Showing Up For My Life

Today my eyes cracked open and I saw the time and I groaned.  I literally had to pep talk myself out of bed this morning and I heard myself say, "Beth, show up for your life today." SIGH.  And another part of me replied back, "I'm not sure I can." SIGH. After a few minutes of back and forth I dragged myself out of bed and tried to engage with the new day.

It's a hard time of year for me. Getting dark around 5 pm certainly doesn't help.  I feel like I need to go into hibernation mode along with the bears. Frankly I feel a little jealous of them.  I mean, I've stored up the fat already.  A few weeks ago I read this fascinating article about a guy in Maine who had lived as a hermit for almost 30 years.  I confess, I was a little envious of his ability to pull it off. Although I would have picked someplace warmer to seclude myself from society. A couple of the Maine winters almost killed him.

It seems to me that one day the hermit woke up in his real life and heard, "Show up for your life today," and he couldn't.  Maybe he didn't even try to pep talk himself into showing up. So he went into hibernation mode instead.  While I feel envious, I also know I can't do that.  That isn't healthy.  I need to continue to engage with humans and responsibilities.  I need to be brave enough to continue to face hard things and wrestle through them. I need to work through mistakes and flaws. I need to set myself aside and be there for others. But lately I've had to do a lot of pep talking to get myself out of the house.

Depression is a tricky thing. I think I might be handling it okay and then BAM! It's got me in a half nelson and I'm headed toward a face plant on the mat called life. Last year I didn't think I would need meds again, I thought I had enough tools to help me combat the depression going that far in me.  I was wrong. So I went back to my doctor, found a counselor, and started again.

Depression keeps me in a place of humility and gratefulness.  Yes, gratefulness. That hasn't changed with this go round of black clouds. One of the things that I am grateful for is the humility it is developing in me.  It keeps me from judging others harshly, and it keeps me sensitive toward those who are struggling.

For the past couple of months the idea of showing up for my life has exhausted me. Just thinking about the energy it will take to get into a shower, get dressed, get into the car and drive makes me want to go back to bed.  But I'm fighting. I'm fighting to stay present in my life.  It's the reason why I force myself to go to certain social events, why I extend past myself to others, why I continue to read books and write and leave voice messages for people on What's App. Having the voices of people who love me despite me in my world, even though they are miles away, motivates me to stay engaged in my life.  I'm fighting to stay present in my life by continuing to look for more ways to assist at work, if I weren't fighting to stay present I would be doing the bare minimum to get by.  But I know I need to engage so I'm learning new things, volunteering for things, and remaining pro-active.  And I'm exhausted.  Showing up for my life is exhausting but I'm doing it as best I can in this season.

And where I just don't have the energy to show up and participate my husband has stepped in and taken it on.  He's been doing the grocery shopping among other things. He's generous in giving me space to show up and participate in a time frame that won't freak me out.

Showing up for life takes courage.  Some days it feels impossible, other days it's rather easy. But I believe it takes courage every day no matter what to show up and participate in this life we've each been given.  And it is a choice.  We have a choice about first of all, showing up and then secondly, participating.  I've showed up a social events or meetings but not participated, so while my physical body is present I am mentally and emotionally absent.  Maybe that's okay every now and then but it shouldn't be the norm.

Have you been showing up for your life?  More importantly, have you been participating once you make an appearance?  What might be keeping you from engaging in life? Are there things you can change or do differently to prompt action?  Or maybe it's not you having a tough time appearing in your life, maybe it's someone you know.  How could you help them? Encourage them? 

Filters

I've been thinking a lot about filters.  I even recently talked a bit about filters over at 365.  Not just the ones that make my pictures look amazing or at least better but the filters that we have access to for filtering out gunk. Gunk from our water, gunk from the air, gunk from the engines running our cars. Or the filters that allow all the good stuff from something to be more present, such as coffee and tea.  Or the filters that allow the unnecessary to fall away to reveal the treasure.

If you are social media savvy and have heard of Instagram then perhaps you also know that you can put filters on the pictures you take before you share them with people.  This has made a whole bunch of average to terrible picture snappers look like they know what they are doing.  The filters Instagram offers cover a multitude of flaws, soften the sharp edges, and sharpen the too soft places.  I know filters for cameras have been around for a really long time but they have never been as accessible as they are now to the average person.  Now we all have the capability to reach for Ansel Adams heights thanks to filters!  (Yes, I am being sarcastic.)  I confess I filter the majority of my pictures and if I don't, I feel the responsibility to let everyone else know that the picture is awesome all on its own with no assistance. That's where #nofilterneeded comes into play.  I recently posted a couple of pictures of myself, which is rare to begin with.  I have zero desire to take part in the selfie craze.  But I did and I was struck with what I felt needed to be filtered and what didn't.

Here I am in the Summer of 1978.
I was four years old.
#nofilterneeded

Here I am in the Summer of 2014.
I am (almost) 40 years old.
I filtered the heck out of this picture,
I think I used every single filter there was.

What happened to my eyes and perception of self between 1978 and 2014?  That's what I am struck by.

Throughout the years I put filters in place but they worked in reverse.  Instead of filtering out the gunk they seemed to have filtered out the good. Life seems to have had a way in filtering out the potential I have within me and leaving me feeling defeated, tired, worn, and shamed.  The gunk stayed in while the treasure flowed out.  In 1978 I was too young to know defeat, but by 2014 it's an almost daily battle to not feel it.

I put the filters in place to protect myself, to shield myself from people and hurtful circumstances but the filters were faulty.  They seemed to have worked in reverse and by the time I realized they were broken and I needed to change them out I had years of gunk built up inside of me to clean out.  And some of the gunk had been there for so long that it had burrowed into my heart and set up like concrete. It was going to take some serious sweat equity to get cleaned up.  What happens over the course of years doesn't get cleaned up in a couple of days, and my 30's were spent cleaning up the gunk.  Yes, it has taken an entire decade. And then some.  Not all the gunk is cleaned out.  I'm still chipping away at the hardened muck of years gone by.

Evidence of this is the two pictures above.  In my (humble) opinion I am one of the cutest 4 year olds ever, *grin*, but at some point my eyes stopped seeing cute when they glanced at me in the mirror.  Over the years my eyes changed, my perception of self changed and today I shy away from too much time in the mirror or being looked at.  It's one of the many reasons I have zero desire to join in on the selfie craze.  I tell my redheads all the time that their eyes see differently than anyone else who looks at them.  I suppose if that is true for them, it is also true for me.  So my eyes have faulty filters still. In a decade that hasn't changed. So I still have to keep chipping away at the gunk.

When I entered my 30's it is like an alarm sounded in my life.  Warning: Filters need to be changed immediately.  So I put the sweat equity in and began the process of changing them out for new ones that worked how they were supposed to - gunk out, good in.  Turns out I needed a filter overhaul.  My mind needed a new filter, my mouth needed one too!  And my heart. Well, the filter on my heart was the most faulty of all.  And as I worked on my heart the other areas that needed a filter were easier to clean up.  So it's true, life starts in the heart and what is contained there flows out to the rest of us.

As I clean out the gunk and put the right kind of filter in place I have to be diligent to keep up on the maintenance. In our refrigerator we have a water dispenser and it gives us filtered water. But in order to keep getting filtered water we have to change out the filter 4 times a year.  Why? Because a filter catches the gunk and stops it from contaminating.  Same thing for our furnace, although we have to change the furnace filter monthly because of all the stuff floating around in our air.  So I have to be diligent in maintaining the filters on my heart, my mind, my mouth, etc and for the same reasons.  There's a lot of gunk floating around the air that my inner life breathes and ingests and I need the right kind of filter to catch those things and keep me from contamination.  And that has to be maintained by me.  Nobody else is going to take care of my filters, I'm the only one who can do that. Oh sure, other people have tried to maintain my filters for me but that never works out very well. They don't know my inner person the way the One who created me does and the way the One who created me calls me to maintenance. So I still have some sweat equity to put in but maintenance requires much less energy than cleaning up years of gunk.

While writing I stopped and took a selfie.  I, like when I was 4, have no make up on today and my curls aren't as noticeable because I put a headband on wet hair this morning.  My eyes look at the picture and send the message to my heart, "Many filters needed."  SIGH.  Thank goodness for the promise that what has been started in me will be completed, because I am a long ways off from being completed in that area of my life.  But my Creator is patient and kind and because of him I know now what kind of filters to apply to my life.

What about you? What faulty filters do you need to change out and replace with new, ones that actually work for you and not against you?

Black Hole Living

Sometimes it seems miles away from me and other times I am teetering on the edge peering down into the darkness.  And then there are the times it swallows me up, almost without my noticing until I am in a free fall like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole to Wonderland.  Except I don't land in Wonderland, I land at the bottom of a black hole.
I lay there, looking up and searching for the pinpoint of light that I need to claw my way up to.  My black hole changes depths, sometimes it is deep and others times it is relatively shallow. Laying at the bottom I feel defeated, depleted, despairing. Wrapping energy around these emotions takes work and until I do I won't be able to claw out of this hole.  So I lay there and I work to get enough energy to begin the upward journey. Eventually I begin to claw my way up.  It feels like one step forward and two steps backward at times. Sometimes I reach the top only to slip back down again.  And then there are the times that I reach the top and I grip the edge with my fingertips and I begin the painstaking process of pulling myself up and out of that hole once again. Should I succeed, or rather when I succeed, it takes some recovery time before I can safely move away from the edge of the hole.
I lay there, so aware of how one little shift would send me tumbling down the hole again, panting and trying to catch my breath.  I inch away from the edge, my energy depleted by the claw-climb out of the hole.  The further I inch away the stronger I become.  Eventually I can get to my hands and knees and move a little faster, always seeking to put distance between myself and the black hole. At some point I know I will be able to get to my feet and walk and then even perhaps run to lengthen the distance.  The further I can get away from it the longer it will take for another encounter.  Because the reality is I am going to have another encounter.  The black hole didn't even exist until a few years ago but now it is here to stay, making its presence known.  Now it is a reality in my life, it is a struggle I encounter, it is a tool of humility.
It isolates me even as truth within me whispers its warnings against isolation.  It numbs me to relationships.  It sucks all physical and emotional energy out of me.  But it no longer perplexes me.  It no longer deceives me into masking what it really is.  I know what it will take to claw-climb out of it.  In some ways I can even determine its depth.  And some days, while in the claw-climb of the black hole, I am even able to laugh and smile and people think I am enjoying life.  I'm good in public, I can almost make the black hole disappear. But see me alone and then you see what kind of life I'm living in the black hole.  Try to interact with me in person or virtually and you will get delayed responses, if you get them at all.  Try to catch my eye and hold eye contact, I'll look away after about 1 second but not before you catch the weariness.  Listen to what I say and you'll hear about my low-energy levels.  Observe me from a distance and you'll see me deeply sigh, blink, and try to motivate myself to do something productive.  Yes, once you know what to look for you will know if I've been sucked in to another black hole or if I am trying to claw-climb my way out of one.
But life in the black hole has had one surprising gift.  It has been, and continues to be, one of perspective.  I have an expanded perspective on God's grace, God's people, and God's love.  So for all the weight that black hole living brings to me, both figuratively and literally, there's a bright pinpoint of light always guiding me.

Fester Fester Rot Rot

A few weeks ago I made a mistake that I've made before.  I was working with raw chicken (stick with me on this okay?) and threw away what I didn't want in our trash can.  Over the course of the day I and my family threw other trash away on top of the raw chicken and I kind of forgot about it.  Fast forward 2 days later I arrived home and was hit with this stench wall of rotting chicken.  Oops.  The stench made me gag and I quickly removed the bag to the garage where it wouldn't stink up our home.  But the stench stayed behind for about a day.  Ugh.  I've done it before and each time I do I think to myself, "I have learned my lesson, I won't do this again" but I do.  I throw away some raw meat and it sits and festers until it rots.  And until it rots I forget about it, I neglect to take care of it.  But once the stench of the rot reaches me I am quick to dispose of it.

Some of you know this and others don't.  I'm a lay counselor.  And I've been in counseling.  And in my own personal experiences and hearing the experiences of others I have come to the conclusion that we all have some "fester fester rot rot" going on in our lives and our hearts.  We all have something (usually more than one thing actually) that we've discarded, or so we thought, and have thrown other things on top of it.  So the thing we needed to get rid of gets buried where it begins to fester.  And we don't pay much attention to it until the stench of its rot finally reaches our awareness.  At that point we either take care of it or we continue to rot and become a stench to anyone we come into contact with.  We are so quick to dispose of the actual rot and stench of something like meat but we tend to drag our feet when it comes to getting rid of the heart rot we have. The longer we let the rot sit the harder it's going to be to get the stench of it removed.  And the more pervasive the rot will be in our lives and relationships.

Each time I begin to stink and the stench of my heart rot reaches the surface of my life and touches my relationships I take the steps I need to take to get it taken care of and say to myself, "I have learned my lesson, I won't do this again" but I do.  I do it again.  Sometimes with the same issue that caused the rot, sometimes with a different issue.  But I let the rot get covered up by the day in and day out of life and I forget about it until its stench covers me.  And it's my own fault every time.  I'm aware of myself enough (I'm a counselor remember?  We are in tune even if we don't respond to the nudges) to know when rot is there that needs to be taken care of.  Why do I continue to allow myself to be deceived that "later" will be a "better" time to take care of it?  There's no time like the present is totally applicable in this instance!  Now is the time.

No this is not a commercial placed by my blog.  

It's a commercial placed by me for the purpose of this blog!  

It's a lead-in, an intro to my next point.  :) 

Here's one final (for this blog post at least) thing about heart rot that we need to know.  Just because we shoot some "Febreze" (i.e. surface fixes) all over the stench doesn't mean the rot is removed or even taken care of.  (Did you watch the video I put in?  The smell is masked but the trash is still there.  Just sayin'.) Surface fixes are short-term, temporary fixes.  In other words THEY DON'T WORK.  In order to remove the rot we have to engage in the heart, er hard, work of removing the rot.  For some this means addresses hurts from many years ago, addressing people that have contributed to the rot, taking personal responsibility for the growth of the rot, doing some honest self-evaluation, being vulnerable and transparent with others who can help (heck, asking for help!), and more.  The rot doesn't just go away on its own, we have to put the sweat equity in and own it to remove it.

How about you?  Got any fester fester rot rot going on?  (Don't say no, I will call you a liar - we all have something in us festering and rotting.)  Consider taking care of it while it's festering before it starts rotting. The festering process gives us the chance to take action.  Don't let your heart become a stench to you and others.  

I Run To You

I run from pain
I run from prejudice
I run from pessimists
But I run too late
I run my life
Or is it running me
Run from my past
I run too fast
Or too slow it seems
When lies become the truth
That's when I run to you

(Chorus)
This world keeps spinning faster
Into a new disaster so I run to you
I run to you baby
And when it all starts coming undone
Baby you’re the only one I run to
I run to you

We run on fumes
Your life and mine
Like the sands of time
Slippin’ right on through
And our love’s the only truth
That’s why I run to you

Can the secular speak to the sacred?  I think so.  First time I heard this song I was struck by a few different lines that are truth about the sacred.  And every time since when I hear the song I am struck by those same lines and the truth that does not change. 

I run my life or is it running me
Do you feel ragged around your edges?  Like you are always figuratively trying to catch your breath?  Like your list of obligations (perceived or reality) just keeps getting longer?  Like there is no time to just be, there's only time to do?  If you do feel like that, and honestly I think most of us do, then it is possible that life is running you instead of you running it.  And if that's the case then you certainly aren't experiencing the abundant life.  Decide to make some changes and be pro-active.  What needs to change so that you are running your life and it isn't running you?

When lies become the truth, that’s when I run to you
Ever heard a lie so much that you begin to believe it is truth?  As soon as you recognize that the lie is masquerading as truth you are at a pivotal place.  Will you allow the lie to become truth or will you change the course and use the actual truth to disintegrate the lie?  When I hear this line the only person I think of that I can and do run to for truth is the author of it.  God.  He is the author of truth.  He holds in his hands the truth that can. does, and will change my life.  He is the one who shows me the lies that are fighting to take top spot in my life.  Do you have lies in your life that have become truth?  Run to the author of Truth and allow him to speak into those.

And our love’s the only truth, that’s why I run to you
In a world that doesn't value honesty and authenticity (even though we say we do) the only love that you can trust and rely on is that of God's.  Just as he is the author of truth so he is the author of true love.  His love is the only thing that will speak truth into your life, your relationships, your fears, your joys.

If you run to God you will find Truth permeate your life and as the world comes undone you will be secure in the life authored for you by the One who ordained it.