From darkness to light...

As I alluded in my last post, I knew before hand that this semester was going to be difficult. And it has been and will continue to be so.

I think the most difficult thing for me to deal with lately is moving back home. And I knew this as well but unfortunately its been the loss of freedom and autonomy that I have suffered from the most. My "space" now only consists of a small room and a bathroom, which despite many conversations, is not entirely my own because of my mom's intrusions. Somewhere is the first two weeks of being home, I began having trouble sleeping yet simultaneously I lost total interest in keeping up with reading for school. I was stuck in this sleepless, lethargic mood that only increased in intensity as the days past. I finally became acutely aware of the effects of this when last Saturday night I sat up in my bed, weeping at 3am over just the darkness I felt I was in... I wondered if I were having a Major Depressive Episode! (I am a therapist in training so I know the DSM-IV TR criteria) By Sunday afternoon, I was at my breaking point. I was on my way to a study group and began to cry again as I drove. That morning in church, our pastor gave us a time of silence before the Lord. Also immediately as the silence fell over me, this phrase rang in my head, "where is my word?" I knew if was from God. I immediately began to think through all the excuses of why I hadn't in weeks taken the time to honestly seek God in His word. But the phrase remained "where is my word?" In the midst of the darkness there was this still small vioce that rang through my head until the point where I was in my car. It wasn't until now that I have begun to put the peices together. Yes, sleep deprivation can cause you to be depressed but I think that the darkness' root was in the absence of true light in my life. I mean, I had lots of "artifical" light in my life - I go to a Christian school, I spend time with Christian friends, I speak of Christian themes - but there was a great deprivation of true light. My face had lost the glow like that of Moses' when he came down from meeting with God. So this week, I have begun a process of reconnection with the Lord. It has been really refreshing yet has still been a battle to make the time. He has blessed me with sleep. I even got up yesterday without hitting the snooze - truely an act of God...

"Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path"
Psalm 119: 105

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."
I Peter 2:9

In mourning...

Ok so no one died or anything... just in mourning of my lost "life"...
This semester/year is going to be incredible busy with school and it just never seems that I am able to do the things I want to do... like going to my cousin's bridal shower (and I am a bridesmaid), visiting my friends and family who don't live within driving distance (in Iowa and DC and CA), live on my own (just moved back in with my parents because of financial reasons)...

But my actual life must go on... the life dictated by school deadlines and class schedules...

::sigh::

Interesting thing a friend sent me...

http://christisdeeperstill.blogspot.com/2008/06/emotional-blackmail-at-church.html

'Emotional blackmail happens when a person equates his or her emotional pain with another person’s failure to love. They aren’t the same. A person may love well and the beloved still feel hurt, and use the hurt to blackmail the lover into admitting guilt he or she does not have. Emotional blackmail says, 'If I feel hurt by you, you are guilty.' There is no defense. The hurt person has become God. His emotion has become judge and jury. Truth does not matter. All that matters is the sovereign suffering of the aggrieved. It is above question. This emotional device is a great evil. I have seen it often in my three decades of ministry and I am eager to defend people who are being wrongly indicted by it.

In an age when personal unhappiness is always someone else's fault, some people walk into church looking for a scapegoat. The pastor is easy prey. Their angry perception of him is, as Dr. Piper suggests, logically confused but psychologically compelling within their own thought-world, which they readily spread to other people.' -Ray Ortlund Jr.

Frustration...

Defined: (using Google, of course)

The feelings, thoughts, and behaviors associated with not achieving a particular goal or the belief that a goal has been prematurely interrupted.
allpsych.com/dictionary/dictionary2.html

When you start tearing your hair out after something that has gone wrong!
www.today.plus.com/3d/tuts/glossarylinks.html

the feeling that accompanies an experience of being thwarted in attaining your goals

an act of hindering someone's plans or efforts

a feeling of annoyance at being hindered or criticized; "her constant complaints were the main source of his frustration"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Frustration is an emotion that occurs in situations where one is blocked from reaching a personal goal. The more important the goal, the greater the frustration. It is comparable to anger.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frustration

The act of frustrating, or the state, or an instance of being frustrated; A thing that frustrates; The feeling of annoyance when one's actions are criticized or hindered; Anger not directed at anything or anyone in particular
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/frustration

So my favorite one is "When you start tearing your hair out after something that has gone wrong!"
I guess that pretty much sums up how I feel right now. Well, kinda.

responding to anger

Thought this was interesting.

Tonight in my church small group we were looking at James 1.

Verses 19-20 really got me...

"Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God."

Other passages to ponder...

Psalm 4:4
"Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent"

Finally Col 3 :1-17 (The Message - to mix it up!)
1-2 So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.

3-4Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.

5-8And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God. It's because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.

9-11Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.

12-14So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

15-17Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

I almost forgot about this thing

I think I have decided to use this blog to ramble about random thoughts I have... I have another blog that I use to keep in touch with high school/college friends.... but sometimes I sensor myself thinking that no one who reads this would want to read about this... so the things I will right about here my be about my faith or my school experiences (I am in grad school to be a counselor) or my constant wondering about life and how it "works..."

Today's random topic... anger.

Lately I have been very aware of my anger and how it flares. I don't know if I am just getting more angry or if I am just letting myself get angry. It mostly surrounds when my plans or my ideas of how something should go gets messed up... The other day I got really mad that I messed up an exam and made an 84 when I really should have done better. I was prepared for the test. I had been awake for about 10 hours that day with only three and a half hours of sleep from the night before and 4 hours of sleep the night before that. We get our grades back immediately and when I looked back at the test to see which 14 questions I got wrong, about 6 of them I knew the right answer to... well, instead of calmly just processing the whole thing, I called back a friend who needed to get directions for the dinner we were going to that night and basically took it out on her. Luckily she understood. But it would have been better if this wasn't the first time I had done that to someone this week. And now I think the grand total is 4 times!! Gez!

Today I noticed my thoughts trailing don't an unhealthy path concerning my body image. So I decided to shout (I can't remember if this was out loud or not) out the truth to myself. This seemingly crazy act actually helped me. I didn't excuse myself for the destructive habits that had led me to my body's current state but I did not allow these thoughts to change the truth... interesting exercise as I think I got it from the Gestalt theory - one that focuses on being real and present all the time, without playing games!

Passion

1/21/07
"You know the Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: 'Did he have passion?'."

1/22/07
This is one of my favorite movie lines about Passion (I know sad that I would have categories for my favorite movie lines). It's from a movie (Serendipity) I've seen a hundred times - not because it is my favorite but because it was the first "chick flick" on DVD my family owned. Its very powerful to think about. All of your life culminated in one question - Did you have passion?

The sermon at church yesterday was on Passion surprisingly enough. The past few weeks I've been confused/frustrated at what the sermons were on and was expected to be so this week as well. The premise being that everyone has passions... things within them that they were destined to want to either pursue wholeheartedly or run from for the rest of their lives. This question was posed at the end: "What is your passion?" So it got me thinking...

1/25/07
A year and a half ago I probably would have brushed that question off by assuming that not everyone has passion about things... but now, I have finally begun to allow myself to think of my passions and decide how they fit into my life...

To back track some, last year I took a year-long Christian counseling class - it ended in November. The method of counseling is called exchanged life. Its basic principle to me is that at the point of salvation your old life enslaved to sin was exchanged for a new life in Christ. You have a new identity and heart. So through learning how to counsel people to understand who they were and who they are, I learned a lot about myself. Actually learned more of how to identity with my true self than actually how to help others... It became very clear to me that I lived almost all my Christian life trying to pour myself into a mold of what a Christian should do, think, say, behave, etc. I never knew or even considered that I was unique in the way I related to the Lord. And I even spent a great deal of time trying to convince others of the same thing! Well, I now "know" that this is not true. I reading a great book right now called "Waking the Dead" by John Eldridge and it is helping me awaken to the idea that I am who am for a reason. The things I am passionate about are not things I should be running from or denying.

So what are my passions? Well, it is funny as I think back on other times when I've been posed this question. I remember being in a capstone management class my senior year and our teacher asking us to tell things about ourselves at the being of the class. One thing she wanted to know what we were passionate about - I said people. And I even caught myself and added that that was probably strange for a MIS major. At the time my motive for this answer was that is what any laboring Christians' passion should be... looking into what are my passions now, I think that this is true.

I am deeply passionate about people - esp hurting, defenseless, forgotten people. This makes total sense why I always ended up "attracting" the unlovable girls when it came to ministering on the college campus. There was no "glory" in being with those girls and investing in their lives. There was little result and much labor!! Of course there is always running the risk with such a passion to think that without me these people have no one - I think that there is a risk perversion with every passion. And then the other extreme is fearing that I impacted no one when none of them went on to be great leaders in college ministry or even stuck around... This can be a pain-staking passion, but I can't deny its existence.

More later...