Back in the Saddle

I have been "kindly" and "gently" reminded by many of you that you've noticed I've been a bit M.I.A. from this here neglected blog.  It's true; but I can explain... Mostly, the onset of spring quarter in March marked the beginning of ten weeks of madness, and with it a busy class schedule, a move, and the beginning of practicum.  Since then, I've been even busier settling into my new little home and my new role as an actual therapist, soaking up sun if and when I can find it, and finding my place in this field as I become increasingly interested in working with women who are struggling with eating disorders.  And quite frankly, once I got out of the routine of blogging, with everything else going on I didn't really miss it!  But now I'm settled into this new chapter and right smack in the middle of a two week intensive for summer school and writing for fun has always served me well as a form of procrastination when I otherwise ought to be writing a paper for school (due tomorrow... zero pages written as of 9:42 p.m.)  So, I'm back.  And though I'm not making any promises of daily postings or anything like that, the ice has been broken.  It has no longer been six months since my last post - which definitely makes it easier to get started again.

So for my first post back, I've copied below an Irish blessing for work that I hold near and dear to my heart.  A professor that I love shared it with me a couple of years ago and I've recently re-fallen in love with it.  I've copied it down and posted it in a a visible place in my little home and honestly I read it every morning.  This is my prayer for myself in this career and as I read these words each morning I let them sink into my soul and guide the way that I go about my day at work or at school.  They echo my own heart and capture more eloquently than I could ever hope to exactly who and how I hope to be in this job.

An Irish Blessing for Work

May the light of your soul guide you. 

May the light of your soul bless the work that you do 

with the secret love and warmth of your heart. 

May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul. 

May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light 

and renewal to those who work with you 

and to those who see and receive your work. 

May your work never weary you. 

May it release within you wellsprings of 

refreshment, inspiration and excitement. 

May you be present in what you do. 

May you never become lost in bland absences. 

May the day never burden. 

May dawn find you awake and alert, 

approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities and promises. 

May evening find you gracious and fulfilled. 

May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected. 

May your soul calm, console and renew you.

found here

It's Always Something

I'm realizing, as I settle into life as a young adult that when it comes to productivity and discipline there will almost always, at any given moment, be something that sounds better to me than what I am actually "supposed" to or hoping to be doing.  Whether it's homework, exercising, filing at work, praying, trusting in God's better plan, waking up early, saving money, grocery shopping, allowing space for some closure, being bold, going for what I really want, writing, getting an oil change...I'm really best at finding something else to do first.  On some days, this is just me, being a "P" (my Myers Briggs personality profile) and proving that I'd rather put someone else's needs before mine and that I do my finest work in the eleventh hour.  A lot of the time though, I am in fact procrastinating; sometimes out of boredom I suppose, but most of the time I procrastinate from a place that is rooted more in fear and avoidance.

I have a tendency toward setting lofty, big picture goals for myself-what I will achieve or the kind of person I hope to be.  I am good at dreaming and hoping and waiting, but less than great at making the small day-to-day choices required for actually getting there. 

I subscribe to a really wonderful daily email that offers a reflection from Henri Nouwen each morning (which you, too, can do here).  Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the lenten season.  I kind of love lent because done right it is so dang challenging but oh so sweet and worth it.  It is about discipline and waiting.  In lent we practice drawing near to Him, waiting patiently, seeking peace, and living intentionally and in anticipation of Easter.  I love the simplicity of this prayer and the honest humility of these words.  I so often find myself divided, and neglecting for a myriad of reasons to make the choices-big or small-that lead to a life lived on the narrow road of faith and courage.  I am choosing to live intentionally this season which, essentially, means choosing to make choices.  Choices in my words, my thoughts, my actions, my time, my perspective.  First choice, to join with wise ol' Henri in making this my prayer for the lenten season too.

A Lenten Prayer
An excerpt from The Road to Daybreak, Henri J. M. Nouwen

The Lenten season begins. It is a time to be with you, Lord, in a special way, a time to pray, to fast, and thus to follow you on your way to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, and to the final victory over death.


I am still so divided. I truly want to follow you, but I also want to follow my own desires and lend an ear to the voices that speak about prestige, success, pleasure, power, and influence. Help me to become deaf to these voices and more attentive to your voice, which calls me to choose the narrow road to life.

I know that Lent is going to be a very hard time for me. The choice for your way has to be made every moment of my life. I have to choose thoughts that are your thoughts, words that are your words, and actions that are your actions. There are not times or places without choices. And I know how deeply I resist choosing you.


Please, Lord, be with me at every moment and in every place. Give me the strength and the courage to live this season faithfully, so that, when Easter comes, I will be able to taste with joy the new life that you have prepared for me.


Amen.

To whom it may concern:

Dearest blog readers (if you even still bother coming back here),

Please don't give up on me.

The last month and a half, I'm finally realizing in hindsight, have been quite hard for me and I haven't been much up for writing and reflecting.

As is the case for most in December, there's been a lot going on.  And I love the holiday season so much that I have a tendency to just throw myself 110% into whatever I can to squeeze the maximum amount of holiday cheer possible out of the days between Thanksgiving and New Years. And despite the things that have made this one unexpectedly harder than usual for me to endure at times, I've still managed to find myself often giddy with childlike excitement about things like stringing popcorn that to others may be tedious, but to me are magical and celebratory. I get all starry-eyed and mushy at a beautiful display of Christmas lights. I enjoy all the decor and the shopping for the people I love and creating gifts and thoughtful words for the ones that are most important to me. I've spent an inordinate amount of time cutting out hundreds of felt circles to make a wreath for my mom, a labor of love that no other time of year could inspire me to finish. I taught myself a new skill to create a gift for Emily that I think I'm more excited to give than she may be to recieve.  And, I made my first independent batch of glogg without burning the house down, which turned out wonderfully and was so pleased to be able to share one of my favorite family traditions with my friends.

There's also been a seemingly endless stream of committments and parties cramming my schedule to maximum capacity; a growing list of people to shop for and not enough money or time or energy. There's been loneliness and impatience and guilt and the fear of missing what Christmas is truly all about. I've been caught up in the hustle and bustle, the parties and arts and crafts and baking of the holiday season.  I've spent a few relaxing and beautiful weekends away, had my favorite Christmas playlist playing pretty consistently in the background of whatever I've been doing, and watched lots of the best holiday movies.  I finished finals, putting another quarter behind me with eager anticipation for what comes next and I've played less-than-aggressive defense against yet another sinus infection and a minor and (thankfully short lived) bit of blue-Christmas-depression.  From what I hear, that sort of thing is commonplace for the holiday season as we get older.  Christmas is no longer just the glistening and sparkling worry-free time of the year for adults that it used to be for us during our childhood.  It often brings with it a dark shadow that covers over some of the brightest parts of this season when and where we least expect it. 

I'm reminded this morning of the brilliance of C.S. Lewis' (in my opinion) best work, Screwtape Letters.  When the joy of this season seems dulled by a dark shadow, Lewis' creative insight into how the spiritual dimension is in a constant match of tug-of-war for our hearts and minds has helped me to realize the ways I've been letting the darkness creep in.  I've surrendered unintentionally some critical footholds and am just now scrambling to get them back.  If you haven't yet read that book, or it's been a while, I can't stress enough how much I believe that you should head out and pick it up as soon as you possibly can. I'm not big on the whole good vs. evil, darkness and light, spiritual warfare stuff but the picture that Lewis paints of how the bad stuff weasels it's way into our lives and grabs ahold of us is a practical and humbling reminder for me during this time of year as it becomes harder for me to always face the season with a joyful, reverent and peaceful glow about me that I so wish I just posessed.  In many ways I've just been lazy, allowing bad thoughts and worries to take the place of the things that I so wish I was focused on at the moment.

For the most part, right now, I am struggling with change.  Rather than embracing it and seeing the goodness of where God has me at the moment and the faithful provision and blessing that defines my days, I've been choosing to become fixated on how uncomfortable the hundreds of changes that seem to be surrounding my day to day existence are making me.  Some of the changes are so minor that I actually don't understand how they manage to stress me out.  Others are quite large and scary and hard to deal with; things that are sad, frustrating or just ambiguous, but I still ought to know better than to cling to them in fear, letting them weigh me down unneccessarily.

I'm off this afternoon to a snowy white Christmas in Chicago and had a few moments to just breathe during which I realized that I miss writing.  I've neglected to process quite a bit in favor of worry, and for some reason this morning I decided that enough was enough.  I'm beginning to embrace the changes that 2010 seems to want to bring to me.  Clinging stubbornly to what used to be "normal" won't do me or anyone else any bit of good.  For me, avoiding writing was a major tool of resistence.  So, hopefully, getting the inital return-to-blogging post out of the way will ease the pressure a bit and pave the way for a more faithful, courageous and thoughtful approach to the new year and the many, many changes it will bring.

Thanks for reading, those of you that have stuck around.  I appreciate you.

This too shall pass

Saturday morning I found myself crying in the baking aisle at Vons.  Not just tearing up, but crying real tears.  It should have been embarrassing except for the fact that I didn't care at all what anyone around thought about me.  These people going about their regular Saturday morning routines probably didn't even notice the crazy girl in the Chicago Bears sweatshirt gasping for breath between sobs, cell phone in hand, squatting to pick out a bag of marshmallows.  And even if they did, those tears were a luxury I rarely afford myself and though they chose to come at an inconvenient time; they were welcome in their own right for what they represented.

This weekend should have been my brother's twenty eighth birthday.  I should have been calling him to wish him a happy birthday, making sure he got the card that I should have been able to write a message in and mail to him wherever his twenty eighth year found him living.  He should have been having a Halloween party that pulled double duty as his birthday party, as was the tradition for every single one of the twenty one precious years he was given to celebrate.  But instead, I was shopping for a party being thrown at my house that was very much not Brad's birthday party and by it's very nature was causing me to ache.  It was on his day and for me, picking up those marshmallows was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back when it came to my ability to contain the grief I've gotten quite good at bottling up.

I've learned, over the past eight years, that there are just a couple of dark days in my calendar year now that I don't really share with everyone else.  The same way that Valentine's day or Fourth of July or even my mom or dad's birthday rolls around with expectation and specific weight attached to it's arrival, Brad's birthday and the anniversary of his accident have now become two days that are a different sort of holiday for me and my family.  And it catches me off-guard every year that the birthday seems to be the harder of the two.  I've given this fact some thought and believe that there are two main reasons that this day is so tough.  For one thing, birthdays are, essentially, a celebration of an individual's life.  They are a day to celebrate their being born, their accomplishments thus far, and their dreams both for the small details and huge milestones they have to look forward to in the years to come.  We lift people up on their birthdays and celebrate their lives.  The birthdays of those whom we've lost are still circled on our calendars but seem to serve as a reminder of all of the things they are no longer able to do, the milestones they never got to reach and days they were no longer with us.  And to add insult to injury, Brad's birthday happens to coincide with Halloween, the one day of the year that no matter where you go or who you are, it seems that death is over-emphasized and celebrated, yet is represented as being something that is only creepy and ominous and dark.  For the past few years it's seemed to me to be a bit of a cruel joke that the two days must be linked for me.

But even more so, I think the birthday-day of those we've loved and lost is so hard to endure is because it's a day that is supposed to be all about that one other person.  We feel the agonizing pain of our own loss on the anniversary of a death because that day symbolizes our loss and is hard in it's own more self-focused way.  But another person's birthday-day is never about us.  We focus our energy and attention solely on them.  We let them have their own way, we tell them nice things, buy them dinner and gifts and shower them with praise.  Birthdays, done right, are totally and completely other-focused.  This is the part that makes birthdays of a lost loved one particularly painful and heavy.

This weekend was tough.  My memories of Halloween are completely centered around celebrating Brad's birthday, and I think most often of the man that he would have become around this time.  My mom wisely pointed out that I take these days harder than the rest of them because the loss of my brother is rarely in my face.  She meant that, unlike them, I am not constantly surrounded my his things, his pictures, and places and people that he knew.  His friends and the rest of my family mourned together and often reminisce about the good stuff, the memories, the richness of his life.  I've been flying solo for most of this time, so she's absolutely right.  But she also meant that it is, literally, rarely in my face.  I don't show how it's changed me, I don't always show the things that are causing me to hurt, to feel angry, sad, scared, or unsettled.  I've got a severe tendency toward avoidance anyway, just in life, but I am rarely forced by something outside of myself to deal with the ongoing process of grief.  But when my go-to avoidance-tactic no longer works, it is also my tendency to break.  Hard.

And this weekend, right there in the grocery store, I did just that.  This time of year is hard for me, surrounding his birthday.  I am beginning to own that fact.  But breaking down like that felt in some ways a strange kind of good.  It felt real, in that agonizing and raw kind of way that is gutwrenchingly hard in the moment but brings with it afterword a sense of peace and being pieced back together by the One who is able to put me back together when I've fallen on my face and faithfully, graciously does so.  I have good friends who sat with me in my sadness for a little while, a very therapeutic way to be loved.  I was taken care of by others, and, in unexpected ways-myself.  I spent some time thinking about how a life worth mourning must have truly been worth celebrating, and took out my kayak and spent some time in the sunshine thinking about what made Brad so hard to let go of.  I indulged in some of my favorite good memories that I don't often let myself visit out of fear of resurfacing some of this sadness and had a really wonderful time doing it.  So, in all, it shaped up to be a necessary kind of time that ended quite well.

Turns out that as you get older life just becomes all kinds of complicated.  Loving and losing, celebrating and grieving are so tightly wound up in one another that maybe it's okay that sometimes the line between in painfully blurred.  We need to go through the hard stuff sometimes, and mostly we end up - much to our surprise - coming out stronger and better for it.  *Deepest thanks to those of you who repeatedly love me well in those seasons.

an off day/self care

Yesterday felt like a bit of an off day for me.  Maybe it's this creepy, blustery, pre-Halloween weather.  It could also be the fact that you can only study so many depressive mood disorders without analyzing the way that those very same symptoms are so often manifest (albeit to a significantly lesser degree) in your own life.  Low self esteem, excessive guilt (I was raised Catholic, I can't always help it), feelings of worthlessness, fatigue, depressed mood, restlessness...from time to time I experience all of these things.  Yesterday I had limited patience with my classmates, with the other drivers on the road, and with myself.  I said things I probably shouldn't have, and gave my roommate a hard time about something that really didn't have much to do with me.  It's days like this that just make me feel like if I'm not careful and intentional about how I do life, I can be someone I'm less than proud of.  It's also days like this that I feel like writing.  I get frustrated with my short fuse (enter excessive guilt) and find myself needing to sit down at the computer and sort things out.

We all have off days, off weeks, off seasons.  But for me, right now, I am fully aware that a lot of the heaviness weighing on my heart is a direct result of what I am filling my mind with.  It seems in my experience and in that of other students around me, that significant mind games are temporarily to come part and parcel with working so closely with the information contained in this quarter's course load.  As students who are training to be therapists, my classmates and I are sponges for this knowledge.  We spend hours and hours each day reading and talking about all of the painful and scary and confusing things that can happen in us, fragile human creatures that we are.   We watch vignettes and videos and do role plays, we read case studies, and write papers about our own experience.  And as we seek to analyze, familiarize ourselves with the symptoms and diagnoses in the DSM and the patterns and theories of psychology available to us, we are bound to get caught up from time to time in the weight of some of these issues.  We question our own sanity, our own interpersonal relationships and dynamics.  We take into consideration our own communication styles, strengths and weaknesses, fears and defense mechanisms and families of origin.  In the long run, we hope that this will make us better therapists; but in the present, it makes for a bit of a messy process.

Today, I think, I am feeling myself buckling under the weight of some of this stuff.  We watched a hard video in class that got my mind reeling about how painful life can sometimes be and the high calling of being a good therapist.  We will be repeatedly invited into the innermost parts of our client's lives.  They will share with us and often trust us to hold onto their burdens and fears and secrets and hurts.   They will look to us for answers, for healing, for a kind and listening ear.  Sometimes we will be scared out of our minds, or feel totally helpless and inadequate.  But there will be other times, too.  Times when we know that we have helped someone to feel validated and understood.  There will be those "aha!" moments when the client comes to terms with something they are working through, makes a major breakthrough or achievement, or experiences empathy and love that they have been craving and searching for within the walls of our offices.  We will be used, if we are willing to be obedient.  I'm terrified, yet honored, that it will be my job to sit, without judgement, and offer support and love to someone else who is scared or hurting, lost, confused, and everything in between.  On some days, I know, it will be a challenge; but on others, I think, it will be such a great joy.

So it is in this time that we are graduate students, juggling as much as we can possibly handle, that we are also encouraged by our professors and advisors to learn about self care.  They stress to us the importance in this field that we have chosen of being intune with our own needs.  Of course, I think that everyone in every field ought to be aware of their own limits and boundaries and have an artillery of tools that they employ to keep themselves healthy.  But I do love that in the mental health field "self care" is built into our training and job description if we are to do what we seek to do, well.  There is an ebb and flow in this learning season as I work hard to seek ownership of this knowledge, this vocation, this life.  Sometimes I am great at self care, better than most, I'd hazard to guess.  But other times, the most I can do is make a box of macaroni and cheese and zone out to whatever has shown up in the mail that week from Netflix.  So it goes.  I am learning so much right now.  But I'd be lying if, on days like today, I didn't acknowledge that this graduate school journey feels equal parts scary and overwhelming and lonely as it is thrilling and wonderful - but I am truly, deeply, grateful when it comes down to it, that I am being forced to come to terms with those very real things too.

Striking a Balance

It's true.  I didn't even come close to following through on my commitment to being a dedicated blogger.  The funny thing is, I don't even feel like a quitter.  Or a slacker.  I made the promise to myself, for a good reason, and then chose daily not to follow through.  On one hand, I think I'm just distracted.  My thoughts have been consumed with things I just didn't feel much like writing about.  Mostly with the DSM-IV - how to make a multi-axial diagnosis, what the five axes are, what the different decision trees are and then the disorders themselves, paired with case studies and charts.  Phew.  This will eventually get easier, but laying the groundwork for this knowledge has been hard work.  Scientific learning and rote memorization don't come as naturally to me as theories of communication and interpersonal dynamics.  I think I learn best in stories and there is less imagination involved in memorizing lists.  But I am fascinated by this stuff and committed to learning it because I want to be a good, wise, well-rounded and educated therapist.  So I've been consumed with creating notecards and pneumonic devices and with staring at lists and charts in hopes that the information is being seared onto my visual memory.  It's hard to sit down for some creative writing when my brain is repeating over and over the difference between agnosia, aphasia, apraxia...

I digress.  So yes, reading the DSM-IV for my psychopathology class takes a big chunk of my time these days.  But it's also the daily stuff of life that is being squeezed in.  It's the business of work and my landlord and my professor from a summer class who gave me an "F" in the course for 30 pages of "missing" papers which turned out to have been in his inbox the entire summer.  There's been a baby shower to host (yes, turns out I am that old), exercise to squeeze in, friends to catch up with and listen to and pray for.  I've got Bible studies to finish, holiday travel plans to get nailed down, laundry to sort and wash and fold, and feelings to wrestle with and analyze, over-analyze, and apparently become swept up in and paralyzed by.

So it seems I'm only doing okay in life at the moment.  I sometimes feel a little bit confused, a little bit lonely, left behind and tired in this stage of life.  I feel like I am waiting, waiting, always waiting.  Waiting too long, waiting not long enough.  But also in many ways it seems I am racing the clock.  Things are changing too fast and not fast enough and I'm struggling to discern when I should bend, when I should act, when I should hold back, and when I should let go. 

I'm trying to lean in to God, to invite and welcome His spirit to move into the deepest parts of the way I have gotten used to doing life.  I'm trying to break old habits and solidify some new ones.  I'm figuring out what it means and looks like to know myself more fully and to love and care for the good and not-so-good parts of the imperfect woman that I was created to be.  Mostly, it seems, I'm spending a lot of my energy working out what it looks like to soften my grip on my own life and to let it rest in the palm of God's hand.  My ability to just be, faithfully, patiently, is changing as I get older and am tempted to cling to the things I can control and run scared from the things I'm afraid I can't. 

Independence is sometimes just plain lonely when you are in your mid-twenties, but sometimes it's exciting, energizing, thrilling even.  It's a process to be celebrated, for sure, this business of growing up.  There are so many moments that are so full of joy, full of healing, full of good lessons, good food and good friends - just plain full.  They strike a balance with those other, harder things.   So much of the lessons to be learned are the good kind of hard; like budgeting, humility, forgiveness, discernment, open communication, broken hearts, and accepting the fact that I am not always right. 

So I'm working on striking a balance right now.  A balance between allowing myself to be caught up in some of this stuff even when it gets hard because I know that it is good, and letting go of some of the things that are weighing me down and getting in the way of my ability to just be.  It's tough, and I'm a worrier and an analyzer and, as Emily points out, a verbal processor.  But I think I'm getting closer in my effort to strike a balance, even if it feels scary.  Here's to hoping that I can find the patience, the endurance, the courage and the humility to continue asking and being asked the hard questions; and the willingness and diligence to commit the things weighing heavily on my heart and mind to the God who already knows about them and is working them all out in His perfect timing.

the (hand)written word

One of the things that I like about setting goals for myself is that when I "fail" to meet them, I can simply adapt and reframe them so that I feel like I have still met said goals.  For instance, becoming a regular blogger.  What I meant was, become a regular writer.  Not a for-school writer.  Not a once-a-month-when-I-feel-like-it writer.  But writing as a discipline and a process that I know to be good for me - a hobby, really.  One that provides me with much needed perspective and an avenue to clear my busy mind, quiet my heart, and make sense of life as I know it.

So while I may not have posted in a week, I have been writing.  Journaling, really.  I have fallen back in love with the comforting way that full pages of a journal look covered in my own handwriting.  Each letter and word flowing honestly and without editing or self-monitoring.  The words on the page look like me.  They take up previously blank space on the unlined pages of my beautiful chartreuse moleskine and come to life, helping me to come to realizations about myself, my world, my faith, my chosen career, those I care about and what I want in life.  It's like as I write the words down life is breathed into them.  The words become my prayer.  They are tangible and manageable; and the thoughts they represent are less scary or muddled or frustrating once they've been put resolutely in their place.  They belong on the page where I can look at them - own them or toss them.  I can decide how they will effect me, what I will do with them, and how ultimately I can change for the better because of their truth.

I think that anyone who is a good do-er of life ought to have a place for unedited free writing.   The setting aside of time for the mental unpacking of stress, relationships, complexities and details of life, worries, dreams and feelings is cathartic.  It enables me to pause, dig a little deeper, reflect, and regain personal equilibrium.  I can talk and think and analyze until I am blue in the face, and those are good things.  But I am coming to realize that when I write, especially in a journal that only I will see, what I actually feel and believe is reflected back to me on those pages.  I see my heart expressed in my own words by my own hand, and am able to proceed from there feeling as if I know myself and where I'd like to be headed a little bit better. 

So that's all really.  Just wanting to share that I haven't abandoned ship on this endeavor, and why I feel that this process has only gotten richer.  Some things that deserve to be written about and reflected upon ought not be shared at the moment, and while blogging and tweeting, texting, emailing and publishing are ways of quickly disseminating written information, the personal and intimate nature of the handwritten word is something that I am especially treasuring this week.