Dear Friend,
Be still my beating heart. Literally! I just about exploded today learning that Liberty University had Ted Cruz announce his bid for the presidency as a convocation speech which students had to attend or be fined money and get four academic marks against them. I'm trying to decide if people are just getting stupider, or what?? I, of course, posted about it on Facebook. I had to delete several posts agin, some by my mother this time -- I hope THAT doesn't re-open the PTSD wounds that are just starting to close back up. But how can people REFUSE to think something through!!!!?? One person wrote that $10 was nothing, no big deal. Like the size of the penalty was what was important! And no one would/could even latch on to the fact that the students did not know what they were walking into. They thought they were going to a convocation speech, which is usually advice for students about their life. Boring and unneeded advice. But this time they walked in to find that they were being used as part of a movie prop to make it seem that thousands and thousands had poured out just to hear Ted Cruz announce his bid for the presidency. And they were REQUIRED to be there, expecting yet another boring convocation speech, but instead get used as political puppetry. The manipulation and the deceitfulness just blows me away. So, I had to make my "get your hands off my Facebook page" speech again. A friend sent me the cutest thing ... and I see that I still have not figure out how to post an image. It is a picture of a minion saying, "my wall, my status, my opinion, my humor, my .... WHOA! There it is!!! Or, rather, there it was! It's gone again. Oh, well.
Anyway, I have a piece of good news, I contacted Dr. Susan Blum's office today. Ring any bells? She is a famous functional medicine doctor who happens to be in Rye Brook, NY not too far from where we are. I called last year and was told I couldn't get in until 2015 so I wound up going to the doctor I'm going to now. But, truth is, they're just not that good and the office is run very badly. Each time I go, it seems like they are completely starting from scratch with me and have no idea what they're doing. They don't seem to be able to maintain their focus. So, I decided I was ready to get my name on a waiting list to get in to see this doctor. I talked to a woman in her office about what all was going on and that I had a cardiologist, endocrinologist, immunologist, a nephrologist and a geneticist and I needed a single, very good doctor who could pull it all together and treat me integratively. Is that the word I'm looking for? Pull it all together into one narrative and work from there. So, the woman said that, since I had called before, she was going to bump me up the wait list and get me in to see Dr. Blum in June! Such great news! I'm really happy about this.
I don't think I told you that I found the perfect outfit for my husband's installation! It's from Talbots where I know I can be fitted, large waist and all. I ordered two sizes of the skirt, and two sizes of the jacket. Can't wait to get them and try them on! I also found an amazingly perfect pair of shoes at Lord & Taylor that should be amazing with it.
Oh, and here's a little, insignificant tidbit for you. You know I tear my nails to pieces when I'm very stressed, don't you? Yep. It's awful. Well, I decided to try out these little plastic nail covers I've seen at Walgreens. I got the French manicure, which wasn't a good idea. My nails are chewed back to the nail bed, so then making it look like I have the tips colored looks silly! But ... I've bathed with them and done the dishes with them and hand washed clothes with them, and they are staying on. It would be so great if I have found a way to protect my nails from my chewing and clawing!!
I had big plans for the day today, and then forgot to set the alarm. Woke up at 10:30. I did get my bed made and my makeup on, had a prayer time, read my Bible and cooked dinner and got some laundry done. Oh ... and fought off attackers on my Facebook page. Oh, and I wrote a SCATHING comment on some article about the Liberty University thing. It was so good! Want to read it? Why sure you do! But after all I went through yet again, I just don't have the chutzpah to include it here.
Well ... that's my life so far. Hope yours is calmer and healthier than mine and that you don't have quite so many crazies in your family as I do. Oh, you want to hear something strange? I have this cousin that I don't know well. She was adopted and a good bit older than me and very strange from the get-go. She kind of lost herself to all of us for years, but after Facebook got going, she started back with comments. And she is the only family member who seems to get what I'm saying, for the most part, and writes pretty decent comments! Go figure.
Lisa
Dear Friend,
Today was a much better day. My husband went with me to an open house at the seminary I would like to go to. I think it's going to be perfect. It turns out I won't have to go into the Manhattan campus at all, and this campus is very near my home. I'll be able to take everything here. It looks like I'll be heading for a M.A. in Biblical Literature, primarily the New Testament, with Greek. I'm really excited/terrified about it. I'm going to start with a single course. They have a ... something or other ... that says what sort of behaviors they believe their students should either exhibit or refrain from and one was ... profanity! WHOOPS!! You don't have to sign anything except that you understand that this represents the school's position on a lot of different matters. I laughed and said, "oh oh! That was going to be a problem!" To my delight, the young woman said something along the line of she thought most people would be surprised at the number of things that don't really upset God! Amen, sister!
My husband thought the place looked great and was going to be perfect for me and hopefully help me to get moving with my writing and life.
We found a wonderful restaurant in the village and had an absolutely delicious lunch. Came home, napped, went for groceries, and I made a French lentil soup that was pretty good.
I've done some crying today, but not much. Vast improvement.
And, that brings us up to date. We learned yesterday ant a pretty large church in this village and plan on visiting it tomorrow.
So ... finally ...
Cheers!
Lisa
Dear Friend,
This brings us to yesterday, Friday. What happened Friday? Geez. I can't remember yesterday. I remember what I made for dinner and that we watched "Interstellar". I remember that I got a phone call from a Texas number and my daughter saw it and wouldn't let me answer it in case it was my
husband's brother. It said there was a voice message left and she checked it, but found that there wasn't anything there.
Oh yes, I got my hair colored. I had held up fairly well until I left the house and then I started falling apart in the car and was wrestling to quit crying before I went in to get my hair done.
After we ate dinner and watched the movie, I started coming apart again and crying real badly. I asked my husband if we could go downstairs and watch some "Friends." He said, of course, and we and our daughter watched a couple of episodes until the Xanax I took had kicked in and I had laughed enough I was calm again.
Oh, in the afternoon I got on my email because I decided to write my oldest brother and tell him that he was mistaken. I had, in fact, written him a very long letter taking his letter apart, virtually line by line - including the line bat putting me in my place. But that I had decided that it would not beneficial for me to send it. So my email setting out my boundaries was me laying down my sword and saying I was not going to fight with him about these things any more and that, surely, there were other things to talk about.
But ... to my surprise I found that he had sent me a slightly chatty email about the sudden firing of a government official in another state. I was really happy about this and thought, "YES! He gets it!" So I write back right away providing a few tidbits of information I had and sent it to him. And THEN I saw that he had sent this email the day before I sent mine to him. So, it didn't represent anything in particular. But I still thought that my emailing him about this would let him know that I was still willing to talk to him, just not about politics, justice, or religion. And ... he hasn't written back at all. And that hurt my little five-year-old trauma-stricken self who is still looking for her older brother to take care of her and protect her pretty dad gum badly. Not as badly as the last few days, at least.
My other brother hasn't responded at all. I doubt that either of them understand that I can't afford to learn anything else about them or I won't be able to ever be around them again.
Lisa
Dear Friend,
By the next morning, Thursday, I was turning into a wreck. All of the hypocrisy of so many people and the deliberate divisiveness combined with all,of this with my brothers had me eager to talk with my psychologist. I told her all about it and was crying really, really badly. I mean, really badly. At one point I told her that all I could think about was that at some point my mother was going to die and we were going to be at her funeral and they were going to be holding my hands and I was going to be thinking that they were monsters!!
She spent a lot of time trying to get to the bottom of why it was affecting me so badly and hurting me so much. And we finally got to it.
She phrased it something like this, "You have worked so hard your entire life to pull yourself out of the ugliness of the world you were in. And you have worked so hard to create a life completely different. A life of beauty and love and compassion. And they are dragging you back down into their world and you feel like you're being pulled back in and trapped and your soul is repulsed by this." She said it better, but that was the essence of it. We talked about options and I decided to tell them ... and the brother-in-law ... that it was not healthy for our relationship to continue on this line. So I would no longer discuss matters of politics, justice, or religion with them.
After I left her office, I sat in my car and sent them each an email telling them this. I asked my brother to quit sending me his group emails and the other two to not post on my Facebook page any more when this was the topic. And to please respect the boundaries I was setting.
I felt so GREAT! I felt a huge weight role off of me and like I had cleansed my soul of all this dirt that had caked it. I met my husband to see "Chappy" ... save your money, btw. During the movie, though, the relief I felt initially began to wear off and I started feeling a sort of dread coming over me. I had never, ever taken a stand like this. I had never EVER protected myself, much less told them to back off and lay down the law.
I don't know if you have any emotional framework to understand this with. But, as you know, my childhood was extremely traumatic. PTSD means that the emotions that y felt at the time of the trauma are stored in your brain in an area where they remain active. They aren't a memory that you can process and make into part of the fabric of your life. It's not lie that at all.
What it is is that the terror and horror and helplessness you felt at the time as a four-year-old child or a five-year-old child is RIGHT THERE. Right below the surface. It hasn't gone anywhere and all you need are the right set of circumstances to throw those gates open wide and experience that torrent of emotion again in the hear and now. I'm crying right now just explaining this.
So I can act like a grown, 58-year-old woman and tell my brothers to back the fuck off one moment. And then, the next, feel absolute terror at having done so. What will they do to me? Will they abandon me? Will they hurt me? Will they leave me all alone to endure the horror that was my mother by myself?
And I'm just lost. Completely lost in a current of a five-year-old girl's terror.
After the movie I saw that my oldest brother had already sent me an explosive email, apparently very angry at me and that I had not responded to anything he had said, and stuff like that. I just glanced at the first part and didn't read the rest. My husband and I went to a restaurant and I told him wha I had done and sat there in the restaurant unable to quit crying. He read my brother's email and then read the one his brother fired off at me and just immediately deleted it without saying anything about it. He could not have treated me better or more kindly. I cried off and on most of the night, at times practically hysterical, though I tried to be away from him when I was at my worst. My son called and we had a good talk about it.
It's a really horrible thing to go through, when you open up trauma. The ironic thing about being terrified that they would abandon me is that they completely abandon me when I was that age. I have one whole summer when my mother was hospitalized and my dad was at work that I was alone in the house with no one taking care of me or even feeding me. I was starving. I spent most of each day so weak I had to stay in bed, crying until I could fall back asleep. The starving is evident in pictures. My mother was so messed up mentally. She used to brag abut how she could make my dresses when I was nine-years-old out of the same patterns she used when I was TWO!! All she had to do, she would say, was lengthen the bodice and the hme, but otherwise, all the dress patterns still fit me. And she thought that that was great. She also used to talk for years, at least through sixth grade, about how much "better" I was than my cousins because when you held their hands, they felt hot! But when you held my hands, my hands were cold.
I kid you not. My school eventually came to my parents and told them that they were going to start having me eat lunch in the school cafeteria and to explain it to me, that I was to go through the line, but I didn't have to pay, and the cafeteria workers knew, so they wouldn't be asking for my money or anything.
So, back to the abandonment. My brothers didn't starve that summer. Neither were they at home. They were six and nine years older than me, so I presume they were going to friends' houses and eating there. They did abandon me.
So, Thursday was a really bad night, too.
Lisa
Dear Friend,
It is actually Saturday night, but I'm just going to tell you what happened on Wednesday of this week. Before, that, though, I don't think I told you what went down between me and my oldest brother ... the crazier of the two. He sent out some ridiculous email and I had a fairly mild response for him, explaining that he had completely mislead the article he sent and was overreacting and needed to calm down. I got an extremely patronizing email back, this is all group emails, btw, insisting that he was right and I was asleep, blah, blah, blah. So ... this was something that involved the world of higher education ... MY WORLD. So, I explained exactly what was going on showing clearly that he was being paranoid -- without coming out and actually using the word. Then he emails me privately saying, why are you sending this out as a group email instead just to him. Of course, group emails were fine until I showed that he was wrong. I asked why I should switch to private emails when we had been doing a group email. He sent me back a long letter in which he criticized me for not having lady-like manners and that he needed to "put me in my place" but couldn't do it in a group email because that, I guess, wouldn't be nice. So twisted. Plus ... them's fight in' words, and I'm not joking at all. Then he just went on a paranoia rampage. So, never one to fail to rise to a challenge, I wrote a pretty devastating letter in which I clearly said his thinking had become distorted and he was using his paranoia to support his paranoia and how, oh ... by the way ... NEVER SAY SOMETHING TO ME ABOUT "PUTTING ME IN MY PLACE" AGAIN. Never ... EVER.
But, I didn't send it. I not only have read the book of James many times, but I've taught it also. So I know very well the verse about being slow to anger and slow to speak. I hd already missed the "slow to anger part" (!), but I could at least be slow to speak. I decided that I would send it as an actual letter, not as an email, because I thought it addressed things in a serious way that could severely impact our future relationship, so I should send it by mail and then block his emails so that he couldn't fire back some I'll-advised response that would sever our relationship.
In the meantime, I was having to fight a war on my Facebook page against my OTHER brother and even my brother-in-law who decided for some insane reason that he could get in on the action also! I posted an article by a man who was writing about the an ideology of the Far Right called Dominionism. He said that Senator Ted Cruz' (TX) father was heavy-duty into this and explained what it is. And, honey, let me tell you what ... It is BAD NEWS. I looked up some more stuff about it and it confirmed what I was finding in my interactions with these people. They are not interested in securing freedom of religion, they want to "take back America" and re-establish it as a Christian Nation, etc., etc.
Well ... people, especially my less-crazy brother and my brother-in-law just started attacking me. Demanding that I explain myself, etc. and I had begun the post by saying that this article was interesting. I was sure it would make my far-right friends angry, but that I thought they might be interested in how they looked through someone else's eyes, and that I thought they would find some nuggets of truth in it ... because a good portion of it talked about how the liberal bureaucracy had failed America. And here's a big, big problem. Everyone has become so indoctrinated that they completely missed what the man was saying and just went to their knee-jerk reactions. He was criticizing a portion of the "Christian Right" that support the ideology of "Dominionism." He distinguishes between Christianity and this ideology and he distinguishes between Christians and the ideology. But people just started yelling about how he was an atheist attacking Christians, etc. my brother-in-law even went on a rant about how this man interviews some other man in some other article who is trying to stamp out Christianity in the military.
Well, I don't know about you, but this all starts to really weird me out. I mean, it's like they have been brain-washed. I wanted to be like an English teacher and make them write a Roman Numeral outline of the article and then answer specific questions about what the man actually SAID. I said at the very beginning of posting the article that this was MY page and I would not tolerate any one commandeering my page and using it as their stage to shout their opinions. That I already knew what they think because they post it all of the time ... and this was something I found interesting, so any comments commandeering my page or attacking me would be deleted. So, guess who would not back off. Yep. My brother and brother-in-law. They kept posting their crap and I kept deleting it and finally got pretty stiff with them. I pretty well told my brother off and concluded with, "(name), I mean it. Drop it." Or something along that line to which he responded with only a "Wow." Then I got a message from said brother and brother-in-law. I wouldn't read them and had my daughter read them. She said that they weren't awful, but she didn't think I needed to read them. Later, my husband read them and said he didn't think it would be a good idea for me to read them.
But all of this with my brothers started really, really getting to me and upsetting me very badly. I started feeling that they had revealed to ouch of themselves to me and that I didn't see how I could let them be in my life anymore. They were not people I liked and had actually become people I was repulsed by. But I couldn't kick them out of my life, could I?
None of the other people bother me or upset me. I can think they use Christianity as a subterfuge and it's no skin off my back. I will refute them and try to expose that, but they are never going to upset or hurt me. I have a fighting spirit.
But my brothers.
One has no problem at all with all of these black men who were killed by police. No sympathy at all for the mentally ill man shot on the streets of L.A. (And I truly think that that has got to be one of the lowest of all the low spots in American history). He defends unquestioningly these actions with no compassion at all for the victim. I despise someone like that. How can this person be in my life??? How can I ever let him be a part of my life? How can I do anything except reject him and uproot him from my world.
My older brother ... he has so embraced hatred and suspicion and has combined his pathology with his politics and reached a place where I think he is one step from being deranged. In fact, I got a lot of people who I think are one step from being deranged, but I don't care about them. But this brother is seeing and believing evil of everything and everyone. He spews hatred and distortion. When I show beyond question that he has done this, he never backs down, he never apologizes, he never says he was wrong. Before this time, he had always just stopped the conversation. This time he has decided to "put me in my place." He makes me feel like my soul has been contaminated by his anger and hate and lies and distortions. How can I let this person be a any part of my life??
My soul started writhing under all this. Wednesday night was a very bad night.
Lisa
Dear Friend,
Well, it's almost mind night and I'm ready to fall asleep, that's an improvement, something will doubtless, happen, though to keep it from happening! Last night, around 1:00 am, my husband started having ferocious heart burn. I was afraid he was having a heart attack and we were going to be on our way to the hospital. He took some Pepto-Bismal (the violets concoction ever made) and then some Alka-seltzer. We got up and watched a couple of episodes of Friends until the pain let u and he could go to sleep. So, I've been pretty tired all day today. But, I was able to get my bedroom and bathroom clean, the kitchen and family room clean, and even the garage floor clean and a load of laundry washed. And dinner cooked. I'm super sore right now, but am hoping I'll be able to go to sleep without having to get up and go into a hot tub.
I've really got to start exercising these hip joints, but I don't w-a-a-ant to!! But they are hurting pretty darn bad, both of them.
I've got my to-do list ready for tomorrow and it's pretty much like all of them: do more work than is humanly possible, but don't be satisfied with the amount you get done, and then excoriate yourself for not having done more. I have a chiropractor's appointment tomorrow, but I'm not in acute pain now, so I'm already thinking that if I go, I won't be able to get as much work done. And it's not hurting that bad now after all ... is it??
My warfare against the fake-Christian Right continues. I'm going to have to deal with both of my brothers tomorrow. But, in the meantime, this woman on Facebook posted something foul and said that she questions the loyalty of anyone who doesn't hate Obama as much as she does! I mean, doesn't this just sound like the woman in A Tale of Two Cities who knitted her scarf and knitted into it the names of everyone that didn't believe a revolution was the answer, and used her scarf to testify against them and get them all beheaded?? I sent in a small response saying, "So, if anyone doesn't hate Obama as much as you do, you've decided that they hate the country?" I got a response back, a rip-snorting one! I sent a long one back that made her just spluttering mad. I've copied it all and will tack it on here just for your amusement ... or rage ... or whatever. I know my husband would say I'm wasting my time, but I just can't let this kind of stuff go by unchallenged anymore!
I can't wait for my outfit for the installation to get here and hop SO MUCH that it fits!!! It's a little fuddy-daddy for my taste, but is appropriate and in perfect taste. But I now just want to find a pair of shoes that will add just a bit of a funk-factor to it! I was looking at the Miz Mooz website and they have some fabulous ones, but I don't think the colors will work.
For our venture into Manhattan yesterday, I wore a short black skirt with black boots and leggings, an ivory t-shirt with sort of tiger-stories on it, my black leather jacket and a beautiful ivory scarf. I wore my hair back and three-inch long art-deco sort of earrings, a black multi-strand bead necklace and a sterling silver design pendant on several black cords with silver beads woven into the cords. A silver artisan watch, an ivory beaded bracelet and an artisan ring with gold and silver spinning circles completed it. It was a fun outfit!
Oh! Reminds me! MUST GET HAIR COLORED!! Can't wear funky outfits at 58 years of age if you have an inch of gray roots showing!
So, here goes my throw-down with this particular crazy woman! Enjoy!
Lisa
So, if people don't hate him like you do, then we hate America?
Lisa, do you agree with what this man is doing to this country? Do you believe our Constitution no longer matters and that wnat he wants is the only thing that matters? Is your "awe" of him making you turn a blind eye to what he is doing? If you sit back and say "he would never do that," aren't you abetting the behavior? And he is not the only person in this country whose loyalty I question. All I am asking is that good Americans really look at their heart as to just how much they would do to make sure this country survives. I hate any person who has this little respect for the country I love so very much. My family goes back to New Amsterdam with immigration in 1620 and many have fought for the freedoms we all enjoy(ed). I feel very strongly about protecting that legacy no matter what it takes. I would lay my life down for this country. And I refuse to apologize to anyone for that.
I would lay my life down for the cause of Christ. It's not right of you to assume that I hold him in "awe". That is patronizing. Neither am I turning a blind eye. That is condescending, I'm actually afraid when you put yourself in a position to judge other people's loyalty to a nation. And you are departing from Christ when you declare your hatred for anyone who doesn't love this nation like you. This nation should only represent the area of the world that God has called you to do HIS work of mercy and compassion. And you care about a legacy that goes back to the 1600's?? How about the legacy you are departing from that goes back more than 2000 years! Your hatred epitomizes everything about the extreme Right that is wrong, and the holy name of Christ should never have been brought into this petty internal political war. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's"! Please quit bringing Jesus into this crusade you have created. If we are Christians, Judy, followers and disciples of Jesus the Christ, then we do not belong to this world. We are no longer of this kingdom. The Bible clearly says that God has already set the borders and the times for all the nations. Obama cannot affect God's plans at all. The Bible also clearly says that no one has been put in a position of authority except by a God. That means that God put Obama in office for whatever reasons He had. There is no meaning to all of this that you have so totally immersed yourself in. None! God has a plan going on and we are getting to watch one tiny part of what He is unfolding. There is the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of this World, which is under the dominion of Satan. Why would you think that political ranting would have any effect on the war between the two kingdoms? As Believers, our work is the work of the Kingdom. If you want to combat the things you think are wrong about the Obama administration, which hopefully -- across the spectrum of history -- you can see is virtually of no importance ... . if you see him as evil incarnate and the enemy of this nation that you have so bound yourself to ... then the Bible teaches clearly that your weapons of warfare are spiritual not earthly! You should be being driven to your knees beseeching God to bless the nation and to spare it from harm ... not spewing hatred on the internet! And I make no apologies to anyone for this, either.
So is this man and people like departing from Christ when he stands by and allows Christians, Jews and evenuslims to be slaughtered in God's name. There were many Christians who died when this country was founded so going to Christ with acceptance of all of this is a cop out. And challenging my faith because I love this country is a cop out as well. Our Lord helps those who help themselves.
Well, Judy. I'm very disappointed in your answer. You don't address my charge that you are being patronizing and condescending to me . You don't deny that you believe you can be the judge other people's loyalty to the nation and you don't address my saying that you are departing from Christ when you make your beliefs about, basically, Obama, the litmus test of whether or not you get to declare you hate someone. You have nothing to say about me saying we are here to do the work of Christ of mercy and compassion in the world, nation, and time in which we are placed. More disturbing is that you do not address at all the Biblical truths I mention. Apparently, if the Bible contradicts you, then you are uninterested in it. And you say nothing at all about the need to rely on spiritual weapons of prayer and submission instead of relying on your own arm of flesh, anger and hatred. So, rather than using reason, you resort to bombast.
Now, why do you think that is? Why are you wiling to let the Scriptures wash over you with no effect whatsoever? You have only one point to make which is that Obama should declare war on ISIS, rather than assist the countries who are actually at war with them. I'm glad for you that you think such a complicated issue is easy and the answer is to send in the marines. You do know, don't you, that your characterization of Obama as standing by doing nothing while innocent people are being killed, whether that is an accurate statement or not, IS accurate of what the United States did at the beginning of WW1 and WW2? We deliberately stood by and did nothing. Do you condemn those presidents as well? Or how about President Bush who refused to do a single thing during the Rwandan genocide and then straight out lied to the people of Rwanda and to the American public by saying that the administration had no idea what was going on? All the documentation is out now. They knew PRECISELY what was going on and did nothing. Those were Christians being slaughtered, too. Do you have any outrage for their deaths? Do you have any outrage directed at President Bush for doing nothing and letting almost one million innocent people be chopped into pieces? If you don't, then your outrage at President Obama is hypocritical.
By saying "going to Christ with acceptance of all of this is a cop out," doesn't surprise me, because you don't seem to be going to Jesus at all. You are basically saying that the Scriptures are of no value to you and do not represent the ultimate truth or the revelation of God to man. I did not actually challenge your faith previously, but now that you show that you care NOTHING for what the Scripture says, I have no choice except to question your faith. The Scripture is the Word of God. It's truth should smash into you and you should let it change your thinking and your position in a way that brings you in alignment with God's word. I in no way challenged or challenge your faith because you love this country. That is nothing buy hyperbole and a complete twisting of what I said. And to be sure you understand what I am saying so there is no mistake, when you deliberately distort the truth, you are lying. Love the country all you want, and show that love it by falling on your knees praying for the nation. I am copping out of nothing. You, however, are waving a flag of "I love my country" to try to hide the fact that you are loving this country enough to refuse to obey the King of the Kingdom of heaven. And, finally, it simply hurts me to no end to hear you say The Lord helps those who help themselves. You are how old and have claimed to be a Christian for how long and you do not know that that is not in the Bible? Nor is it true! The Lord helps those who fall at His feet in utter dependency on Him and who submit their will to Him and are willing to be obedient to Him. The slogan, "The Lord helps these wh helps themselves" is a slogan that can be used by anybody to rationalize any sin they want to.
Dear Friend,
I had such a good day today. My husband and I caught the 12:18 train int the city and saw "If/Then" on Broadway. Wow! What voices!! And, my, how many homosexuals! The main character is heterosexual, but four of the six primary characters are gay or lesbian. I didn't know there was going to be tragedy in it, so I went completely unprepared for crying. As we were leaving I saw a young woman who had obviously been crying and we got to talking. She used her scarf for her tears, but my scarf was ivory and dry clean only, so I couldn't use it! I'm very glad we didn't miss this. Tomorrow is the last performance. The woman who plays the lead is the woman who plays Rachel's mother in Glee, BTW.
I looked online for restaurants near the theater and found one highly recommended called Blue Fin. Wow!! It was so haute New York!! And the food was fabulous. We had a delightful time there.
After we left, we made our way to the subway station to take us back to Grand Central. My husband was trying to buy our tickets for the subway and just had one problem after another after another! I mean,he couldn't buy those tickets to save his life! Need run his credit card through wrong or hit a wrong number entering his zip code. I turned to the man behind us and started to say, "He's actually quite brilliant!" But after seeing his face, I decided he wouldn't appreciate the humor! Then, after he was successful and we started walking downstairs I started laughing so hard I could barely breathe and was in PAIN! We made good time to the station and caught our train home. When I told our daughter about him buying the subway tickets, I couldn't even speak I was laughing so hard!!
So, back to my family. Because I know y want me to tell you more about my family, don't you?? I posted that article last night and had three comments, one from my lesser crazy brother who was at least addressing what the man said and how he thought he was contradicting himself. BUT, then he wrote me a message that apparently said that by posting something I was inviting conversation and debate. I started to respond, but didn't have time to finish. But, then I got back home and found that my mother had texted me asking why I was so angry and was she one of the ones that I was talking about and why did I post this article and she had read it three times and still didn't understand why I posted it. Now, if your mother is normal, this doesn't mean anything to you, but, since my mother is crazy, it rings all sorts of alarm bells! How has she interpreted this through her mind and where is she going to run with it. So I messaged her that she wasn't one of the ones and she said something about another article this man had written called, "Killing Ragheads for Jesus" written by oh, the sniper guy they made the movie about ... Kyle? Well, I was super disappointed to learn that he was not the noble warrior they portrayed in the movie, according to his own writing in his book. The plot was completely fabricated. So the movie cultivated a cult-like revering of a character who didn't really exist. And it's a movie that supports a lot,of things that are troubling me.
So,,the whole thing is making me uneasy. My son says he has ghost written a response to my crazy brother for me to read. Tomorrow, I need to get both of those letters mailed. Not emailed, mailed.
Well, I can tell that I have to start working on strengthening my hip joints again. They're both weak and hurting a lot. I wasn't keeping this journal when my left hip joint almost came out of its socket. Wow! Took several months of therapy to get it strengthened back up. At least I know all the exercises and won't need a physical therapist.
So, I had a great day with my husband, though my family still casts a long shadow over my life.
Lisa
Dear Friend,
My back and calf were significantly better today. Enough so that I'm pretty sure I just strained all the muscles really bad and didn't actually tear anything. I spent the day in my chair in my study on a heating pad and stayed there all day until I had to go to the chiropractor.
After that I went to the health food store and picked up some items for a super fast dinner of cuban shrimp tacos. Could have sworn we had tequila, but it couldn't find it anywhere. They turned out really good, though.
After that we watched"Predestination" with Ethan Hawke. An incredibly rich and multi-layered time travel movie. Then my daughter and I tidied up the kitchen and I put the dogs out and started to feed them when all the muscles around my right hip went into a spasm. Not spasmS. One continual hard and extremely painful spasm! I was crying it hurt so bad, plus discouraged plus just really mad at my body for letting me down again. It hurt horribly being in bed, so I got in a hot tub with a bunch of Epsom salts and took three Motrin. Alternating hot and cold water, I finally got the spasm to release. Still a pretty good amount of pain, but at least I'm able to lay in bed on the heating pad now.
Figured out the insomnia. The reason my brain starts sounding the alarm the moment I almost go to sleep, it's because I am not willing to stop my day to rest my body. I don't care if it needs sleep. I'm sick of it and I don't WANT to take care if it anymore. So I come up with this big lust if things I MUST do before I'll let myself go to sleep. So, my overall lack of self-care is due to NOT CARING. I've got a lot of work to do on myself. Can I forgive my body and start trying to take care of it? Seems like a long shot to me.
I posted something on Facebook that is gong to make my family and other right wing nut cases furious! It's an article about the far right and how they are harming the country! I said my comment section will not become a place for them to rant and rave. This is my page and they can rant against the author and me all they want on their own page and that I will delete any posts that I perceive to be like that. But I was offering them the article, which is about them, looking at the country from a different perspective, for them to thnk about. Then I posted a video of kittens bathing and said for them to watch it after they read the article to lower their blood pressure.
I am still contemplating my response to my brother and making a lot of notes about what I want to say. I do know that it will be an actual letter in the mail. Not something he can slam back at immediately.
We are going to see a Broadway play tomorrow afternoon, "If/Then." I have a very funky/cool outfit I'm planning on wearing that I hope will be cute and fun.
I ordered a fabulous outfit for my husbands installation ceremony. Oh, I hope it fits!
That's it for today. I'm wondering if I can try to just thoroughly enjoy tomorrow instead of being mad at all the things I'm not getting done.
Lisa
Dear Friend,
I apparently really don't want to talk to you, do I? It's been 19 days since I wrote anything, and I'm not going to write much now. I should probably read over my last posts to see where I was when I quit writing, but I don't have time to. It's super late and I'm finally really sleepy.
But here's the skinny version if these 19 days:
1. I finished the freaking room and got the adjoining bathroom decorated and it all turned out looking really, really nice. If I say so myself. The speaker who stayed with us was a very quiet woman and no trouble at all ... after she got here. She was a TON of trouble because of all the work I had to do in that room!!
2. I got the library cleaned out also. It's right beside this bedroom and doesn't have a door, so it had to be cleaned up also. I did realize that there is about a half of a box tat has to be dealt with still in there, but it shouldn't take much time.
3. The conference was a great success with a terrific turnout.
4. Our good friends came up for the conference and stayed with us and I got as much visiting done with my friend as could be squeezed into the time they were here.
5. Our daughter is done with the ex-boyfriend. Finally. She is "talking" with a cute guy who works at a movie theater as a ticket taker. That doesn't sound promising, but it turns out he's a junior in college getting a psych degree and is having to sit out for a year to make some money to be able to go back and finish. She hasn't let him know who her daddy is or what he does. She says he's already a better boyfriend than her last boyfriend of four and a half years ... Even though he's not her boyfriend! He has already treated her more nicely than the jerk did in the entire four and a half years she was with him!
6. I got extremely angry with my right-wing, gun-toting, red-neck brother (and this is the one I like!) over the homeless man that was killed by the police in L.A. I won't even go into that.
7. Sessions with my psychologist have been ... intense lately. I asked her to give me some feedback on her thoughts about me so far. She surprised me by intimating that she is surprised by the degree of meanness I have towards myself and anger at myself and some issues with self-hatred. Shazam! You could have knocked me down with a feather, but it have been thinking about it and she's kind of hit the nail on the head.
8. My husband went to a conference in D.C. where he spoke and was on a panel. I took these four days as an opportunity to work like a dog on the house. I got a good start in the basement and a TON of work done in my study! I lifted and carried and moved so many boxes of things up and down between the three stories of the house.
9. All was fine until, just before he got home on the train, I moved a bunch of flattened cardboard boxes to the curb for recycling. But they had been outside for a week and were wet and very heavy. I had to pick them up one at a time, twist and turn towards the curb, and drag them there. In the process, I tore up my back. By the next day I was in extraordinary pain with super-bad spasms in it. Scream-worthy pain. I got to a chiropractor and he did some very strong STEM treatment and heat and ice in it just to try to get it to call down. I may have torn a tendon or a muscle again.
10. The main problem with this was that we were entertaining a couple who are very important to our college that evening. A pretty famous man who is close, personal friends with people like Eli Wiesel and Ben Carson! I managed it okay. Had a few spasms hit me that were excruciating, accompanied by me saying, "Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!" Which was a lot better than some on the things I had been yelling earlier in the day!
11. Our son celebrated his two-years of sobriety!! We are so proud of him, I can't even begin to tell you!!! And so thankful to God for the amazing work he has done in his life.
12. I am extremely angry with my oldest brother and about ready to cut him out of my life. We are in the middle of some exchanges on email and I've decided to just come straight out and say that he is pathologically paranoid, and subtly dishonest, and a disseminator of hate. I've decided that I don't need him in my life and if he decides to cut me off, that is ok. But I'm not sitting back anymore and let him do and say the ridiculous and outrageous things he does and says. My son called today while I was working in the email and we had a good talk about it. He had me send him the whole trail of emails to look at and make suggestions. Since this is pretty serious, I'm waiting until tomorrow to finish it, after I've had time to mull it over.
13. Saw my psychologist today. She asked me why I didn't listen to my body and take better care of it instead of pushing it so hard and far. It came down to I absolutely don't care about it. It is going to do what I tell it to. She says it comes back to the self-hatred thing.
Husband is calling me to get back in bed. Later!
Lisa
Dear Friend,
I've screwed this day up so bad that I don't think there's a even a chance that tomorrow's going to go well. It is 1:18 as I write this! My husband is on a trip, and I hate going to bed when he's gone. Although I was so sleepy I wanted to go to bed at 8:30! I didn't get much done today or yesterday, and the big crew of workers will be here first thing tomorrow and it will be insane around the house again.
I kept looking at the mini-chandeliers I had installed in the two hallways and ... they just didn't look like what I thought they would. Too babyish. And PLASTIC fake-crystal drops. I wouldn't have ordered something with plastic. But I couldn't find my receipt or any email telling me where I ordered them. I finally found, though, that they were ordered from LampsPlus via Amazon and that they are NOT what I ordered! So thinks going to be a mess. I'll have to get them to send me the right ones and have the electrician take these down and out u the right ones and then ship them back. Darn! Darn! Double darn!
I spent oodles of time today trying to pick out a carpet runner for the back stairwell. I had hoped to have it installed before the conference, but I think I can forget that. It's kind of hard because it needs to coordinate with the colors in the den and the colors at the top of the staircase ... but I don't know what the colors of the den are going to be yet! I'm going to call around tomorrow and see what delivery dates the different ones have. Plus, I'm just really bad at making decisions like this. As you already know. So that's going to be hard.
I seem to have misplaced the curtains that are supposed to go up in the guest room, and they placed the curtain rods wrong, so those will have to be redone.
One million decisions all of the time!!!
I've ordered the curtain rods for our bedroom, but they aren't here yet. I hope they come tomorrow.
I had a lot of anxiety going on yesterday and today. Yesterday was pretty bad.
I've realized I have a real problem with hating myself when I don't meet up to my expectations. Or my to-do list. Or have any sort of day other than a terribly organized and disciplined one. If I get a lot done, correction ... a WHOLE lot done ... then I'm not mad at myself and don't hate myself.
But take today for instance. My husband didn't leave until after 12:00, so I didn't try to get anything done until he left. But then I saw how grossly dirty the kitchen was from not having washed the dishes the night before. The laundry room is full of dirty clothes. I was tired and didn't want to work, though I was trying to make myself. And then, to top it all off, I overage at dinner. Or did I? It's hard to tell. I had a sushi role, one that was not covered with rice and was about 6 inches long ... not huge. A bowl of thai curry soup, which was mostly broth with some vegetables in it. I split some lettuce wraps with a chicken salad with my daughter. And then ate some sautéed bok choy. So, too much, but not horribly too much. But my stomach has not wanted to digest it, so it's just been sitting there making me feel so sick. I finally remembered that this can be a dysautonomia thing, but by then I was so mad at myself that there was no lightening up. I also read too much and spent too much time looking for the carpet runner. And now I've stayed up way too late. I forgot to take my klonopin this morning so that probably added to it all.
I'm just so tired of every day being constant work. I know it won't stay this way, but it feels like it will. I know I used to work out almost every day, have good prayer times, read my Bible, write Bible studies and teach groups of high school or college girls, go to church, go to women's Bible studies and manage a home. I just need to get back to that point.
On a good note, though, it snowed all day today. My daughter and I got dressed and walked down to the train stating and climbed up to the top to look at the Hudson. Wow! It's saltwater at this point, but it's still frozen for a long ways out. You can see the ice flows in the middle moving in the current, so it's not frozen all the way over. But my husband is up further north and he said it looks like the Hudson is completely snowed over where he is.
On the way back to the house, I got confused about hw to get back to the house. My daughter was insisting it was one road, but I was sure it was the other road. So I told her to just meet me at the house. I started walking up the road and finally realized that ... I was WRONG! (gasp!) so I walked back down to where she had stayed waiting for me. We were laughing and joking all about it until it reached the point that I was doubled over I was laughing so hard! So that was a lot of fun. Then we ordered delivery (yes, I gave the man a good tip!) and watched Spielberg's "The Prince of Egypt." Hadn't realized before that Sandra Bullock is the voice of Moses' sister, Miriam.
So, it is now 1:47. Perhaps it is time to go to bed now.
Cheers! I'm expecting tomorrow to be awful, but cheers to you, anyway!
Lisa
