Great-ful and Thankful

July 22, 2012, Sunday

One thing that is typically true for depressed people is that they lose focus of their blessings.  They lose their attitude of gratitude.  To help with this, it is often recommended to start a gratitude journal in which, daily, you write ten things you are grateful for in your life.  Ann Voskamp wrote a book titled, “One Thousand Gifts,” that is about finding contentment right where you are.  How do you do that?  One way is to write ten things you are grateful for every day for 100 days – no repeats.  That makes 1000 gifts. 

I’ll be honest, I’ve not read the book.  About once a week or maybe a little more often, I check on her blog, www.aholyexperience.com , and I’ve found that she is continuing her list of gifts.  She is somewhere around 3500+.  Her style of writing is very flowery and “lilting” as one reviewer put it and so it just doesn’t appeal to me to read the book.  But, the blog is interesting.  One of the gifts that she listed is “a bucket of soapy water and a dirty floor.”  I remember thinking when I first read it, “WHATTTT??”  After thinking about it often, yes it took a lot of thinking because that one is wayyyy off my radar, I understand that she is grateful that she has the floor, that the floor is dirty because her large family is living on it, and that she had a means to clean it as well as the ability.  What did that focus of attitude do for her?  It must have helped her to be content and maybe even happy in doing a task that I abhor.

I’ve tried writing my own gratitude journal but, frankly, I’m horrible at it.  I just don’t take the time.  I don’t make the effort.  But, what I do do (it is necessary to say that with an emphasis that distinguishes it as two words) is I find myself increasingly looking for my blessings – or looking for the blessings even in the struggles.  As I’ve struggled with depression here lately, I find it helps to realign my focus.

So, what am I thankful for today?

1.       First and foremost, I am thankful for a God that not only lets me yell and scream at Him, but He wants it.

2.       I am thankful for the family I have and the measure of health we all have.

3.       I am thankful for my prayer warriors.

4.       I am thankful for the new portable A/C unit sitting beside me keeping me cool.

5.       I am thankful for the medical system we have because, while I am jaded at the moment, I still know that if we were in socialized medicine, we wouldn’t have been able to see all the doctors we have so far.

6.       I am ever so thankful for a husband who loves me unconditionally despite my failings, who is my rock, my encourager, my supporter, and who helps me to be a better person.

7.       I am thankful that my kids have a relationship that is beyond close.

8.       I am thankful for my sisters (biological and spiritual) who love me in so many ways.

9.       I am thankful for two careers that I absolutely love and places to work that grow me professionally, personally, and spiritually.

10.   I am thankful for the cruise we are taking this weekend!!!!

This morning in church we sang an old hymn that has for my entire life been negatively associated with funerals.  But this morning, as we were encouraged to sing it with enthusiasm and feeling, my heart soared and brought me to tears (yes, I hear the gasps of shock now!).  Here is the refrain:

Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

For your listening enjoyment, my favorite version (other than this morning) of “How Great Thou Art.”

Startling and Healing

Sometime in the mid-late 1990s

From time to time I get these wonderful little reminders of a time long ago in my life.  Yes, I am being sarcastic, very.  The truth is that very occasionally I get a flashback from my childhood – a recovered memory that’s been long forgotten.  I think God so wonderfully designed our brains that when things are too traumatic to remember, too painful to remember, too destructive to remember, we forget.  We block it out.  It is a form of protection that God wired into each of us.  Then, as God determines that we can handle it, He allows the memory to return which then helps to heal a wound.

I have experienced a few of these flashbacks and, frankly, they rock my world for a while until I figure out how to process them.  I have had several flashbacks and all are relating to some part of the abuse.  I remember one physically made me ill and I had to pull over to the side of the road and vomit.  Looking back on it now, I see that as me truly expelling that poison from my system.  It was the most vivid flashback, including having the physical sensation of the abuse happening, yet I think I processed that one quickly because there was no chance to minimize my response.

Then one morning in church we sat behind an older man who was bald on top and grey on the sides…just like my grandfather.  Before I knew it, I was propelled back in time seeing myself playing with my grandfather’s hair.  He always carried a comb in his shirt pocket and I would use that comb to play with his hair.  It was a memory of a thing that was good with him.  And that is what threw me for a loop!  I left church crying, upset by the startling vision of him, and confused by the recovery of a happy memory.

For days I was put off by this memory.  What was the point?  For years, I couldn’t explain this memory.  Then, a deeply insightful friend pointed out to me that perhaps this happy memory meant that I was healing enough to be able to see some sort of good in him.  Before, he was all bad.  My description of him had always been “he’s just a sick bastard.”  Does this memory change that?  Not really.  But it did show me that it is ok to acknowledge the good memories as well as the bad.  God showed me once again that He knows what is best for me, that He knows long before I do what I can handle.  But, above all, He showed me that He loves me enough to reach into my life and touch me in a way that is both startling and healing.

El Roi

July 13, 2012

To me, the more names you have, the more loved you are.  Sometimes it is a distortion of your real name.  For example, I often call Lettia “Lett-cha” because that is how my iPhone voice command pronounced her name and it’s funny to me.  Other times it’s just an outright nickname that has no association with your real name, like when I call Rachel Bear Cub because there was a time when I got protective of her and my “momma bear” came out.  Or, I often call Kelsey “Kelsey Belle” just because it kind of rhymes.  All are a sign of love.

God (and Jesus) has many names too.  Jehovah, Yahweh, Lamb of God, I AM, Lord, Savior, Great Shepherd, Author of Salvation, Emmanuel, Messiah, Son of Man, and El Shaddai are just a few examples from a long list of names. 

In response to my post titled “He Speaks,” I got an email from my Southern-speaking cuz, Kristin, and she told me about a name of God I had never heard before.  The name El Roi (El raw-EE) translates “The God who sees me.”  During this season of uncertainty and pain, this name is comforting and reassuring and I have meditated on it often.  To my knowledge, this name is used only once in the Bible.  In Genesis 16, Sarai was very jealous and despised Hagar because she was able to conceive a child before her, so Hagar fled from her and went into the desert.  An angel found her by a spring and told her to go back and submit to Sarai and then he told her the future of her son, Ishmael, and that the Lord had heard her misery.  She responded by giving God the name, “You are the God who sees me,” and then she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

It is so incredibly comforting to know that God sees me.  He is El Roi.  He sees my struggles.  He sees my pain.  He sees my joy.  He sees my worship.  I am struck by Hagar’s comment of “I have now seen the One who sees me.”  Because God sees me, I can see him better.  If I am to believe that he receives my worship and praise, then I have to believe that he sees my struggles.  One would not be true without the other.  If God sees me, then isn’t He allowing Himself to be seen?

God showed Himself several (I can’t say that word without that scene from Spanglish coming to mind!) times recently.  I saw Him in the God-incidences (I don’t believe in coincidences) that my Bible study sisters shared this week.  I saw Him in people loving on me.  I saw Him in Dr. Pearse as she called m last night (What doctor do you know of that gives you her personal cell number and calls you at night?) and gave me a great laugh to help me put Dr. I’s appointment in perspective.

So, if I can see Him, He MUST see me.  El Roi!!

My favorite Whitney Houston song comes to mind, “I Look To You.” 

Being A Stiff-Necked Israelite

July 5, 2012

As I was stepping into the shower this morning, I was asking God about what I should write about today.  I’ve been a bit stuck this week.  I developed a kink in my neck last night, and as I was waiting for the water to warm up before I stepped in, I was praying and stretching my neck to try to relieve the tightness.  As I looked up, I saw the verse I had painted, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Ps. 110:105).  A consistent part of my prayers, usually at the end, is “Shine your light brightly before me so that I may more easily walk in your ways.”  It comes from that verse in Psalms.  One of the ways that God speaks to us is through his Word.  A Bible verse will just pop out when you open your Bible, or a verse will consistently come to mind throughout a week, or a verse will come to mind when trying to make a decision.  That verse, whatever it is, is the answer.

The verse that has come up several times this week is Jer. 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?”  I used it a couple of times in counseling sessions this week as a pattern of living according to what they feel was revealed.  Phrases such as “If it feels good, do it,” “it felt right!” and “follow your heart” bombard us all too often.  The heart is the source of feelings.  Jeremiah clearly tells us that we can’t trust the heart.  The heart is deceitful, sick, and beyond help.

Next Tuesday is an appointment for which we have waited a couple of months.  This doctor is a neuromuscular specialist.  I am excited to finally get her to see Kelsey.  But, as the time nears, I find myself increasingly nervous.  We’ve been largely unsuccessful in figuring out what is going on with Kelsey that I feel I am losing hope at times.  Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that I feel like I shouldn’t get my hopes up.  Inherent in these thoughts is the realization that we are running out of doctors here in the metroplex.  There is one more possibility after this one.  But, then what?  Mayo clinic?  I feel more and more anxious so I have every right to be anxious.  Right?

Should I really base whether or not to have hope based on how well previous doctors have done to help Kelsey?  That’s a sandy foundation.  Should I really go into this appointment with anxiety that may well temper my mood in a way that is unproductive in working with this doctor?  That is trusting a deceitful heart.  Do I really know the future and who and where the best doctor will be for my daughter?  I am not God.  I can't live according to what I am feeling.

So, in the midst of my growing nervousness that is based on what I am feeling and thinking, I get a kink in my neck that makes me look up.  Oh those stiff-necked Israelites!  I hope I am a faster learner than they were.