by Toby Mac
I will not
cause pain
without
allowing
something
new to be
born, says
the Lord.
Isaiah 66:9
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Want to fly
by Trina Paulus
"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked.
"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."
"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked.
"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."
Grew them
from Muses with a Mystic
She wasn't born
with her wings.
It was only through
sheer inner strength,
unwavering faith
and resilience
that she grew them.
Expose the lie
from Flying Free
by Christian Women Too
All marriages are not good or safe, and when there is abuse going on, the marriage covenant has been broken by one party. This tells a lie about God, and as Christians, we are responsible to expose that lie.
by Christian Women Too
All marriages are not good or safe, and when there is abuse going on, the marriage covenant has been broken by one party. This tells a lie about God, and as Christians, we are responsible to expose that lie.
Wilderness
by Brene Brown
Belonging so fully to yourself that you're willing to stand alone is a wilderness - an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can't control it, or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it's the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.
The Crane Wife
from Flying Free
by CH Hauser, The Paris Review
(I was only going to record excerpts of this, but decided on the whole thing)
Also-experimenting with different fonts
The Crane Wife
Ten days after I called off my engagement I was supposed to go on a scientific expedition to study the whooping crane on the gulf coast of Texas. Surely, I will cancel this trip, I thought, as I shopped for nylon biking pants that zipped off at the knee. Surely, a person who calls off a wedding is meant to be sitting sadly at home, reflecting on the enormity of what has transpired and not doing whatever it is I am about to be doing that requires a pair of plastic clogs with drainage holes. Surely, I thought, as I tried on a very large and floppy hat featuring a pull cord that fastened beneath my chin, it would be wrong to even be wearing a hat that looks like this when something in my life has gone so terribly wrong.
Ten days earlier I had cried and I had yelled and I had packed up my dog and driven away from the upstate New York house with two willow trees I had bought with my fiance.
Ten days later and I didn't want to do anything I was supposed to do.
I went to Texas to study the whooping crane because I was researching a novel. In my novel there were biologists doing field research about birds and I had no idea what field research actually looked like and so the scientists in my novel did things like shuffle around great stacks of papers and frown. The good people of the Earthwatch organization assured me I was welcome on the trip and would get to participate in "real science" during my time on the gulf. But as I waited to be picked up by my team in Corpus Christi, I was nervous - I imagined everyone else would be a scientist or a birder and have daunting binoculars.
The biologist running the trip rolled up in a large white van with a boat hitch and the words BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES stenciled across the side. Jeff was forty-ish, and wore sunglasses and a backward baseball cap. He had a winter beard and a neon-green cast on his left arm. He'd broken his arm playing hockey with his sons the week before. The first thing Jeff said was, "We'll head back to camp, but I hope you don't mind we run by the liquor store first." I felt more optimistic about my suitability for science.
Not long before I'd called off my engagement it was Christmas.
The woman who was supposed to be my mother-in-law was a wildly talented quilter and made stockings with Beatrix Potter characters on them for every family member. The previous Christmas she had asked me what character I wanted to be (my fiance was Benjamin Bunny). I agonized over the decision. It felt important, like whichever character I chose would represent my role in this new family. I chose Squirrel Nutkin, with a blazing red tail - an epic, adventuresome figure who ultimately loses his tail as the price for his daring and pride.
I arrived in Ohio that Christmas and looked to the banister to see where my squirrel had found his place. Instead, I found a mouse. A mouse in a pink dress and apron. A mouse holding a broom and a dustpan, serious about sweeping. A mouse named Hunca Munca. The woman who was supposed to become my mother-in-law said, "I was going to do the squirrel but then I thought, that just isn't CJ. This is CJ."
What she was offering was so nice. She was so nice. I thanked her and felt ungrateful for having wanted a stocking, but not this stocking. Who was I to be so choosy? To say that this nice thing wasn't a thing I wanted?
When I looked at that mouse with her broom, I wondered which one of us was wrong about who I was.
The whooping crane is one of the oldest living bird species on earth. Our expedition was housed at an old fish camp on the Gulf Coast next to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, where three hundred of the only six hundred whooping cranes left in the world spend their winters. Our trip was a data-collecting expedition to study behavior and gather data about the resources available to the cranes at Aransas.
The ladies bunkhouse was small and smelled woody and the rows of single beds were made up with quilts. Lindsay, the only other scientist, was a grad student in her early twenties from WI who loved birds so much that when she told you about them she made the shapes of their necks and beaks with her hands - a pantomime of bird life. Jan, another participant, was a retired geophysicist who had worked for oil companies and now taught high school chemistry. Jan was extremely tan and extremely competent. Jan was not a lifelong birder. She was a woman who had spent two years nursing her mother and her best friend through cancer. They had both recently died and she had lost herself in caring for them, she said. She wanted a week to be herself. Not a teacher or a mother or a wife. This trip was the thing she was giving herself after their passing.
At five o'clock there was a knock at the door and a very old man walked in, followed by Jeff.
"Is it time for cocktail hour?" Warren asked.
Warren was an eighty-four-year-old bachelor from Minnesota. He could not do most of the physical activities required for the trip, but he had been on ninety-five Earthwatch expeditions, including this one once before. Warren liked birds okay. What Warren really loved was cocktail hour.
When he came for cocktail hour that first night, his thin, silver hair was damp from the shower and he smelled of shampoo. He was wearing a fresh collared shirt and carrying a bottle of impossibly good scotch.
Jeff took in Warren and Jan and me. "This is a weird group,"Jeff said.
"I like it," Lindsay said.
In the year leading up to calling off my wedding, I often cried or yelled or reasoned or pleaded with my fiance to tell me that he loved me. To be nice to me. To notice things about how I was living.
One particular time, I had put on a favorite red dress for a wedding. I exploded from the bathroom to show him. He stared at hos phone. I wanted him to tell me I looked nice, so I shimmied and squeezed his shoulders and said, "You look nice! Tell me I look nice!" He said, "I told you that you looked nice when you wore that dress last summer. It's reasonable to assume I still think you look nice in it now."
Another time he gave me a birthday card with a sticky note inside that said BIRTHDAY. After giving it to me, he explained that because he hadn't written in it, the card was still in good condition. He took off the sticky note and put the unblemished card into our filing cabinet.
I need you to know: I hated that I needed more than this from him. There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes my hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient. I did not want to feel like the kind of nagging woman who might exist in a sit-com.
These were small things, and I told myself it was stupid to feel disappointed by them. I had arrived in my thirties believing that to need things from others made you weak. I think this is true for lots of people but I think it is especially true for women. When men desire things they are "passionate." When they feel they have not received something they need they are "deprived" or even "emasculated," and given permission for all sorts of behavior. But when a woman needs she is needy. She is meant to contain within her own self everything necessary to be happy.
That I wanted someone to articulate that they loved me, that they saw me, was a personal failing and I tried to overcome it.
When I found out that he'd slept with our mutual friend a few weeks after we'd first started seeing each other, he told me we hadn't officially been dating yet so I shouldn't mind. I decided he was right. When I found out that he'd kissed another girl on New Year's Eve months after that, he said that we hadn't officially discussed monogamy yet, and so I shouldn't mind. I decided he was right.
I asked to discuss monogamy, and in an effort to be the sort of cool girl who does not have so many inconvenient needs, I said that I didn't need it. He said he thought we should be monogamous.
Here is what I learned once I began studying whooping cranes: only a small part of studying them has anything to do with the birds. Instead we counted berries. Counted crabs. Measured water salinity. Stood in the mud. Measured the speed of the wind.
It turns out, if you want to save a species, you don't spend your time staring at the bird you want to save. You look at the things it relies on to live instead. You ask if there is enough to eat and drink. You ask if there is a safe place to sleep. Is there enough here to survive?
Wading through the muck of the Aransas Reserve I understood that every chance for food matters. Every pool of drinkable water matters. Every wolfberry dangling from a twig, in Texas, in January, matters. The difference between sustaining life and not having enough was that small.
If there were a kind of rehab for people ashamed to have needs, maybe this was it. You will go to the gulf. You will count every wolfberry. You will measure the depth of each puddle.
More than once I'd said to my fiance, How am I supposed to know you love me if you're never affectionate or say nice things or say that you love me.
He reminded me that he'd said "I love you" once or twice before. Why couldn't I just know that he did in perpetuity?
I told him this was like going on a hiking trip and telling me he had water in his backpack but not ever giving it to me and then wondering why I was still thirsty.
He told me water wasn't like love, and he was right.
There are worse things than not receiving love. There are sadder stories than this. There are species going extinct, and a planet warming. I told myself: who are you to complain, you with these frivolous extracurricular needs?
On the gulf, I lost myself in the work. I watched the cranes through binoculars and recorded their behavior patterns and I loved their long necks and splashes of red. The cranes looked elegant and ferocious as they contorted their bodies to preen themselves. From the outside, they did not look like a species fighting to survive.
In the mornings we made each other sandwiches and in the evenings we laughed and lent each other fresh socks. We gave each other space in the bathroom. Forgave each other for telling the same stories over and over again. We helped Warren when he had trouble walking. What I'm saying is that we took care of each other. What I am saying is we took pleasure in doing so. It's hard to confess, but the week after I called off my wedding, the week I spent dirty and tired on the gulf, I was happy.
On our way out of the reserve, we often saw wild pigs, black and pink bristly mothers and their young, scurrying through the scrub and rolling in the dust among the cacti. In the van each night, we made bets on how many wild pigs we might see on our drive home.
One night, halfway through the trip, I bet reasonably. We usually saw four. I hoped for five, but I bet three because I figured it was the most that could be expected.
Warren bet wildly, optimistically, too high.
"Twenty pigs," Warren said. He rested his interlaced fingers on his soft chest.
We laughed and slapped the vinyl van seats at this boldness.
But the thing is, we saw twenty pigs on the drive home that night. And in the thick of our celebrations, I realized how sad it was that I'd bet so low. That I wouldn't even let myself imagine receiving as much as I'd hoped for.
What I learned to do, in my relationship with my fiance, was to survive on less. At what should have been the breaking point but wasn't, I learned that he had cheated on me. The woman he'd been sleeping with was a friend of his I'd initially wanted to be friends with too, but who did not seem to like me, and who he'd gaslit me into being jealous of, and then gaslit me into feeling crazy for being jealous of.
The full course of the gaslighting took a year, so by the time I truly found out what had happened, the infidelity was already a year in the past.
It was news to me but old news to my fiance.
Logically, he said, it doesn't matter anymore.
It had happened a year ago. Why was I getting worked up over ancient history?
I did the mental gymnastics required.
I convinced myself that I was a logical woman who could consider this information about having been cheated on, about his not wearing a condom, and I could separate from it the current reality of our life together.
Why did I need to know that we'd been monogamous? Why did I need to have and discuss inconvenient feelings about this ancient history?
I would not be a woman who needed these things, I decided.
I would need less. And less.
I got very good at this.
"The Crane Wife" is a story from Japanese folklore. I found a copy in the reserve's gift shop among the baseball caps and bumper stickers that said GIVE A WHOOP. In the story, there is a crane who tricks a man into thinking she is a woman so she can marry him. She loves him, but she knows that he will not love her if she is a crane so she spends every night plucking out all of her feathers with her beak. She hopes that he will not see what she really is: a bird who must be cared for, a bird capable of flight, a creature, with creature needs. Every morning, the crane-wife is exhausted, but she is a woman again. To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one.
One night on the gulf, we bought a sack of oysters off a passing fishing boat. We'd spent so long on the water that day I felt like I was still bobbing up and down in the current as I sat in my camp chair. We ate the oysters and drank. Jan took the shucking knife away from me because it kept slipping into my palm. Feral cats trolled the shucked shells and pleaded with us for scraps.
Jeff was playing with the sighting scope we used to watch the birds, and I asked, "What are you looking for in the middle of the night?" He gestured me over and when I looked through the sight the moon swam up close.
I think I was afraid that if I called off my wedding I was going to ruin myself. That doing it would disfigure that story of my life in some irredeemable way. I had experienced worse things than this, but none threatened my American understanding of life as much as a called-off wedding did. What I understood on the other side of my decision, on the gulf, was that there was no such thing as ruining yourself. There are ways to be wounded and ways to survive those wounds, but no one can survive denying their own needs. To be a crane-wife is unsustainable.
I had never seen the moon so up-close before. What struck me most was how battered she looked. How textured and pocked by impact. There was a whole story written on her face - her face, which from a distance looked perfect.
It's easy to say I left my fiance because he cheated on me. It's harder to explain the truth. The truth is that I didn't leave him when I found out. Not even for one night.
I found out about the cheating before we got engaged and I still said yes when he proposed in the park on a day we were meant to be celebrating a job I'd just gotten that morning. Said yes even though I'd told him I was politically opposed to the the diamonds he'd convinced me were necessary. Said yes even though he turned our proposal into a joke by making a Bachelor reference and giving me a rose. I am ashamed of all of this.
He hadn't said one specific thing about me or us during the proposal, and on the long trail walk out of the park I felt robbed of the kind of special declaration I'd hoped a proposal would entail, and, in spite of hating myself for wanting this, hating myself more for fishing for it, I asked him, "Why do you love me? Why do you think we should get married? Really?"
He said he wanted to be with me because I wasn't annoying or needy. Because I liked beer. Because I was low-maintenance.
I didn't say anything. A little further down the road he added that he thought I'd make a good mother.
This wasn't what I hoped he would say. But it was what I was being offered. And who was I to want more?
I didn't leave when he said that the woman he had cheated on me with had told him over the phone that she thought is was unfair that I didn't want them to be friends anymore, and could they still?
I didn't leave when he wanted to invite her to our wedding. Or when, after I said she could not come to our wedding, he got frustrated and asked what he was supposed to do when his mother and his friends asked why she wasn't there.
Reader, I almost married him.
Even now I hear the words as shameful: Thirsty. Needy. The worst things a woman can be. Some days I still tell myself to take what is offered, because if it isn't enough, it is I who wants too much. I am ashamed to be writing about this instead of writing about the whooping cranes, or literal famines, or any of the truer needs of the world.
But what I want to tell you is that I left my fiance when it was almost too late. And I tell people the story of being cheated on because that story is simple. People know how it goes. But it's harder to tell the story of how I convinced myself I didn't need what was necessary to survive. How I convinced myself it my lack of needs that made me worthy of love.
After cocktail hour one night, in the cabin's kitchen, I told Lindsay about how I'd blown my life up the week before. I told her because I'd just received a voicemail saying I could get a partial refund for my high-necked wedding gown. The refund would be partial because they had already made the base of the dress but had not done any of the beadwork yet. They said the pieces of the dress could still be unstitched and used for something else. I had caught them just in time.
I told Lindsay because she was beautiful and kind and patient and loved good things like birds and I wondered what she would say back to me. What would every good person I knew say to me when I told them that the wedding to which they RSVP'd was off and that the life I'd been building for three years was going to be unstitched and repurposed?
Lindsay said it was brave not to do a thing just because everyone expected you to do it.
Jeff was sitting outside in front of the cabin with Warren as Lindsay and I talked, tilting the sighting scope so it pointed toward the moon. The screen door was open and I knew he'd heard me, but he never said anything about my confession.
What he did do was let me drive the boat.
The next day it was just him and me and Lindsay on the water. We were cruising fast and loud. "You drive," Jeff shouted over the motor. Lindsay grinned and nodded. I had never driven a boat before. "What do I do?" I shouted. Jeff shrugged. I took the wheel. We cruised past small islands, families of pink roseate spoonbills, garbage tankers swarmed by seagulls, fields of grass and wolfberries, and I realized it was not that remarkable for a person to understand what another person needed.
by CH Hauser, The Paris Review
(I was only going to record excerpts of this, but decided on the whole thing)
Also-experimenting with different fonts
The Crane Wife
Ten days after I called off my engagement I was supposed to go on a scientific expedition to study the whooping crane on the gulf coast of Texas. Surely, I will cancel this trip, I thought, as I shopped for nylon biking pants that zipped off at the knee. Surely, a person who calls off a wedding is meant to be sitting sadly at home, reflecting on the enormity of what has transpired and not doing whatever it is I am about to be doing that requires a pair of plastic clogs with drainage holes. Surely, I thought, as I tried on a very large and floppy hat featuring a pull cord that fastened beneath my chin, it would be wrong to even be wearing a hat that looks like this when something in my life has gone so terribly wrong.
Ten days earlier I had cried and I had yelled and I had packed up my dog and driven away from the upstate New York house with two willow trees I had bought with my fiance.
Ten days later and I didn't want to do anything I was supposed to do.
I went to Texas to study the whooping crane because I was researching a novel. In my novel there were biologists doing field research about birds and I had no idea what field research actually looked like and so the scientists in my novel did things like shuffle around great stacks of papers and frown. The good people of the Earthwatch organization assured me I was welcome on the trip and would get to participate in "real science" during my time on the gulf. But as I waited to be picked up by my team in Corpus Christi, I was nervous - I imagined everyone else would be a scientist or a birder and have daunting binoculars.
The biologist running the trip rolled up in a large white van with a boat hitch and the words BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES stenciled across the side. Jeff was forty-ish, and wore sunglasses and a backward baseball cap. He had a winter beard and a neon-green cast on his left arm. He'd broken his arm playing hockey with his sons the week before. The first thing Jeff said was, "We'll head back to camp, but I hope you don't mind we run by the liquor store first." I felt more optimistic about my suitability for science.
Not long before I'd called off my engagement it was Christmas.
The woman who was supposed to be my mother-in-law was a wildly talented quilter and made stockings with Beatrix Potter characters on them for every family member. The previous Christmas she had asked me what character I wanted to be (my fiance was Benjamin Bunny). I agonized over the decision. It felt important, like whichever character I chose would represent my role in this new family. I chose Squirrel Nutkin, with a blazing red tail - an epic, adventuresome figure who ultimately loses his tail as the price for his daring and pride.
I arrived in Ohio that Christmas and looked to the banister to see where my squirrel had found his place. Instead, I found a mouse. A mouse in a pink dress and apron. A mouse holding a broom and a dustpan, serious about sweeping. A mouse named Hunca Munca. The woman who was supposed to become my mother-in-law said, "I was going to do the squirrel but then I thought, that just isn't CJ. This is CJ."
What she was offering was so nice. She was so nice. I thanked her and felt ungrateful for having wanted a stocking, but not this stocking. Who was I to be so choosy? To say that this nice thing wasn't a thing I wanted?
When I looked at that mouse with her broom, I wondered which one of us was wrong about who I was.
The whooping crane is one of the oldest living bird species on earth. Our expedition was housed at an old fish camp on the Gulf Coast next to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, where three hundred of the only six hundred whooping cranes left in the world spend their winters. Our trip was a data-collecting expedition to study behavior and gather data about the resources available to the cranes at Aransas.
The ladies bunkhouse was small and smelled woody and the rows of single beds were made up with quilts. Lindsay, the only other scientist, was a grad student in her early twenties from WI who loved birds so much that when she told you about them she made the shapes of their necks and beaks with her hands - a pantomime of bird life. Jan, another participant, was a retired geophysicist who had worked for oil companies and now taught high school chemistry. Jan was extremely tan and extremely competent. Jan was not a lifelong birder. She was a woman who had spent two years nursing her mother and her best friend through cancer. They had both recently died and she had lost herself in caring for them, she said. She wanted a week to be herself. Not a teacher or a mother or a wife. This trip was the thing she was giving herself after their passing.
At five o'clock there was a knock at the door and a very old man walked in, followed by Jeff.
"Is it time for cocktail hour?" Warren asked.
Warren was an eighty-four-year-old bachelor from Minnesota. He could not do most of the physical activities required for the trip, but he had been on ninety-five Earthwatch expeditions, including this one once before. Warren liked birds okay. What Warren really loved was cocktail hour.
When he came for cocktail hour that first night, his thin, silver hair was damp from the shower and he smelled of shampoo. He was wearing a fresh collared shirt and carrying a bottle of impossibly good scotch.
Jeff took in Warren and Jan and me. "This is a weird group,"Jeff said.
"I like it," Lindsay said.
In the year leading up to calling off my wedding, I often cried or yelled or reasoned or pleaded with my fiance to tell me that he loved me. To be nice to me. To notice things about how I was living.
One particular time, I had put on a favorite red dress for a wedding. I exploded from the bathroom to show him. He stared at hos phone. I wanted him to tell me I looked nice, so I shimmied and squeezed his shoulders and said, "You look nice! Tell me I look nice!" He said, "I told you that you looked nice when you wore that dress last summer. It's reasonable to assume I still think you look nice in it now."
Another time he gave me a birthday card with a sticky note inside that said BIRTHDAY. After giving it to me, he explained that because he hadn't written in it, the card was still in good condition. He took off the sticky note and put the unblemished card into our filing cabinet.
I need you to know: I hated that I needed more than this from him. There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes my hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient. I did not want to feel like the kind of nagging woman who might exist in a sit-com.
These were small things, and I told myself it was stupid to feel disappointed by them. I had arrived in my thirties believing that to need things from others made you weak. I think this is true for lots of people but I think it is especially true for women. When men desire things they are "passionate." When they feel they have not received something they need they are "deprived" or even "emasculated," and given permission for all sorts of behavior. But when a woman needs she is needy. She is meant to contain within her own self everything necessary to be happy.
That I wanted someone to articulate that they loved me, that they saw me, was a personal failing and I tried to overcome it.
When I found out that he'd slept with our mutual friend a few weeks after we'd first started seeing each other, he told me we hadn't officially been dating yet so I shouldn't mind. I decided he was right. When I found out that he'd kissed another girl on New Year's Eve months after that, he said that we hadn't officially discussed monogamy yet, and so I shouldn't mind. I decided he was right.
I asked to discuss monogamy, and in an effort to be the sort of cool girl who does not have so many inconvenient needs, I said that I didn't need it. He said he thought we should be monogamous.
Here is what I learned once I began studying whooping cranes: only a small part of studying them has anything to do with the birds. Instead we counted berries. Counted crabs. Measured water salinity. Stood in the mud. Measured the speed of the wind.
It turns out, if you want to save a species, you don't spend your time staring at the bird you want to save. You look at the things it relies on to live instead. You ask if there is enough to eat and drink. You ask if there is a safe place to sleep. Is there enough here to survive?
Wading through the muck of the Aransas Reserve I understood that every chance for food matters. Every pool of drinkable water matters. Every wolfberry dangling from a twig, in Texas, in January, matters. The difference between sustaining life and not having enough was that small.
If there were a kind of rehab for people ashamed to have needs, maybe this was it. You will go to the gulf. You will count every wolfberry. You will measure the depth of each puddle.
More than once I'd said to my fiance, How am I supposed to know you love me if you're never affectionate or say nice things or say that you love me.
He reminded me that he'd said "I love you" once or twice before. Why couldn't I just know that he did in perpetuity?
I told him this was like going on a hiking trip and telling me he had water in his backpack but not ever giving it to me and then wondering why I was still thirsty.
He told me water wasn't like love, and he was right.
There are worse things than not receiving love. There are sadder stories than this. There are species going extinct, and a planet warming. I told myself: who are you to complain, you with these frivolous extracurricular needs?
On the gulf, I lost myself in the work. I watched the cranes through binoculars and recorded their behavior patterns and I loved their long necks and splashes of red. The cranes looked elegant and ferocious as they contorted their bodies to preen themselves. From the outside, they did not look like a species fighting to survive.
In the mornings we made each other sandwiches and in the evenings we laughed and lent each other fresh socks. We gave each other space in the bathroom. Forgave each other for telling the same stories over and over again. We helped Warren when he had trouble walking. What I'm saying is that we took care of each other. What I am saying is we took pleasure in doing so. It's hard to confess, but the week after I called off my wedding, the week I spent dirty and tired on the gulf, I was happy.
On our way out of the reserve, we often saw wild pigs, black and pink bristly mothers and their young, scurrying through the scrub and rolling in the dust among the cacti. In the van each night, we made bets on how many wild pigs we might see on our drive home.
One night, halfway through the trip, I bet reasonably. We usually saw four. I hoped for five, but I bet three because I figured it was the most that could be expected.
Warren bet wildly, optimistically, too high.
"Twenty pigs," Warren said. He rested his interlaced fingers on his soft chest.
We laughed and slapped the vinyl van seats at this boldness.
But the thing is, we saw twenty pigs on the drive home that night. And in the thick of our celebrations, I realized how sad it was that I'd bet so low. That I wouldn't even let myself imagine receiving as much as I'd hoped for.
What I learned to do, in my relationship with my fiance, was to survive on less. At what should have been the breaking point but wasn't, I learned that he had cheated on me. The woman he'd been sleeping with was a friend of his I'd initially wanted to be friends with too, but who did not seem to like me, and who he'd gaslit me into being jealous of, and then gaslit me into feeling crazy for being jealous of.
The full course of the gaslighting took a year, so by the time I truly found out what had happened, the infidelity was already a year in the past.
It was news to me but old news to my fiance.
Logically, he said, it doesn't matter anymore.
It had happened a year ago. Why was I getting worked up over ancient history?
I did the mental gymnastics required.
I convinced myself that I was a logical woman who could consider this information about having been cheated on, about his not wearing a condom, and I could separate from it the current reality of our life together.
Why did I need to know that we'd been monogamous? Why did I need to have and discuss inconvenient feelings about this ancient history?
I would not be a woman who needed these things, I decided.
I would need less. And less.
I got very good at this.
"The Crane Wife" is a story from Japanese folklore. I found a copy in the reserve's gift shop among the baseball caps and bumper stickers that said GIVE A WHOOP. In the story, there is a crane who tricks a man into thinking she is a woman so she can marry him. She loves him, but she knows that he will not love her if she is a crane so she spends every night plucking out all of her feathers with her beak. She hopes that he will not see what she really is: a bird who must be cared for, a bird capable of flight, a creature, with creature needs. Every morning, the crane-wife is exhausted, but she is a woman again. To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one.
One night on the gulf, we bought a sack of oysters off a passing fishing boat. We'd spent so long on the water that day I felt like I was still bobbing up and down in the current as I sat in my camp chair. We ate the oysters and drank. Jan took the shucking knife away from me because it kept slipping into my palm. Feral cats trolled the shucked shells and pleaded with us for scraps.
Jeff was playing with the sighting scope we used to watch the birds, and I asked, "What are you looking for in the middle of the night?" He gestured me over and when I looked through the sight the moon swam up close.
I think I was afraid that if I called off my wedding I was going to ruin myself. That doing it would disfigure that story of my life in some irredeemable way. I had experienced worse things than this, but none threatened my American understanding of life as much as a called-off wedding did. What I understood on the other side of my decision, on the gulf, was that there was no such thing as ruining yourself. There are ways to be wounded and ways to survive those wounds, but no one can survive denying their own needs. To be a crane-wife is unsustainable.
I had never seen the moon so up-close before. What struck me most was how battered she looked. How textured and pocked by impact. There was a whole story written on her face - her face, which from a distance looked perfect.
It's easy to say I left my fiance because he cheated on me. It's harder to explain the truth. The truth is that I didn't leave him when I found out. Not even for one night.
I found out about the cheating before we got engaged and I still said yes when he proposed in the park on a day we were meant to be celebrating a job I'd just gotten that morning. Said yes even though I'd told him I was politically opposed to the the diamonds he'd convinced me were necessary. Said yes even though he turned our proposal into a joke by making a Bachelor reference and giving me a rose. I am ashamed of all of this.
He hadn't said one specific thing about me or us during the proposal, and on the long trail walk out of the park I felt robbed of the kind of special declaration I'd hoped a proposal would entail, and, in spite of hating myself for wanting this, hating myself more for fishing for it, I asked him, "Why do you love me? Why do you think we should get married? Really?"
He said he wanted to be with me because I wasn't annoying or needy. Because I liked beer. Because I was low-maintenance.
I didn't say anything. A little further down the road he added that he thought I'd make a good mother.
This wasn't what I hoped he would say. But it was what I was being offered. And who was I to want more?
I didn't leave when he said that the woman he had cheated on me with had told him over the phone that she thought is was unfair that I didn't want them to be friends anymore, and could they still?
I didn't leave when he wanted to invite her to our wedding. Or when, after I said she could not come to our wedding, he got frustrated and asked what he was supposed to do when his mother and his friends asked why she wasn't there.
Reader, I almost married him.
Even now I hear the words as shameful: Thirsty. Needy. The worst things a woman can be. Some days I still tell myself to take what is offered, because if it isn't enough, it is I who wants too much. I am ashamed to be writing about this instead of writing about the whooping cranes, or literal famines, or any of the truer needs of the world.
But what I want to tell you is that I left my fiance when it was almost too late. And I tell people the story of being cheated on because that story is simple. People know how it goes. But it's harder to tell the story of how I convinced myself I didn't need what was necessary to survive. How I convinced myself it my lack of needs that made me worthy of love.
After cocktail hour one night, in the cabin's kitchen, I told Lindsay about how I'd blown my life up the week before. I told her because I'd just received a voicemail saying I could get a partial refund for my high-necked wedding gown. The refund would be partial because they had already made the base of the dress but had not done any of the beadwork yet. They said the pieces of the dress could still be unstitched and used for something else. I had caught them just in time.
I told Lindsay because she was beautiful and kind and patient and loved good things like birds and I wondered what she would say back to me. What would every good person I knew say to me when I told them that the wedding to which they RSVP'd was off and that the life I'd been building for three years was going to be unstitched and repurposed?
Lindsay said it was brave not to do a thing just because everyone expected you to do it.
Jeff was sitting outside in front of the cabin with Warren as Lindsay and I talked, tilting the sighting scope so it pointed toward the moon. The screen door was open and I knew he'd heard me, but he never said anything about my confession.
What he did do was let me drive the boat.
The next day it was just him and me and Lindsay on the water. We were cruising fast and loud. "You drive," Jeff shouted over the motor. Lindsay grinned and nodded. I had never driven a boat before. "What do I do?" I shouted. Jeff shrugged. I took the wheel. We cruised past small islands, families of pink roseate spoonbills, garbage tankers swarmed by seagulls, fields of grass and wolfberries, and I realized it was not that remarkable for a person to understand what another person needed.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
The goal
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Philippians 3:14
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:14
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Your precepts
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Psalm 119:93
I will never forget Your precepts,
For by them You have given me life.
Psalm 119:93
I will never forget Your precepts,
For by them You have given me life.
Friday, July 26, 2019
By Faith
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Hebrews 11:1
By Faith We Understand
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
By Faith We Understand
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Not broken anymore
by Jenny Williams, A Modern Day Ruth
She's not broken anymore...
She's stronger, wiser, and
more beautiful than before.
Because God took her broken
pieces and made her new
again.
Best advice
Some of the best advice I've been given: (not sure who said this)
"Don't take criticism from people you would never go to for advice."
"Don't take criticism from people you would never go to for advice."
Something great
by Toby Mac
The enemy
always
fights the
hardest
when he
knows
God has
something
great in
store
for you.
The enemy
always
fights the
hardest
when he
knows
God has
something
great in
store
for you.
Bring me up
Though you have made
me see troubles,
many and bitter,
you will restore
my life again;
from the depths of
the earth you will
again bring me up.
Psalm 71:20
What glorifies God
The "do what makes you happy" culture is so toxic for Christians.
We are not called to do what makes us happy.
We're called to do what glorifies God.
Christianity isn't always sunshine and happiness.
It's hard work and dedication to Him, not us.
Do. What. Glorifies. God.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Made haste
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Psalm 119:60
I made haste, and did not delay
To keep Your commandments.
Psalm 119:60
I made haste, and did not delay
To keep Your commandments.
Deals graciously
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Psalm 112:5
A good man deals graciously and lends;
He will guide his affairs with discretion.
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Look fear in the face
by Eleanor Roosevelt
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Let Me carry you
The girl who seemed unbreakable,
broke.
She dropped the fake smile and
whispered,
"Jesus, I can't do this anymore."
And He replied,
"Daughter, I never wanted you to,
I've been waiting for you to let
Me carry you."
Act of blessing
from Stumbling Toward Wholeness
by Andrew J. Bauman
by Andrew J. Bauman
The act of blessing is not
just positive self-talk
but an affirmation of God's handiwork.
You are beauty, you are good,
and if that is not how you
feel about yourself,
you must look at what is blocking you
from agreeing with God's view of you.
A break
A break from someone
will either make you realize
how much you truly miss/love them
or how much peace you have
without them.
Experience
Don't be afraid
to start over again.
This time
you're not starting from scratch,
you're starting
from experience.
A kid
by Mike Myers
Having a kid is
like falling in
love for the
first time when
you're 12, but
every day.
With you
Remember, Shadrach,
Meshasch, and Abednego.
God didn't put out the fire.
He just put Jesus in there
with them and they
came out without smoke.
It's not about God stopping
all the things that look
bad; it's about who is in
there with you.
Champion of character
Here is the description of the WWP Champion of Character Award given out to several kids at your memorial tournament:
For exemplifying true sportsmanship and integrity throughout competitive play, and exhibiting strong and positive leadership, inspiring our water polo community.
For exemplifying true sportsmanship and integrity throughout competitive play, and exhibiting strong and positive leadership, inspiring our water polo community.
Held hostage
Not the violence part, but some of this rings true...
Imagine being held hostage. Only
no one knows you're being held
hostage. You're forced to plaster on a
smile during public appearances, so as
not to alert the outside world of the
danger you are in. Contrary to most
hostage situations, there are no prayer
vigils begging for your release. There is
no ransom being gathered to free you.
And there is definitely no mission being
planned to rescue you. Should you
manage to escape, instead of
rejoicing at your liberation, you are
told that God wants you to go back
and love your captor well.
This is domestic violence.
Good but not stupid
Be good enough to forgive someone, but don't be stupid enough to trust them again.
Intimacy
People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them and their response is "you're safe with me" - that's INTIMACY.
About yourself
from The Wedding Singer
(this can go both ways)
You'll know when you meet the right girl because it's not how you feel about her, it's how she makes you feel about yourself.
(this can go both ways)
You'll know when you meet the right girl because it's not how you feel about her, it's how she makes you feel about yourself.
Good for you
I know I've recorded this and others more than once, but good reminders
Choose a partner that is good for you.
Not good for your parents.
Not good for your image.
Not good for your bank account.
Choose someone who is making
your life emotionally fulfilling.
Not a community project
Your relationship doesn't need
to make sense to anyone,
except you and your partner.
It's a relationship.
Not a community project.
Change of address
Death is just a change of address,
but what you believe will determine what neighborhood you end up in
Every woman
Every woman
deserves a man who calls
her baby, kisses her like he means it,
holds her like he never wants to let
her go, doesn't cheat or lie, wipes
her tears when she cries, doesn't
make her jealous of other women,
instead makes other women jealous
of her, he's not scared to let his
friends know how much he really
cares about her, and he tells her he
loves her everyday.
Kamp log
When we were Up North last week, I looked back in the Kamp log from 2015 and here's what was written:
8-21-15 (by Uncle Rick)
Another week at the Kamp! Hot weather the arrival weekend with some rain and cool weather mid-week. News of Hayden's accident on Thursday dampened our spirits. Leaving this weekend with heavy hearts.
8/31 - 9/14 (Monday) (by Aunt Lois)
Our spirits were lifted by the sky full of stars at 3 am. Millions and millions were shining in their glory! May Hayden rest in peace.
8-21-15 (by Uncle Rick)
Another week at the Kamp! Hot weather the arrival weekend with some rain and cool weather mid-week. News of Hayden's accident on Thursday dampened our spirits. Leaving this weekend with heavy hearts.
8/31 - 9/14 (Monday) (by Aunt Lois)
Our spirits were lifted by the sky full of stars at 3 am. Millions and millions were shining in their glory! May Hayden rest in peace.
Bigger hands
This was in a book that Nance got me. It's from a song written by the author, Billy Sprague. I used this as part of the FB post for the 3-year, 11-month anniversary of your accident.
My favorite part is the idea that this is a song from earth to heaven, but it could also be sung from heaven to earth. That part reminds me of the quote on your headstone, "Thanks for the adventure-now go have a new one!" I hope you are enjoying your new adventure~
I don't want to let you go
I don't want to say goodbye
But the road has led us here to this divide
Nothing I can say or do
Can make it any other way
But the promise of forever knows no time or space
And out there in the somewhere I will pray
And speak your name...Every day to heaven
Now Go, shine like a star
Knowing our hearts can never really be apart
Fly as high as you can
And it won't be long
'Til I see you again
What is meant to be is such a mystery.
And mysteries are not meant to understand
The hardest part of love has got to be
Leaving it in bigger hands
My favorite part is the idea that this is a song from earth to heaven, but it could also be sung from heaven to earth. That part reminds me of the quote on your headstone, "Thanks for the adventure-now go have a new one!" I hope you are enjoying your new adventure~
I don't want to let you go
I don't want to say goodbye
But the road has led us here to this divide
Nothing I can say or do
Can make it any other way
But the promise of forever knows no time or space
And out there in the somewhere I will pray
And speak your name...Every day to heaven
Now Go, shine like a star
Knowing our hearts can never really be apart
Fly as high as you can
And it won't be long
'Til I see you again
What is meant to be is such a mystery.
And mysteries are not meant to understand
The hardest part of love has got to be
Leaving it in bigger hands
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Ended
by Pastor Jeff Crippen
A marriage to an abuser does not need to be fixed, it needs to be ended.
A marriage to an abuser does not need to be fixed, it needs to be ended.
Go in your sins
by Charles Spurgeon
If you are to go to Christ, do not put on your good doings and feelings, or you will get nothing; go in your sins...Your ruin is your argument for mercy; your poverty is your plea for heavenly alms; and your need is the motive for heavenly goodness. Go as you are, and let your miseries plead for you.
If you are to go to Christ, do not put on your good doings and feelings, or you will get nothing; go in your sins...Your ruin is your argument for mercy; your poverty is your plea for heavenly alms; and your need is the motive for heavenly goodness. Go as you are, and let your miseries plead for you.
Damaged
She's damaged but she's a keeper.
She just needs to be loved a little different, reassured a little more.
She just needs to be loved a little different, reassured a little more.
God removes
Never question who God removes from your life.
He heard the conversations when you weren't around.
He heard the conversations when you weren't around.
Through you
If you're in a position to help someone.
Help them.
God just may be answering
that person's prayer
through you.
Help them.
God just may be answering
that person's prayer
through you.
Deeply
by Jessi Snapp
She never knew
just how deeply
she could love.
Until she stood
on one side of the veil
& her child on the other.
Her feet rooted on earth
& her heart forever reaching
towards heaven.
Break the cycle
It ran in your family
until it ran into you.
God says, You've
been anointed to
break the cycle.
Generational curses
stop with you.
Covenant breakers
from Flying Free
Divorce isn't the breaking of the marriage covenant. It's the legal process and ending of a marriage covenant that was already broken.
Women who initiate divorce from abusive men are not the covenant breakers.
We need to tell the truth about this to protect these women.
Divorce isn't the breaking of the marriage covenant. It's the legal process and ending of a marriage covenant that was already broken.
Women who initiate divorce from abusive men are not the covenant breakers.
We need to tell the truth about this to protect these women.
A beautiful heart
A beautiful
heart can bring
things into your
life that all the
money in the world
couldn't obtain.
Something new
by Brian Tracy
Move out of your
comfort zone. You
can only grow if you
are willing to feel
awkward and
uncomfortable when
you try something
new.
How precious
by Charles Spurgeon
Consider how precious a soul must be,
when both God and the devil are after it.
Consider how precious a soul must be,
when both God and the devil are after it.
Poorest person
If money and material things make you believe you are better than others,
you are the poorest person on earth.
you are the poorest person on earth.
Keep walking
by Jane Doe (instead of Anonymous?)
Hey, Beautiful One.
You knew today
would be a little
tricky.
Hang tight, Love.
You're walking in
the right
direction.
Just keep walking.
Hey, Beautiful One.
You knew today
would be a little
tricky.
Hang tight, Love.
You're walking in
the right
direction.
Just keep walking.
Won't hold it against you
One thing I love about
God is, He'll bring you out
of situations that you got
yourself into, and won't
hold it against you.
Amen
Live like
by Martin Luther
Live like Jesus
died yesterday.
Rose this morning.
And is coming
back tomorrow.
A real man
A real man is going to change his ways for a girl he really wants to spend the rest of his life with.
Unexpected tears
from Flying Free
by Andrew J. Bauman
"Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention," wrote Frederick Buechner. "They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not, God is speaking to you through them."
by Andrew J. Bauman
"Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention," wrote Frederick Buechner. "They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not, God is speaking to you through them."
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Misattunement
Totally new word and concept for me~
from Flying Free
Huh? What's misattunement? Here's an example: I went to a very crowded garden show the other day and while looking at zinnias, I witnessed a mom with her 4-year-old daughter. Daughter says, "Mom, I'm hungry." Mom quickly grabs the little girl's arm and angrily says, "You're not hungry. Let's go. You're always telling me you're hungry." She then pulled the little girl behind her off into the crowd. My heart broke for this child whose mother dismissively misattuned with her daughter's very basic, physiological need for food.
So what happens inside little ones who frequently experience this sort of misattunement? They stop expressing their needs, learn to unconsciously reject their needs, and then shut down and disconnect from their needs. Dr. Laurence Heller, author of Healing Developmental Trauma says that children who experience this sort of deprivation give up their demand for caring and love. They decide unconsciously that there's no hope that their needs will be met. Giving up becomes a common way they respond to stress.
As such a child matures, she becomes used to living with these unmet physical and emotional needs. She develops survival strategies, like being really helpful to others and needing very little for herself. She has an unconscious belief that her deepest needs don't matter and that she doesn't matter. She may feel erased and empty, like she doesn't exist. When she risks expressing a need, she gives up easily if someone doesn't respond.
from Flying Free
Huh? What's misattunement? Here's an example: I went to a very crowded garden show the other day and while looking at zinnias, I witnessed a mom with her 4-year-old daughter. Daughter says, "Mom, I'm hungry." Mom quickly grabs the little girl's arm and angrily says, "You're not hungry. Let's go. You're always telling me you're hungry." She then pulled the little girl behind her off into the crowd. My heart broke for this child whose mother dismissively misattuned with her daughter's very basic, physiological need for food.
So what happens inside little ones who frequently experience this sort of misattunement? They stop expressing their needs, learn to unconsciously reject their needs, and then shut down and disconnect from their needs. Dr. Laurence Heller, author of Healing Developmental Trauma says that children who experience this sort of deprivation give up their demand for caring and love. They decide unconsciously that there's no hope that their needs will be met. Giving up becomes a common way they respond to stress.
As such a child matures, she becomes used to living with these unmet physical and emotional needs. She develops survival strategies, like being really helpful to others and needing very little for herself. She has an unconscious belief that her deepest needs don't matter and that she doesn't matter. She may feel erased and empty, like she doesn't exist. When she risks expressing a need, she gives up easily if someone doesn't respond.
Boundaries
What do boundaries feel like?
-It is not my job to fix others
-It is okay if others get angry
-It is okay to say no
-It is not my job to take responsibility for others
-It is my job to make me happy
-Nobody has to agree with me
-I have a right to my own feelings
-I am enough
-It is not my job to fix others
-It is okay if others get angry
-It is okay to say no
-It is not my job to take responsibility for others
-It is my job to make me happy
-Nobody has to agree with me
-I have a right to my own feelings
-I am enough
For not knowing it
There is nothing more attractive than a man who teaches you things without making you feel like you're dumb for not knowing it already.
Parts of your soul
One of the most grueling parts of recovering from abuse is making friends again with parts of your soul that you have felt betrayed by. -Bob Hamp
A choice
The honeymoon phase doesn't exist when you fall for someone who is dedicated to making you feel loved and admired the ENTIRE time you're theirs. Stop normalizing the loss of affection in relationships; that is a choice, not a phase.
Asking yourself
by Jade Marie
Get into the habit of asking yourself,
"Does this support the life I'm trying to create?"
Get into the habit of asking yourself,
"Does this support the life I'm trying to create?"
Love never dies
Whenever grief tries to steal the beauty of your memories
Just remember
Love. Never. Dies.
Just remember
Love. Never. Dies.
Holding space
from Flying Free
inspired by Rachel Held Evans
Often I hear from readers who left their churches because they had no songs for them to sing after the miscarriage, the shooting, the earthquake, the divorce, the diagnosis, the attack, the bankruptcy. That American tendency toward triumphalism, of optimism rooted in success, money, and privilege, will infect and sap of substance any faith community that has lost its capacity for "holding space" for those in grief. As therapists and caregivers explain, to "hold space" for someone is to simply sit with them in their pain, without judgment or solutions, and remain present and attentive no matter the outcome. The Psalms are, in a sense, God's way of holding space for us. They invite us to rejoice, wrestle, cry, complain, offer thanks, and shout obscenities before our Maker without self-consciousness and without fear. Life is full of the sort of joys and sorrows that don't resolve neatly in a major key. God knows that. The Bible knows that. Why don't we?
inspired by Rachel Held Evans
Often I hear from readers who left their churches because they had no songs for them to sing after the miscarriage, the shooting, the earthquake, the divorce, the diagnosis, the attack, the bankruptcy. That American tendency toward triumphalism, of optimism rooted in success, money, and privilege, will infect and sap of substance any faith community that has lost its capacity for "holding space" for those in grief. As therapists and caregivers explain, to "hold space" for someone is to simply sit with them in their pain, without judgment or solutions, and remain present and attentive no matter the outcome. The Psalms are, in a sense, God's way of holding space for us. They invite us to rejoice, wrestle, cry, complain, offer thanks, and shout obscenities before our Maker without self-consciousness and without fear. Life is full of the sort of joys and sorrows that don't resolve neatly in a major key. God knows that. The Bible knows that. Why don't we?
Unhealthy boundaries
from Flying Free
Signs of Unhealthy Boundaries
-Telling all
-Talking at an intimate level on the first meeting
-Falling in love with a new acquaintance.
-Falling in love with anyone who reaches out.
-Being overwhelmed with a person - preoccupied.
-Acting on first sexual impulse.
-Being sexual for partner, not for self.
-Going against personal values or rights to please others.
-Not noticing when someone else displays inappropriate boundaries.
-Accepting food, gifts, touch, or sex that you don't want.
-Touching a person without asking.
-Taking as much as you can get for the sake of getting.
-Giving as much as you can give for the sake of giving.
-Allowing someone to take as much as they can from you.
-Letting others direct your life.
-Letting others describe your reality.
-Letting others define you.
-Believing others can anticipate your needs.
-Expecting others to fill your needs automatically.
-Falling apart so someone will take care of you.
-Being a "rock" in order to take care of someone else
ABUSE: Physical, Emotional, Intellectual, Social, Spiritual, Sexual, Verbal, Alcohol, Tobacco, Drugs, Food
Signs of Unhealthy Boundaries
-Telling all
-Talking at an intimate level on the first meeting
-Falling in love with a new acquaintance.
-Falling in love with anyone who reaches out.
-Being overwhelmed with a person - preoccupied.
-Acting on first sexual impulse.
-Being sexual for partner, not for self.
-Going against personal values or rights to please others.
-Not noticing when someone else displays inappropriate boundaries.
-Accepting food, gifts, touch, or sex that you don't want.
-Touching a person without asking.
-Taking as much as you can get for the sake of getting.
-Giving as much as you can give for the sake of giving.
-Allowing someone to take as much as they can from you.
-Letting others direct your life.
-Letting others describe your reality.
-Letting others define you.
-Believing others can anticipate your needs.
-Expecting others to fill your needs automatically.
-Falling apart so someone will take care of you.
-Being a "rock" in order to take care of someone else
ABUSE: Physical, Emotional, Intellectual, Social, Spiritual, Sexual, Verbal, Alcohol, Tobacco, Drugs, Food
Nothing too hard
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Jeremiah 32:17
Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.
Jeremiah 32:17
Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.
Being confident
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Philippians 1:6
being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
Philippians 1:6
being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
Children's quotes
by A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh:
"Sometimes," said Pooh, "the smallest things take up the most room in your heart."
by Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:
It's no use to go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.
by Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:
The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.
by Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.
by Roald Dahl
Above all,
watch with glittering eyes
the whole world around you,
because the greatest secrets
are always hidden
in the most unlikely places.
Those who don't believe in magic
will never find it.
by J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
The moment where you doubt whether you can fly,
you cease for ever being able to do it.
by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Numbing the pain for a while will only make it worse when you finally feel it.
by E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
"Why did you do all this for me?" he asked.
"I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you."
"You have been my friend," replied Charlotte.
"That in itself is a tremendous thing."
by A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Piglet: "How do you spell love?"
Pooh: "You don't spell it, you feel it."
by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
by Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live 'em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give 'em.
by Roald Dahl
If you have
good thoughts
they will shine
out of your face
like sunbeams
and you will always
look lovely.
by A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
by A.A. Milne
Promise me you'll remember,
you are BRAVER than you
believe, STRONGER than you
seem, SMARTER than you think.
"Sometimes," said Pooh, "the smallest things take up the most room in your heart."
by Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:
It's no use to go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.
by Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:
The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.
by Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.
by Roald Dahl
Above all,
watch with glittering eyes
the whole world around you,
because the greatest secrets
are always hidden
in the most unlikely places.
Those who don't believe in magic
will never find it.
by J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
The moment where you doubt whether you can fly,
you cease for ever being able to do it.
by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Numbing the pain for a while will only make it worse when you finally feel it.
by E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
"Why did you do all this for me?" he asked.
"I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you."
"You have been my friend," replied Charlotte.
"That in itself is a tremendous thing."
by A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Piglet: "How do you spell love?"
Pooh: "You don't spell it, you feel it."
by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
by Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live 'em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give 'em.
by Roald Dahl
If you have
good thoughts
they will shine
out of your face
like sunbeams
and you will always
look lovely.
by A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
by A.A. Milne
Promise me you'll remember,
you are BRAVER than you
believe, STRONGER than you
seem, SMARTER than you think.
Faced evil
by Carol Allred
I think until a person has truly faced evil,
they really have no idea what it is.
They think sin is sin is sin. No!
We are all sinners, but we are not all evil.
Sinners can repent as a result of God's love.
Evil can't be fixed with love. God's love
couldn't reach Lucifer and his followers.
No wonder God tells us to avoid such
people. (2 Timothy 3)
2 Timothy 3
Perilous Times and Perilous Men
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.
The Man of God and the Word of God
But you have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra - what persecutions I endured. And out of them all the Lord delivered me. Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you must continue in the things which you have learned and bee assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have know the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Stop
Stop hating yourself
for everything you aren't.
Start loving yourself
for everything that you are.
for everything you aren't.
Start loving yourself
for everything that you are.
Exceedingly abundantly
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Ephesians 3:20-21
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
My words
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Matthew 24:35
Heaven and earth will pass away,
but My words will by no means pass away.
Matthew 24:35
Heaven and earth will pass away,
but My words will by no means pass away.
Your lovingkindness
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Psalm 138:2
I will worship toward your holy temple,
And praise Your name
For Your lovingkindness and Your truth;
For you have magnified Your word above all Your name.
Psalm 138:2
I will worship toward your holy temple,
And praise Your name
For Your lovingkindness and Your truth;
For you have magnified Your word above all Your name.
Perfect
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Psalm 18:30
As for God,
His way is perfect;
The word of the Lord is proven;
He is a shield to all who trust in Him.
Psalm 18:30
As for God,
His way is perfect;
The word of the Lord is proven;
He is a shield to all who trust in Him.
Saturday, July 6, 2019
Not a burden
by Chloe Frayne
Perhaps
we are all searching
for someone
to teach us
that we
are not a burden.
Perhaps
we are all searching
for someone
to teach us
that we
are not a burden.
A note
by Susi Costello
Today I wrote a note to a bereaved mother. I wanted to say don't believe all those sympathy cards. The ones that say "time heals" and "God only takes the best" and "may your sorrows be lessened." You'll only be disappointed. I wanted to say this is the most heart-wrenching, chest crushing, breath-stealing tragedy on earth. I wanted to tell her there will be days she wants to die, and friends will not understand some of the things she does or says.
I wanted to tell her she will still feel her child's presence at times, sometimes so strongly it is as if they are dancing just at the edge of whatever activity is going on. And other times she might not feel their presence at all.
I wanted to tell her that her life will not go back, that she will never be the same, because a piece of her left with her child. And that even though the pain does not go away, somehow her soul will eventually make enough room so she can hold it all - the grief, the pain, the joy and the love.
I wanted to tell her...but I didn't. Instead, I wrote this: I'm sending love, for words are pointless right now. And that is the truth.
Today I wrote a note to a bereaved mother. I wanted to say don't believe all those sympathy cards. The ones that say "time heals" and "God only takes the best" and "may your sorrows be lessened." You'll only be disappointed. I wanted to say this is the most heart-wrenching, chest crushing, breath-stealing tragedy on earth. I wanted to tell her there will be days she wants to die, and friends will not understand some of the things she does or says.
I wanted to tell her she will still feel her child's presence at times, sometimes so strongly it is as if they are dancing just at the edge of whatever activity is going on. And other times she might not feel their presence at all.
I wanted to tell her that her life will not go back, that she will never be the same, because a piece of her left with her child. And that even though the pain does not go away, somehow her soul will eventually make enough room so she can hold it all - the grief, the pain, the joy and the love.
I wanted to tell her...but I didn't. Instead, I wrote this: I'm sending love, for words are pointless right now. And that is the truth.
The struggle
The struggle
you're facing is a
test to see
if you're
truly committed
to the life
you say
you want.
-Christopher Ferry
Safe haven
by Jen Hindley
The problem is not that the church isn't a safe haven.
It's that it's a safe haven for abusers instead of victims.
The problem is not that the church isn't a safe haven.
It's that it's a safe haven for abusers instead of victims.
Frees them
by Gretchen Baskerville
Satan loves the fact that innocent spouses and children are bound to someone who devastates them, humiliates them, betrays them, and treats them treacherously.
Jesus frees them, even if it makes religious leaders furious.
Luke 13:10-17
A Spirit of Infirmity
Now He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, "Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity." And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; and he said to the crowd, "There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day."
The Lord then answered him and said, "Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it? So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound - think of it - for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?" And when He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame; and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him.
Satan loves the fact that innocent spouses and children are bound to someone who devastates them, humiliates them, betrays them, and treats them treacherously.
Jesus frees them, even if it makes religious leaders furious.
Luke 13:10-17
A Spirit of Infirmity
Now He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, "Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity." And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; and he said to the crowd, "There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day."
The Lord then answered him and said, "Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it? So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound - think of it - for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?" And when He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame; and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him.
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
The heart
Bible Gateway Verse of the Day
Jeremiah 17:9-10
"The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings.
Jeremiah 17:9-10
"The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings.
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
A woman should have
by Pamela Redmond Satran
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE...
Enough money within her control to move out...
And rent a place of her own
even if she never wants to
or needs to...
Something perfect to wear if the employer
or the date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE...
A youth she's content to leave behind...
A past juicy enough that's she's looking forward to
retelling in her old age...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE...
A set of screwdrivers,
a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...
One friend who always makes her laugh...
And one who lets her cry...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE...
A good piece of furniture not previously owned
by anyone else in her family...
Eight matching plates,
wine glasses with stems,
And a recipe for a meal that will make
her guests feel honored...
A feeling of control over her destiny...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
How to fall in love without losing herself...
HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT
RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP...
When to try harder...
And WHEN TO WALK AWAY...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
That she can't change the length of her calves,
The width of her hips,
or the nature of her parents...
That her childhood may not have been perfect...
But it's over...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
What she would and wouldn't do for love or more...
How to live alone...
Even if she doesn't like it...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
Whom she can trust,
Whom she can't
And why she shouldn't take it personally...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
Where to go...
Be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
Or a charming inn in the woods...
When her soul needs soothing...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
What she can and can't accomplish in a day...
A month...
And a year...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE...
Enough money within her control to move out...
And rent a place of her own
even if she never wants to
or needs to...
Something perfect to wear if the employer
or the date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE...
A youth she's content to leave behind...
A past juicy enough that's she's looking forward to
retelling in her old age...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE...
A set of screwdrivers,
a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...
One friend who always makes her laugh...
And one who lets her cry...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE...
A good piece of furniture not previously owned
by anyone else in her family...
Eight matching plates,
wine glasses with stems,
And a recipe for a meal that will make
her guests feel honored...
A feeling of control over her destiny...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
How to fall in love without losing herself...
HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT
RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP...
When to try harder...
And WHEN TO WALK AWAY...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
That she can't change the length of her calves,
The width of her hips,
or the nature of her parents...
That her childhood may not have been perfect...
But it's over...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
What she would and wouldn't do for love or more...
How to live alone...
Even if she doesn't like it...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
Whom she can trust,
Whom she can't
And why she shouldn't take it personally...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
Where to go...
Be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
Or a charming inn in the woods...
When her soul needs soothing...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
What she can and can't accomplish in a day...
A month...
And a year...
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