Some thoughts on waiting your turn...

There's a book I've been reading called When Wallflowers Dance by Angela Thomas. I have mentioned it here before. It's the sort of book that, rather than reading a chapter a day, I have been saving, not wanting to be finished. Instead, I have been reading a chapter here and there when I feel like I need a pick me up, or a nudge in the right direction. The chapter I read this week is called "Until It's Your Turn." I'd like to share some of the insight provided by this chapter:

p. 106 "The mature woman knows how to wait on God. She has learned through tears, disappointments, and even rejection that sometimes it's just not your turn. That doesn't mean it won't ever be. Or that you're not qualified. Or that you've gone completely the wrong way. It's just not yet."

p. 107 "To do everything we can, stay the course, and wait to be next requires a grown-up Jesus woman who has put away whining and manipulation. She has decided not to stomp her feet, huff and puff, groan and complain. She is waiting with integrity. Not cutting in line with her friend who's farther ahead. Not cheating for advantage. Not bargaining or bribing. Just waiting until she is called."

p. 108 "Waiting is not whining or fretting or looking over to compare whose turn came before ours. Waiting is an opportunity to grow up. To wait upon the Lord means choosing a higher road that most are not willing to take. Sometimes the wallflower has to wait to dance."

p. 109 "A long time ago I heard the adage You haven't begun to wait until you think you've waited long enough." "But maybe it's not about the length of time you have been waiting; maybe what matters is how." (Do you see where I'm going with all of this yet?)

p. 117 "While you wait, are you actively becoming the woman God can use? Are you faithful to prepare?"


So, after all of that, what was my point? In case you are reading this and wondering, "what exactly is Jeni rambling about now?" I am about to explain.

This whole chapter got me thinking about how I wait for things. I do not wait patiently--even in a grocery store line or a traffic jam, when I have to wait I grow surly and irritable. It affects everything in my life--The way I pray (without faith), the way I eat(too much), the way I sleep (not well), the way I clean (I don't), and the way I write (I also don't). The moral of the story is, I don't like to wait. I suppose part of the reasoning for this is because when I am waiting for something, I am incapable of focusing on anything else. My whole life is focused on the one thing I am waiting for and everything else is just an interruption or a distraction. It keeps me from doing any of the other things that God has for me.

Right now I am waiting for my turn at romance. This has been an on and off thing for several years. My eyes are so set on this ONE thing that I want that I cannot focus on my other dreams/Godly desires. Who cares about writing? Who cares if learning this computer program will help me if I get the chance for a different job? Who cares if I want it to be Christmas every day? I don't have time to worry about that. I need to get somebody to fall in love with me. While I'm waiting for the love of my life to come along, which could be months, but could also be YEARS, I could be writing (something other than blog posts) or developing a plan for Christmas Everyday, or investing in learning a new computer program, or even making my room into a suitable place to spend time writing. I could be doing any of these things to work toward what God has for me, but I'm not. I'm laying around reading, moping, and sometimes crying and screaming, my mind focused on how much it sucks that I'm still alone. It is time for this pattern to end. Today, I will take some time to write, and I will dance victoriously at the end of the day.

Everything stays the same...

Denden requested an update but there's really not much to say. I'm still struggling to let go of something that has been a part of me for five years. The reality of it is that I don't really want to--I just feel like I have to. True, I WANT the pain that it has caused to be gone. I WANT to have joyful life without so much drama, and am trying to be active in choosing that. But when I am alone, it's not as easy as it is when I'm around the people who love me. They help to force it out of my mind, or at least to the back where it's not so prevalent. I'm trying to force it out the rest of the time, when I am alone--But my heart continuously betrays me. In a moment of weakness, I stumble back to the source of it all. I want more than anything to see his face, hear his voice offering me words of comfort, and if I can't have that then at least I have to read what he writes, even though I promised myself I wouldn't. I did so well at it for a month and a half before he forced himself back in. Since then I find myself unable to stay away, even knowing that his words are the cause of my ever growing restlessness. Everytime I stumble and go back to them, I find something that confuses me even more--that gives me even more for my mind to wrestle with as I try to get some sleep. I return over and over again hoping to find something that will give the situation more clarity, but it just keeps getting murkier and murkier. Before I go, I know that I will not find anything that helps me, and yet I am continuously drawn. I need to stop going there. I need to not desire to know what he's doing/feeling. If God has plans for us down the road, so be it... He can take care of how we get there. But in the mean time I need to stop going there and focus my attentions on other things that God has for me. I need God to give me the strength and discipline to do this because it's completely obvious I cannot do it on my own. I want to be as focused as I was in that happy month and a half where I still cared, but I didn't NEED to know. Dear God, please return me to that.

A prayer for sleep

It has been just over two weeks since the last time I slept soundly through the night. I have been having a hard time falling a sleep and once I get there I am having dreams I don't want to have and waking up before it is time. I am beginning to feel run down, exhausted, irritable. Really small and insignificant things have been getting on my nerves because of my inability to control where my unconscious mind wanders... And because of this, I am also struggling with protecting my concious mind from such thoughts.

I pray that as I go to bed tonight that my mind will be free from these distractions--that I would be able rest in God and not have my thoughts wandering elsewhere while I sleep. I pray that I would have the strength to stay away tomorrow and the next day and for as long as it takes. I pray that God will soon begin to reveal his plans in this and that I will be accepting of them. Jesus, please be my strength, my courage, my grace, my love. I know I don't ask nearly enough.

Just a thought...

How sad is it to find typos when flipping through a book of cocktails? This is my life...

A valiant effort

I really did try... But there was no way my little Ford Escargot was getting up that hill. Perhaps I'll try again at ten thirty... Or maybe I'll walk, it's really not that far... But can I trust the cars on the road not to slide into me... Eh, we'll see...

My Christmas card

Despite the fact that I generally don't like the way I look in pictures, I had my roommate take pictures of me with my cat so that I could use one for my Christmas card. Smokey was just like a little kid--he didn't behave the whole time we were trying to take pictures. He kept squirming and getting distracted and looking in every direction but the camera. My roommate then proceeded to joke that she didn't think pet photography was for her. At any rate, here is the end result:

Numb

It was easier to be numb. When I was angry and thought he didn't care, I was numb. I had a protective coating of frost protecting my heart. I had embraced the numbness the way one who'd injured themselves would embrace an ice pack. The anger and indifference was my icepack. But the truth has come out, melting the layer of protective frost, leaving me open to pain once more. I have up until this point learned to go on through the pain, by making it numb, but now it's time to see the good doctor, Jesus, and have it healed. I have gone a month, and I will go on for much longer. I am a much stronger woman than I used to be and I have only God to thank for that. Now it is time for more strength. It would be so easy to give in--to break down and cry--or to try to put things back the way they used to be. But God wants my whole heart, and He can't have it if I've given part of it away. I can wish all I want that this had gone the other way, that my life had become a romantic comedy complete with the happy ever after. Wishing will not change the fact that I'm the only one who wants that ending. My life is not a romantic comedy and it never will be. My life is a testament of God's love and strength. I choose to be joyful despite the pain... I choose to love despite the risks.

A story of healing

November 29, 1998

Three days past Thanksgiving, two days after the break-up. I had cried for a while, hung out with a friend, and was ready to move on. At least, I thought I was. And then I showed up at work, and he was there. Smug, cheerful, as though nothing had happened to soil his weekend. Talking to me as though nothing had changed, like things would instantly be the same. He was on his way out the door when I came in, for which I was glad. I didn’t want to let him see me shed another tear over this.

It’s not like I loved him, I still had no clue what love felt like. But I had shut everyone else out of my life because at the time I didn’t know any better. I had made him the center of my world because I wanted to love him--I wanted to know what it felt like. He had told me that he loved me three weeks in (which I’m certain was just a ploy to get me into bed) and for the following four months he had been trying to coax me to say it back. He wanted leverage so that he could say, “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t hold out on me.”

The truth of the matter is, I don’t think that ten years together would have made me love him. But at the time I was convinced that I would learn to love him despite the fact that he met very few of my standards. I thought that I would learn to like being kissed by him, being let go quickly when we hugged, being practically ignored in public, being pressured to have sex before marriage. I thought I could get over the fact that he called himself an atheist, that he talked down to me because I wasn’t an engineering major, that he absolutely despised kids. I thought it would all work itself out one day.

Perhaps this is why when he called it off, took away my chance to make him the man I wanted him to be, I was completely devastated. I had halfway been expecting it, and yet when it happened, I was appalled. I couldn’t believe that we were through. I begged him to change his mind, I cried until I was hoarse, and it didn’t change a thing. I was just left there with a soggy red face and a sore throat. The day after the break-up my mom and my friend Jamie did everything they could to cheer me up, and I thought I was going to be okay.

And then I saw him. That’s the trouble with dating someone from work-- if it doesn’t work out, you can’t avoid them. You still have to see them every day--still have to be reminded of the failure day after day after day. I wouldn’t let him see me cry, but the moment he was out the door, I was sobbing once more. I tried to make it stop. I knew it was unprofessional to be crying at work. I hated that I always cried. I fought it for two hours and still, I couldn’t force the tears to stop. They sent me home from work, because after all, who wants to eat an extra-salty pizza flavored with my tears. (Perhaps someone who’s a fan of anchovies...) But I couldn’t go home yet--I didn’t want my mom to know how upset I was. I had been keeping my depression a secret from her: she didn’t know about the cutting or the self-induced vomiting and it was definitely not the time to tell her that I wanted nothing more than to die a quiet painless death.

I headed to the back room of Round Table Pizza and waited. An hour passed, and still I cried. I wanted it to stop. I wanted my brain to stop--I wanted the tears to stop--I wanted the breath to stop. I dug in my bag for anything I could find. No razor. No sharp objects. Ah, a bottle of Advil, a bottle of antihistamines... It would have to do. I lined the pills up on the table so I could count. Fifty in all between the two. I’d never been good at swallowing and took them one at a time, like it was a ritual. When it was through, I felt like I needed more and grabbed ten single dosage packages of Aspirin from the first aid kit and swallowed them also. When I was finished, the tears were gone. My brain had started to feel doughy, as though my head had been stuffed with clay. I was calm when I called my parents to pick me up. When I got home, feeling dizzy, panic began to set in. I prayed my first really, non-formulaic prayer: “Oh God! Sh**! What did I do? I really wish I hadn’t done that. I really don’t want to die! My parents can’t handle this. Oh f***! God, I don’t want to die! Help me please!”

That night has been both the foundation of my faith and one of my biggest struggles for the last seven years. Every year on November 29th I have struggled with an enormous burden of guilt--I have been angry, depressed with myself over and over again every year. I have had to constantly forgive myself. But I am writing this mostly just to praise God today, because on my way home from work today I realized that this year I had felt none of that. November 29th passed without event--I felt no guilt, no self-hatred, no depression and had no thoughts of this event at all. I praise God that I have been healed enough that November 29th can go back to being just another day instead of a day filled with dread and regret. I praise God that I can now even survive real love being unreturned because no man is the center of my universe--I am glad that only God can have that place.

The look of joy

This morning during worship, I found myself smiling uncontrolably. I felt so filled, so joyful that I could do nothing but smile and dance. I have to say, I feel happier, more content, more peaceful than I have for a really long time. I am in the process of shedding the excess baggage that has been weighing me down. For the last four years, I have been struggling to focus on God, to be joyful in Him, to find comfort by His side, because I have been so focused on this one thing that I had allowed to weigh me down. It is not going to weigh me down any more. This burden is being cast aside, it is being pushed away, it is no longer going to be a part of me. I am telling you all this because you are my family in Christ and I want to proclaim before you what I intend to do so that I can be held accountable to that. This burden can no longer be a part of my life. I feel comfortable doing this now, because I know I have so much love from all of you to fill up the space that I've been leaving empty for so long.
I have to say, six months ago, I could not have made this step. I didn't see the love that was out there to keep me from falling. I felt like I was not really part of the church FAMILY at all--that I was really more of like a long term guest. I lurked on the sidelines, clinging to the walls, waiting for someone to invite me into the family, as though I wasn't already a part of it. I only spoke to those who spoke to me first, and even then, I was never really truly honest. That all changed shortly after all the blogs began popping up--one day after church when Scoey was talking to Becky and I, he said something along the lines of I'd told more about myself on my blog in that one month than I had revealed to the people there in four years. That hurt me to hear that. I hadn't really realized that I was keeping people on the outside, not really letting them know me. After that, I made an effort to actively pursue conversations with people. To be honest with them when I spoke--and sometimes I might over share, but it's better than not sharing at all. Once I made this effort to pull myself away from the walls, to engage in face to face conversation, I began to feel like I was a part of the family I had been outside watching the whole time. Here's the thing I've come to realize: If you're part of a family, nobody has to INVITE you to talk to them--you just do it. When I go to my parents house, I don't go stand by the wall until they talk to me; I greet them with joy, because I'm happy to see them. I give them a hug, I ask them how things are going, I tell them how things are going for me, and I don't have to be afraid that they don't love me because they are my family. And why should it be any different in God's house? Why should I go there expecting to be invited to talk, afraid that the people there won't love me, because I know that they do--they are my family, too.
So now that I've come to realize how much I belong, and how much love my family in Christ has to offer, I know that I have the strength to start on a new path. This new path is all about finding what God has for me and really seeking it. It is about turning away from giving my focus to someone who will never love me in return, when it should be on God who has loved me all along. It is about letting go of hurt and finding joy in all things, even those that are tedious and seem unimportant. Nothing that God has for me is unimportant. I need to put that in a prominent place in my room so that I can be reminded of it every time I wake up, every time I go to sleep and everytime I sit at my computer to post another blog. I am going in a new direction and that new direction starts (again, maybe?) today.

The Upside of the Evil K

Today I received a box from my friend Meg who live in Iowa. It contained six books that she had borrowed from me about a year and a half ago and a rather large quantity of candy. The candy was packaged in a bag along with some other "FedEx Peak Shipping Season" supplies such as Duck Tape (Yes, it is DUCK tape because that's the brand of duct tape), Band-Aids, Kleenex, Sharpies, and Chapstick. I had expected to never see my books again, so imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail saying that they were on their way back and THEN receiving a package with not only my books, but a thoughtful gift from a friend who understands just how stressful the Evil K can be. After all, she works in a store in Iowa. At one time we worked in the same store, doing the same job on different shifts.

Meg is just one of the MANY incredible friends I've met through the Evil K. I know that sometimes I make the Evil K sound like an incredibly dreadful place, but when it comes right down to it, it could be worse... I could be working at Walmart where making friends at work could cost you your job because of what's called "Time Theft." But I'll save that for another post. Perhaps tomorrow night after I see the Walmart movie. At any rate, the friends that I've made during the 4+ years I've been with Evil K are well worth some of the more negative aspects of the job. There is Meg who moved to Iowa; Rachel, whose wedding I just recently attended; Theresa and Trish who are now my roommates; Rue who is just Rue... And I'm certain that there will be more as time goes on.

This weekend at the Unnamed Writer's Group meeting that I went to, this author was speaking about perspective. It is very difficult to write when we are looking at it as something that we (writers) have to do... Instead, we should look at it as something that we GET to do, because after all, we do enjoy it once we're doing it. The same thing applies to work. When work is getting to me, I should think, I get to go to work today--because even when things are stressful, I am still in the company of friends. I get to spend time with friends every day because I work with them. How many people can say that and truly mean it? I am blessed in my job, even when it seems like it is awful. I need to remind myself more often to find joy in the good things that I have.

Thanks to Meg for reminding me of one of these good things!