurt feelings. They've felt abandoned and unloved. They felt “pushed off” on other people. I said no to almost everything – going from one extreme to another as they saw it. 

It took several years before I could say yes or no honestly. Changing direction was hard, but it was way past time for me to grow up and act like an adult in my own life. Not carrying the weight of the world has reminded me that only God can be God in the lives of others. When people are not able to comfort us, God comforts us best and helps us to change.

How can you know who you are if your entire life is lived at the will of the people around you? If you've not made the decisions for the direction your life would take? If you deny the things that would be “best” in order to serve the things that are only “good?” If you've never taken the time to identify them for yourself? 

For one week - take 15 minutes each day to sit quietly with pen and paper. Ask yourself and God – Am I saying “yes” when I should say “no”? If I said “no” to those things... what things would I be free to say “yes” to? Come back and share your “best” list with us!

What Are You Waiting For To Live Your Life?

So, you have a dream, a vision, a purpose and a passion. Unfortunately, you haven't moved it out of your head and into action.

I was moved into action by 7 months of a mysterious back injury/ailment that just would not improve no matter what I did. I tried physical therapy, prescriptions, yoga, applied heat, applied ice, applied medicine with little roller ball applicators that felt like heat and ice, and applied tears. Finally, I found a little relief. Sitting on my tucas (as dad says, and spell check refuses to respect) for 4 months. While sitting there, I read, I researched, I studied and I wrote. I had no choice. (Yes, there was daytime television, but UGH!) You may not be so lucky. Yes, I said lucky. I had no option but to do what I feared doing – stop waiting and start pursuing my desire to write.

So, what's holding you back? What are you waiting for? I gave this some thought yesterday and here are some things you may believe you have to wait for to live your life instead of just imagining what it would be like to live your life -

• When I lose 10 pounds
• When the kids grow up
• Mr. Right
• After Mr. Right gets a divorce and is back on the market
• After I'm married
• After PMS week
• After my wife's PMS week
• When I have children
• When the baby starts sleeping all night
• After the baby is potty trained
• After the kids go to school
• When the kids graduate
• After the kids move out
• My divorce from Mr. Wrong, so I can use my imagination for things other than planning perfect crimes
• A rainy day
• When it stops raining
• When I learn HTML
• When I find WYSIWYG software that works with my free blog site
• When I think of the perfect domain name
• When the person who stole my perfect domain name stops paying their renewal
• After the kids move out AGAIN
• Tomorrow
• When I lose 25 pounds
• After I find an agent
• When I write something worthy of an agent
• When this pulled muscle heals
• When I find my soul mate BFF with the same Pinterest board as me, who will live it with me
• When Spell check is updated to recognize tucas, BFF and Pinterest
• When my spouse gets a personality exchange and is suddenly interested in my interests
• When I get a raise
• When I get a less stressful job
• When I get a job
• When I retire
• Payday
• A better software program
• When I get caught up
• An eBay deal on the software I want
• An instruction manual
• A free Kindle day for the instruction manual I want
• When I finish reading every book ever written on the subject
• And the new one that comes out next week
• And the really boring one that got kicked under my bed after I fell asleep trying to read it
• After the spider dies that built a web on that that really boring one still under my bed
• When I have more time
• When I feel better
• When I find the perfect theme for my website
• And it's available for free
• Without a watermark
• When we buy a bigger house
• When we pay off the house
• After we remodel the house
• After spring cleaning
• A deadline
• The next deadline
• A deadline next year that I think I could really meet
• When I have all the right equipment
• When I update all that equipment
• New shoes
• When I remodel the previously remodeled space that is now dated and no longer inspires me
• When I figure out if blue or green paint in my office is more inspirational
• In the summer
• After summer
• After Christmas
• On my next vacation
• After vacation
• Next month
• A winning lottery ticket
• To go to college
• To graduate college
• To get into graduate school
• My masters degree
• My doctorate (important if you're dream is to be a medical doctor. Just sayin')

You aren't going to begin at the pinnacle (unless you're a supermodel in which case, I'm sorry to say, every day that passes you by is a day you will never look as dewy again and you may have to consider work in Walmart ads). Get started! What can you do today to pursue your dream?

Not everyone is blessed with a temporarily disabling injury, making all other activities of life excruciatingly painful. I'm sorry, that was insensitive – it could happen to anyone. Chances are you won't be that lucky, though... so get moving!

What's holding YOU back?

This past weekend, I attended a seminar that featured Elizabeth George as the primary speaker.  She spoke on loving God with all of our mind, and used one of my favorite verses as her reference - Philippians 4:8.  “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are right, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.”

How much of my life would be different if I allowed my thoughts to be held in check against this verse!!!

I have a hard time making solid decisions (ones that I don’t unmake 15 minutes later) in some areas of my life.  If it’s a financial concern - I can make that decision.  If it’s a moral concern - I can make that decision.  When it comes to matters of ministry - I can be a mess.  It takes a Perfect Storm for me to have the confidence to take a stand, make a change, make a move, or put my walking shoes to go somewhere else.

Why am I so afraid?  I took a quiz in Oprah’s magazine this morning.  (Don’t judge me - you know those magazine quizzes are quite enticing!)  It was entitled “What is holding you back?” and it was part of an entire section dedicated to discovering and acting on the discovery of what your purpose is in life.

I had to take the quiz twice.  The first time I had nothing holding me back, but the questions were geared toward career changes - promotions, business start up, ambition.  Easy peasy questions.  Then I substituted ministry situations, as well as a recent acceptance that God wants me to use written or spoken words.  (I hope someday to complete that sentence.  It should say “use written or spoken words to…” and then a result or intended goal.  However, all I know to do today is use the words - God hasn’t filled me in as to what they are supposed to actually DO.)  What a mess I made of that quiz!  Of course, the quiz designer assumed a person was held back by a consistently recurring fear - of success OR of failure OR of disapproval.  I had them all.  My biggest fear of all wasn’t in the results, though.  I’m most afraid of ME.

Too much confidence outside a secular or practical situation is terrifying to me.  I know the downfalls of pride, arrogance, misplaced confidence, ego, incorrect conclusions, or mistaking a circumstance as a sign.  I’ve made every one of those mistakes in one area of my life or another.  I’d rather do nothing than mess up a situation with higher consequences than an angry teenager or a reluctantly cooperative vendor.  I’ll do background support instead of fully using my abilities so that the liability isn’t mine.  “Just following orders, here.”

Do your fears paralyze your drive?  Do your worries stop you in your tracks?  Does your chewing gum lose it’s flavor… oops - occasionally my mind goes on a side trip.  Do you find that by the time you’ve thought through all the variables, possibilities, methods and madness of something - you’ve become bored with the subject and you walk away - believing it’s not for you, or you wouldn’t have lost interest?  Are you looking for a reason to sit on the bench so you don't have to face the uncertainty of the game?

Is God able to use you, or do you believe rational lies  rationalize your way out of each and every opportunity that comes your way.  Fess up! 

Here is how my own trip to the bench sounds in my head. 

“I don’t want to get my ego involved or look like a difficult person, so I will just adjust to changes that I really feel are detrimental to the ministry I’m involved in.  I’m just me, what will they think if I start interjecting my opinions with confidence?  I’ll just be quiet.  I don’t want to seem arrogant or prideful, so I won’t refer to myself as a writer.  There have been centuries, no, millennia of compositions produced by people with amazing lives and important revelations - am I deluded with sinful self-importance to think I could say something that hasn’t already been said - maybe I should just point at other people’s writings.

“This is probably a waste of time to write about so publicly, because there is no usefulness to the tedious and boring sorting out of my psychological, emotional and spiritual baggage.  One day I’ll get blindsided with the revelation that I‘m foolishly diving into a writing pool that I‘m not qualified to swim in.  Am I boring God with my subject material?  Should I write something different?”

It is Satan that accuses the brethren.  He is called the accuser in Revelation 12, but his work is seen many places in the Bible. Elizabeth George shared that when her first manuscript was sent to the publisher - a publisher that requested she write the book in the first place (this wasn’t something she’d pursued out of the blue) it was turned down in a blaze without glory.  She went for a walk that afternoon and in her head, this thought started, “Who did you think you were… to write a book… who do you think you are to think they’d publish it…”  I could hear that accusation in my own head in a multitude of situations and circumstances.

God has an opposing view to Satan‘s accusation that you are mistaken to believe you have something to offer - Psalm 139.  If you want to know exactly what God knows about you - read that chapter.  He’s not only “in the loop” on who you are - he owns the loop.  Verse 14 says - “I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are your works.”  Are you thankful for how God made you?  This is the chapter of the Bible God brought to Elizabeth’s mind to remind her that she was his wondrous work - fearfully and wonderfully made.  She had the talents he wanted her to have she didn’t have the ones he intended that she didn’t have. 

Not trusting our own discernment when it comes to our aspirations and heart’s desire is normal.  Gideon was visited by an Angel of the Lord and told that he was selected to deliver Israel from the Midianites.  Gideon balked, “Who, me?  Don’t you know that my family is the least in Manasseh, and I’m the BABY of the family!”

God assured Gideon that he would go with him, and yet Gideon had a hard time believing that he, of all the people God had to choose from, was selected by God to do this important thing.  He proceeded to make the angel wait while he prepared an offering.  Gideon didn’t just go out to the barnyard and bring in a lamb - he made bread, put the meat in a basket, put the broth into a pot and brought all of this out to the angel.  The angel touched the offering with his staff and it burst into fire.   Gideon was astonished! 

The angel commanded that Gideon pull down the altar his father built for Baal and present a burnt offering there.  Gideon was too afraid to do so in broad daylight, so he did it under the cover of night.  The community was outraged and when they found out who did this, they requested Gideon’s dad to present Gideon so they could put him to death for what he’d done.

Gideon‘s dad said, “If Baal is mad, let him defend himself.  If he’s a god, surely he can do something about this himself.” 

Gideon was still plagued by the doubt that God had this special thing for him to do.  He told God about it.  Time and again he pleaded for God to not be angry with him, but to provide additional evidence that He truly wanted Gideon to deliver the Israelites.  (I can relate to Gideon’s mistrust of his own senses, can you?)  Not only did God provide reassurance and signs for Gideon, but he whittled away the army Gideon started with from 22,000 to 300.  There would be no doubt at the end of this campaign that God had a plan that no rational general would use as his strategy.

James 1:5 encourages us to take our lacking selves to God directly… “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

So, when you find that you don’t have the wisdom to discern whether or not God wants to use you, whether or not you can accomplish his tasks, whether or not he has a plan for you - because of whatever roadblocks from your own past or background make you unfit for duty - take it to him.  Ask for wisdom, and he will give it - without reproach. 

He already knows what you’re feeling and thinking, so if you think you’re going to surprise him with an unknown failing in your character that will shock him…. You are no different than the 5 year old with chocolate all over his face believing that his mother doesn’t know chocolate is one of the desires of his heart - remember Psalm 139 where it says “Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, Though dost know it ALL.”

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are God’s works and you are one of them.  Only Satan benefits from making you believe that you are a useless mistake.  Only Satan benefits from accusing you of being sinful in acknowledging that God’s word is true and he can not only use someone like you, but he can and wants to use YOU.  It isn’t because you are perfect, because who exactly could you relate to if you were?  Jesus doesn’t need you to minister to him.  He‘s already aware of his own superspectacularness.  It’s when your broken humanity is changed by God into something new and surprising (not surprising to God, but to those that are NOT omniscient) that the miracle occurs.

He gives you the talents he wants you to have.  You possess what he wants you to possess to start his work.  While you may doubt your abilities in relation to others that you believe are better qualified, the truth is this isn’t a job interview, where God will pick just one - it’s a call to action.  If God is for us, who can be against us?  You already know who - don’t be his accomplice.

Usually, It Isn't Enough To Be A Good Wife

We, women of a mother's age, balk whenever we hear of a young woman barely out of high school getting engaged.  At least I do.  Perhaps because I know what she doesn’t know yet.  I know that she will put all of her emotion into this man that she’s newly in love with.   She, if she is odd and knows who she is, is in danger of forgetting all of that in a desire to bond and connect with him.  Most times, she doesn’t know who she is yet.  She’s unaware of the gifts and talents that God has given to her for satisfying her longing soul by moving faithfully within His will. 

In Genesis, when God is explaining the consequences for Adam & Eve’s prohibited snack, He says to Eve in Genesis 3:16 “…Yet your desire shall be for your husband...”  This puzzled me when it was brought up at my weekly Bible study.  I’d never paid any attention to that phrase, most likely because it’s followed up with that “and he shall rule over you” phrase which we have all heard more times than we’ve enjoyed.  My friend from Bible study gave me a fresh perspective on this.  She said, “We will always be longing toward our husband.  Even if he isn’t meeting all of our emotional needs, we will always be longing for that and looking to him.”  Suddenly, I realized how many problems in marriages surrounding me directly reflects back to this explanation.

How many times have I sat in church without my husband and my thoughts distracted away from the message, wishing my husband was there, or, rather than taking the word for myself, I considered his circumstances, his unhappiness, his stress, his needs and applied the sermon to them in his absence. 

How many times has my mother gone to see the changing leaves, out for lunch, to church or a community event and felt lonely because my dad didn’t want to go with her. 

There is much undone by women of God because we want the companionship of our husband but he doesn’t share our desire, interests, mission or purpose. 

It may seem that we are simply living a self sacrificing life - but I believe that we are sacrificing our purpose and work on this earth for God in order to cling to our husband.  In God's design for a marriage, he tells a man to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they should be as one flesh.  He does not say to leave God and cleave to his wife.  I can't imagine he would want a woman to do so.

How many women have spent years with a physically or emotionally abusive man because she just could not break that bond she felt for him.  A bond that is one-sided and certainly not glorifying to God, as she allows the years of destruction to rob her of joy, purpose, fruits of the spirit, inspiration, thought, or direction from God because her desire for her husband overshadowed it all.  This is truly the worst case scenario of this curse. 

We’ve each been created as individuals.  We’re not appendages of our husbands, nor are we tools or extensions of our husband's spiritual identity.  God addressed Eve personally - he didn’t say, “Adam - you figure out what to do with your wife, as it doesn‘t concern me personally.”  We have an individual identity with God, and though our emotional longings threaten to pull us away - we’ll miss much of the fruits of the spirit that have little to do with who we are married to, if we don’t acknowledge and then move in accordance to the identity God created within us.

Many wives will tell you that the stress from her husband’s job takes him far away from God and from a spiritual dependence upon him.  He doesn’t trust God through the difficult times, or believes that he is on his own, which is obviously an exhausting heart condition to operate from.  Adam’s punishment was to experience exhausting labor because of a curse on the ground.  Regardless of our husband’s profession, we can see the same result of exhaustion due to the stress of obstacles that thwart his efforts as the thistles and thorns have done to farmers for millennia. 

Our preoccupation with our husbands can misdirect us away from God in the same manner.  The true consequence of Adam & Eve’s faithless and disobedient behavior is a distance from God.  Physically they had to leave the garden, and spiritually, we’ve allowed our preoccupation with our husbands to pull us away from Him ever since.

As women, it’s important that we teach a young woman that she will always have an identity with God that is her own personal intimate relationship and responsibility.  Her husband cannot live that out for her.  She will of course feel love, desire, devotion and a deep connection to her husband - but she must also have a conviction to not allow it to push God so far into the background that she can't hear his voice.  She may have a work or mission that she shares with her husband, or she may have one that is completely personal, and she must have faith that God wouldn't fill her with the talents, passions, purpose and conviction to complete that work if it doesn’t matter to him whether she acts on it or ignores it.

A young woman should know who she is to God before she commits to being a wife to a man.  She should know God’s voice and hear it clearly before she tragically reduces it to background noise as her desire turns toward her husband.

And ALL of that was what I’ve heard in my spirit for the last couple days that I was quiet and obeying God’s recent mystifying, yet persistent conviction that I needed to hang up the telephone, go to a festival by myself (while my husband gathered our last cord of firewood and I was unable to help because my hand was burned), paint my nephew’s bedroom (in solitary quiet without so much as a radio), and enjoy taking the long way home - so that I could hear Him tell me to believe Him, trust Him, and write this - because it's always the right time to hear God and act upon his instruction.

The Distraction of Something Good (or not) From What Is Best

This spoke to me.  I thought of teenagers and people less experienced than myself so easily drawn into the superficial distractions of life around them.  The list on this video doesn't draw me in, and I felt the attitude creeping in that is usually portrayed with an all-knowing  a "more knowing" look and thoughts of how frustrating it is to watch the "unknowing" buy into all this distraction.

However... my family is planning a trip to an amusement park to celebrate my brother's 40th birthday.  This past weekend found me in rare usual form when in the midst of getting ready for a family event.  Frazzled over gathering ticket money, arranging transportation, planning food, the phone ringing off the wall (if I had actually hung it up, which I hadn't... so it was ringing from virtually every flat surface in my house throughout the day).

Too often family events become my nightmare as people mess with the plan, rethink the plan, rethink the date & time, don't have transportation, can't afford the plan, want to dictate food assignments, can't afford the food assignments, show up late, change the menu the day of the event, or just talk every detail to death.  I am almost always in the position of being the only one willing to or responsible insane enough to sew it all together into a coherent activity.

I know this griping sounds ugly.  It looks ugly too.  I dearly love my family, but I resent being in charge of accommodating everyone's suggestions, which feel like demands.  Too many years of doing it and the family keeps growing - which just leads to more suggestions and more hoop jumping desires to strangle family members with said hoop.  I am literally numb, exhausted and angry - event after event after event.  And of course the guilt from those feelings eat me up.

After sharing yet another frenzied rant eloquent analysis of my frustration, I summed it all up to my darling husband this way... because he just never gets enough of the insanity that overcomes me a week before a family get together.. "Am I being wrong?  Am I being selfish?  I don't know how much is right?  I don't know if I'm being wrong!!!!  I just want to run away!"  I lost the ability to use any words I learned past first grade.  I've been found sobbing on my knees at the foot of my bed after yet another Thanksgiving Day breakdown.

I remember when my mother came out of rehab and she pulled back from us.  I heard a lot of "I have to focus on me.  This is MY time."  I understand that better now that I'm no longer 19, but there is still a feeling of oppression when I consider the role I've played in my family from a young age.  I'm sure I've lost the ability to discern how much is enough... apparently "Too Much" will eventually reveal itself - but by then - it's too late. 

Today I'm waiting for the plumber to show up.  Water is being conserved - no laundry, dishes, shower, housework - and I'm sitting in the grass in my front yard.  I'm providing amusement to a variety of bugs, and apparently a landing strip for skydiving spiders.  2 Daddy long legs have run across my composition book in the time I've taken to write this.  I feel as though I'm on vacation, it is that refreshing.  I should step away from the phone (a huge distraction for me) and have this little bit of time each day...

God loves a cheerful giver.  I'm not being cheerful about all of this.  I can twist it all up into a need for changing my attitude, or I could be honest.  Honestly, I'm not doing this to please God.  I'm doing it to make up for and fix all of the weirdness of my family.  I'm doing it to give my family, and myself, what I idealized as the normal family - when I was just a kid in a dysfunctional home with an alcoholic mother and no dad on the premises, watching television programs with moms baking pies and dads going to work, and Walton family holidays. 


My family is my distraction from what is best.  They haven't done this TO me, I've done it to myself.  Trying to transform a messy tangle of people into a family with idealized traditions and interactions is an exhausting job that I became convinced was a necessary one.


The main problem with being a people pleaser is that you can't please God... there are just too many people.  They want too many different things. 


I have to accept that my mother wasn't playing the role of martyr, and forgive her for running out of physical, emotional or spiritual resources while I was still in need - physically, emotionally and spiritually ... because that is the superglue that keeps me stuck here.  I have judged her in a way that I can't bear to be judged myself.