8/28

“The best things are the nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hands, the path of God just before you. Then do no grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain common work as it comes certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.” Robert Louis Stevenson.

Yesterday, I woke up shaky.

It was the shakiness that comes from being in both a nightmare and a dream where you can fly. I didn’t know if I would be able to make it. Like, could I do the simple tasks of being a mother and picking up the kids from school after having been there and back again. Could I make dinner? It was in this place, that I had to surrender. And ask for the intervention of heaven. I shot off an email asking a handful of people to pray. It’s so easy to go the other place of depression and shame after going through such trauma. It’s what simply feels natural. Stigma is easy in a sense.

Last night, I was able to make dinner. A small thing, but nothing short of a miracle from the hand of God. I mean this.

He has been telling me to not think about tomorrow or the future. He’s been telling me to just keep walking, on shaky step at a time.

My steps today are less shaky. My heart is less heavy. Gratitude saves the day. Again.

It’s a wonderful thing to have gratitude just flowing through you. And love. To not have to muster it up. It’s a thing that’s refined in the darkest of places. The darkest dark is there simply to unleash the lightest light. Doesn’t every night have a dawn that follows?

So today, I am thankful. Thankful for things such as breath and the grapefruit nasal spray my doctor gave me to clear up the post nasal drip. Thankful that I had two feet to chase my chickens and take their feed to the coup. Thankful that I have a middle schooler who still tells me that I am pretty. Thankful that I hand the hands and the will to cook. Thankful for my friends who are still my friends and who can see past the beast that was trying to devour me. Thankful that I can actually laugh at myself.

Thankfulness is a gift. It can be practiced, and must be practiced. But one day, it just bursts forth like a dam. And the torrents of it are what come from the hand of God. The most severe of mercies.

8/27

It feels like waking up from a dream. A dream vivid with colors, images, pain, glory. A dream where one minute I am flying through the air and the next minute falling from a tall building, but never really hitting the ground. Equally intense amounts of grace are the nets that catch me.

Waking up is hard. Fragile. It feels disorienting, vulnerable.

The illness fights. It wants to be front and center. So I wake up, out of the dream, with the illness in my face. Stigma wants to win. And honestly, it feels easier at times to let it win.

Bi-polar is a beast. A disease.

But I am not that beast. Or the disease.

The irony is that through it all, I discovered a little bit more about who I really am. How heaven sees me. This is the gift that enabled me to stand. Along with the support of family and friends.

I’ve sat here this morning wondering what I need. I think the biggest thing is compassion. A gentle touch. I don’t need pity, from myself or from others. I need to see myself, at the core, with the illness being in its rightful place. Which is a mystery that I can’t understand.

Tied to a Plan. I have to remember the larger story. That this is all not just about me. It is somehow for the Glory of God. As I’ve said before, like the blind man in Scripture.

It is in this complicated reality that I must keep walking. One shaky step at a time. Looking forward. Who am I to understand His ways? The only confidence I have is this: He’s good.

Who am I to understand your ways?
Who numbers the stars, sets my days.
Hell comes, You are there.
The Storms rage,
You are asleep, without a care.
This is what you give to me.
Ears to hear and eyes to see.
So let the storms come, let them almost take me.
To be able to look into calm Eyes that know eternity.

My Stake in the Ground

Let me just tell you. The summer I’ve had.

I don’t type these words lightly, with a proud swagger in my fingertips. I don’t type out of some voyeuristic need. I type for myself, and for the many people who suffer with mental illness.

I’ve been manic. There I said it. Manic.

Hold on, though.

—————-

Three days ago, I was in my bed, sobbing. Thoughts swirled around in my head, but mostly thoughts of pain that I can in no way explain. That’s not the point of this. The point of this is that I was rescued. I was heard. My cries were heard. I called my new doctor and told him what was going on and he prescribed a new medication. I went and picked it up and took it. Immediately, the anger, the pain and the rage and the highs were gone.

Mental illness loves darkness. It fears being exposed. For four months I was in and out of mania, extreme rage, confusion. My marriage was falling apart. I was falling apart. Let me say this. God is who He says He is.

—————–

I won’t go into how it was the summer that I could have lost my life and my mind. I will go into how it was the summer that God rescued. He gave me scents of lavender when there was no lavender growing. He met me on an atomic level. He loved me through my family, through nature, through friends. At one point, He even told me how to ride my bike. Like switch lanes here. Stop there. He is so incredibly good.

So incredibly good .

I can’t understand this. I can’t understand suffering. But I know that the love that I can feel in my heart for Him makes this load that I have to carry a hell of a lot lighter.

There is light. Incredible light. There is darkness, incredible darkness that I can’t understand. And I am nothing short of thankful today. Thankful for my life, my children, my husband, my family. I put my stake in the ground. My stake says, “It is all worth it.”

That Day (from Isaiah 25)

Rows and rows of tables, candles, seats, pottery, china. A table set with ancient wisdom, an ancient knowing of each story behind each guest.

Purified tables on an atomic level. Chairs, steady and leathery and woody.

Column candles, tea lights burning. Both on the tables and in the air, like the banquet hall in Harry Potter. The stars in the sky seem low, within reach finally.

The air is dry and fragrant with smells that we have never smelled, mixed with the roasted lamb and other choice meats, fragrant offerings to us, to God. A little breeze laced with chocolate. A larger breeze pregnant with expectation, chilling to our strong bones.

Time, coming together. The past, the present. Wedded at last.

Family members that have been long gone. Victims of tragedy, martyrs, raised.

Music, dancing. The way we will be able to dance. With no urge to please anyone else, with no shame.

Wine. Wine that gets into skin, not just heads.

A mingling, rowdy party. Earth, sweat, breeze, completion.

Seeing Him. His eyes full of the fire of love. His garments fragrant.

Lounging and reclining. Having a Nat Sherman. He knows us.

Those who have stared at the face of tragedy, of death, of darkness, of mental illness, of injustice, of not being known in this life. Who have felt the anger and rage in their gut.

He enjoys our company. He thrives off our conversation. Phrases are completed in minds before they are actually spoken. There is laughter, victory, peace.

When we drive home, there will be no accidents. No more dark nights.

Robin Williams, “A Centurion of the City”

I’m clunkily typing and retyping this first line.

I’m having a hard time finding words, words that aren’t too angry, words that aren’t laced in judgement toward the voices in the Christian community that have judged the recent tragedy of Robin William’s suicide. Words that aren’t saturated with anything else other than trying to wrestle with my own reaction.

Here’s the hard, cold, reality. It could have been me.

I urge us, each and everyone, to take this as an opportunity to look at ourselves.

This is a hard thing to do and I don’t say this lightly and I say it with the utmost respect and love. Love for the beauty in us. And compassion for the pain that each of us has had to endure.

Depression can strike anyone at anytime. Its victims know no rank. If you have the privilege of looking at your own shit and coming out alive, get on your knees and thank God for life and the new compassion you will have on others. It is in the surrender that we actually wake up.

I urge the church, we beautiful people, us, (in the non-organized sense and organized sense) to wake up. This is actually the place that I’ve personally experienced the most rejection. It is also the place (through its members) that I’ve found the most healing.

We, the church (not buildings), have great responsibility to care for the mentally ill. It is a messy, risky, job at times.

It is in hard times, times of questioning, that knowing our identities and functions are of utmost importance.

My son said the other day, “Mom, the mentally ill are the centurions of the City. They watch over and protect it.”

Robin Williams was a centurion. He battled, he fought, he brought us great joy along the way. He kept our humor up and our hearts and minds inspired. This is how he should be remembered. Not as a victim of tragedy.

This is turning out to be longer than I expected. I would like to remind the Church Universal today, (speaking to myself), who We are.

We are:

A house of lovers.
A house of prayer.
A house of forgiveness.
A lover of ourselves first, instead of beating up ourselves and those who attend.
A respite.
A haven for the weak.
A speaker of LIFE into others, not death.
The FIRST place where people go to receive grace.
A place of humility, not power and people shows.
A seat of service, not of judgement.
Prophets. Priests. Kings and Queeens.
People not a production.

Centurions of the city.

——————————-

Summer Birth

It has been the summer from Hell.

And from Heaven.

Let me say this. There is Hope. And not only Hope, but Expectation.

Expectation that the King is coming. When we give God our Yes, Hell follows closely. But it is nothing to fear. Because God is much stronger.

I am here typing this after feeling immense pain today. There has been pain on all fronts. Pain, though, is the very conduit of Heaven, if we let it be. And feel it and let it do its thing and not walk away from it.

If we will all just look deeply at ourselves. At our pain, but only nestled in the wings of the Divine Yes. The Yes that Jesus said over us when He came to die and the Yes He will say to us when we meet Him face to face.

I am thankful. Thankful for the deaths that we have all had to die this summer, in order that the King may first be enthroned in our hearts, then on this earth.

When I was talking to Him this morning, releasing, sitting looking at the trees and the chickens in my back yard, He gave me the image of a party. And of a wedding. We fight…and rest…and stand…so that we will lounge on the leather couches at the Feast. Where every tear will be wiped away. And with every sip of New Wine, the old wine skins will be shed. This is our inheritance. He is our inheritance. If we suffer well, we will be able to minister to the very heart of God both now and on that Day.

I sit here as both a broken woman and an expectant one. Feeling the pangs of the in between and the push of eternity. The birth of Summer is upon us.

Intimacy

Grace has found me.

Grace knows me. I know grace. Like in the most orgasmic way. Anything less than grace like this is counterfeit. We are meant for nothing short of Grace like the ocean. Washing us with its gentle caresses. Tossing us about with its masculine fierceness. It hones in on us…as if we were the only ones it knew.

—

The Motherload of Yes

It’s a rainy day here on Ladson. It reminds me of Ireland, as the rain is “soft” they say.

It’s the first time I’ve cooked breakfast in awhile for the family. There have been many do it yourself mornings this summer. Grab your own toast, cereal, milk.

But now it’s back to breakfasts, the Pandora Moby station and getting a minute to myself to write again.

——————

There’s been lots of talk about giving God your Yes. It’s true. It’s what He wants.

——————-

I gave God my Yes to what He has been saying over me for years at the beginning of the summer. There is certainly a grandness to what He says over us. It should feel a little scary to say Yes to God. We have small human dreams over ourselves at times. He has big huge ones…better than we could imagine.

The training ground for His glory in us, though, is the ancient path. A path that many have walked down before us. It is a path full of routines, immense pain, loneliness, suffering, but ALWAYS a good meal on the way, with unexpected companions. There are treasures in hidden places. We get to gaze into the very face of God as our reward.

He is our reward. Saying Yes to God unleashes the Motherload. The motherload of Glory, pain, intimacy and life in the Spirit.

There was a massive high dive at the hotel we used to stay at in Entebbe, Uganda. It was super scary. Your heart would beat itself right up into your throat right before jumping. I went to the edge. I had to put all reason and logic aside and just jump. Looking at the proud, expectant faces of my team members (there was also a tinge of “that girl is crazy” there too) was all I needed.

Wind in my hair, gravity pulling me down fast, the smack of the water and the relief of sinking down to come back up. It was much less scary than I thought and the cheers of my team members and feeling true to my nickname “Uganda Wanda” was worth it.

Saying Yes to God is like this. Looking into His proud, expectant, full of laughter face to find strength to risk.

And a bonus, although all hell has broken loose since I have said Yes, I do always get good parking spaces.

Peace.