JULY

Well, most of my writing has been fiction and a few opinion pieces I post for another site, but I thought I should take a moment to discuss some of the personal struggles I've had.

I found myself in a pit. So many changes, so much confusion, so little surety in anything in our lives has taken a toll on me. My beloved brother moved away just months after we moved to be closer to him (coincidence?) I know this is not an accident. One minute he got a call that he was losing his job and five minutes later he got a call that they wanted him on a different site hours away, requiring him to move in a short space of time. I admit to being really thrown by this. Angry, too.

I was quite willing to live in this tiny apartment but able to spend time with my brother and his wife. I was so excited about it. But within months they were suddenly gone and I just felt that it was TOO MUCH. On top of all the trials and struggles and disappointments over the last few years, it took the wind out of me.

So much of life seems to be about me getting the wind knocked out of me, being thrown to the ground with a sucker punch and crawling back, standing back up and getting my wind again only to repeat the cycle. I think the point is to strengthen me, to deepen me, to reduce my reliance on myself and my own understanding and to force me to rely on the only wise God. I'm not great at this. My basic training is going on far longer than most peoples it would seem. I assume they must be faster learners. Either that, or I made it through basic training and the training was for a war that I didn't realize had started.

Whatever the case, I was worn out, exhausted, sad and confused. It showed all over me. What made it all worse is that my fibromyalgia has been in a major flare for the longest period yet--well over two years now. Amazing. I was tired of all of it. Tired of the pain, the physical inconvenience, the financial struggles, the losses, all of it.

I let myself get depressed. I know better. I know how to be happy. I've learned that through great pain and long study. I just stopped practicing what I knew. When someone commented on my smile as if it were a rare or nearly-nonexistent thing, I realized what I had allowed. I allowed myself to quit practicing, to quit CHOOSING to be happy. So I once again have chosen to be happy. Trust me on this. It's totally doable. If I can learn to be happy, anyone can. I find it hard to imagine a more dismal soul than me, at least the old me.

The problem of pain and attitude is that it is hard to maintain a positive attitude when you are in pain, but the severity of the effect of pain is increased in proportion to the depth of your own misery and depression. If one can maintain a good, positive attitude, pain is not diminished, but the effect of that pain is. Plus misery drives others away.

Soooooo, rambling as this has been, I have had an attitude adjustment. I allowed myself to focus on the circumstances rather than the one who holds me in the circumstances. I forgot that I am not dependent on jobs or what I can see with my own eyes for my sustenance and my stability, but that I am dependent on one who is not affected or concerned by the things which I can see. he is utterly reliable when nothing else is.

Forward, ho!

Self-Examination

I have to ask myself the following questions today.  I believe they came from Tozer, but I heard them while listening to an online sermon from Twin Oaks Presbyterian Church.

1. What do you want more than anything else?  Honestly examine your hearts cravings.  
2. What do you think about more than anything else? 
3. How do you use your money?  
4. What do you do with your leisure time?  
5. Who do you admire and what do you admire about them?
6. What is humorous to you?

My answers, the truthful ones, not as I wish they were, but what they really are, is very instructive to my soul.

What I wish the answers to be is: 1. God, 2. God's Word and the person and work of Jesus Christ, 3. To further the kingdom of God and to care for the poor., 4.  Serving the poor, studying the Word and gathering with other believers to delight together in God, 5.  I want this list to be filled with spiritual giants both known and unknown who follow after God with their whole hearts, and 6.  I want this not to include things that demean others, cruelty, etc.

What is true is somewhat different.  My truthful responses show my heart to be in need of repentance, cleansing and renewal and that I CANNOT do on my own.  My truth reveals a need for God to wash me clean, to renew a right spirit in me, to root out my selfishness and the sin which is still rooted in my heart.  God help me.  I am not who I want to be, I am not who I wish to be, I am not who I was made to be.  I must throw myself on the mercy of God, the only wise and merciful God.  I have seen my heart and it is an ugly and needful thing.

I am, we are, blessed that our salvation and our hope does not rest on this.  I am blessed that God in his mercy sought fit to save me, one whose heart is so unworthy.  Even my response to the Savior is not the beautiful thing I wish it to be.  Oh may I one day truly answer those questions as I desire.  May that really be.  Lord, rescue me from me.  Thank you for revealing the condition of my heart.  Teach me and mold me, cleanse me and purify my heart.  Renew my spirit.  Continue the work you have begun in me.

Signs of Spring

What?

Each time I come to this site over the past couple of weeks, preparing to post a new blog, I stop short at the words of my previous post. It is awful and sad, but a truth that must be admitted. I have been writing. Actually I've written quite a bit recently--just not here. Where, you ask? Ah, I'll keep that secret for now.

Suffice it to say that the conditions of life have changed so dramatically over the past year that my life is barely recognizable. I thought I would have started school by now, at least, but George Mason wants me to get a lot more credits in before transferring in. I just found that out today, which is a bit of a blow.

Steve just started a new job--one that will last 2-3 months at most. And today, an old boss from Colorado called to offer him a job, thinking he would be back in CO by now. We just signed a year's lease. It would cost us $2200 to get out of the lease, plus moving expenses. Sigh. Is it a job worth taking? Don't have enough details. I'm exhausted thinking about the possibility of moving to Denver, as unlikely as it is.

2010

So a new decade has begun. Not just a new year, a new decade, and I am 45. 45 puts you in a new age bracket on things like Web MD and some other surveys and questionnaires. I don't know why that bothers me. I don't feel 45. I do sometimes look at myself in the mirror and do a double-take. Who is that fat woman with the aging skin, the puffy eyes and the hands that are beginning to seriously wrinkle? I don't recognize her at all, I'm afraid. Who is that woman who lurches down the hall when her joints don't want to work, or who gets down on the floor and can no longer trust that she can simple stand back up again with ease? Who is the woman who needs bifocals?

45 isn't old. I know it isn't. But it feels that way sometimes. I'm a grandma. Me. How did this happen? (Please don't write in to tell me the mechanics of it.) I was a schoolgirl just yesterday...or maybe it was the day before that, but it was just moments ago! All of life was ahead of me as an open book, a blank canvas, and empty stage, waiting for me to write on the pages, to paint brilliant colors or to dazzle the world with my brilliance. How did all that hopeful and fearful expectation come to this?

If I am to be dazzling and brilliant, it will have to be a different way now. Even our colors fade as we get older. Our hair fades, although with the proper shade of Loreal, no one need know. Our skin loses the luster and suppleness of youth.

For some, 2010 is a good place to start. It is the year of birth or of graduation, that first adult job or the start of a hopefully long and successful marriage.

For us, 2010 is a year for starting over. Hopefully we have not dragged too much past baggage with us. It is a challenge to be optimistic, to see this as a good thing. I feel pressure to do and to accomplish.

There is a great paradox in the ideas of doing and being. Some say that we simple must be. We must be in Christ. We must remain and abide and wait. Passive words. Others say we must do. We must put our faith into action. Faith without works is dead. We must get busy about the work of the kingdom, busy with the work of life.

I struggle with these two. I believe that both are true and I don't really understand that. I don't know how to be and do at the same time. I don't know that I understand when it is time to rest and when it is time to work and run the race.

In my body there is a condition that requires being and doing. Fibromyalgia constantly reminds me that I cannot simply power my way through life with will and determination. And yet, I must power my way through many things or I have no life with this horrible condition. I must accept (be) that I have this condition and that it affects what I can and cannot do. And I must do so that FM doesn't take everything away. I sometimes get the balance off. When I feel good I do too much and the ability to do is lost for a time. But if I give in to the pain, I do nothing and have no life and the FM is worse for the inactivity.

So what is the truth? Is there a correlation between the being and doing of FM and the being and doing of our Christian walk? Well, both are balancing acts. We aren't actually doing the work of changing and perfecting us, but we have things we must do anyway. We must remain and abide in Christ and are also told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

Anyway...John 15 talks about abiding or remaining in Christ, the true vine. I don't understand all of it, particularly the cutting away of dead branches, but I do understand the pruning bit. It appears that the troubles and travails of this life may be part of a pruning process, so that the fruit we bear may be increased. It is to increase the health and vitality of the whole being--me joined with Christ and tended by the Father. All of this loss, all of this pain, all of this trouble may simply be pruning to make me more fruitful. "For without me you can do nothing," the passage states. So I abide in him and he makes the doing possible.

I don't understand this, but 2010 is the year I want to begin to understand this being and abiding and resting in him in the midst of the doing of life. If he wants me to stand still, then stand still I shall, but if he wants me to do, then he must guide and empower me.

What I long for in this being and abiding and remaining and doing is to develop my love for Him. I told a friend of mine the troubling thing I realized the other day--that I am not in love with my Savior, and I don't really love my God. At the moment I kind of like Him. I'm ashamed and embarrassed. It's a hard thing to say, and I am keenly aware that this is not what I have been ordered in scripture. I have been told to Love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind and spirit. I have a Savior who went to all the trouble to become like me, to become human, to live and to die an insanely awful death, to suffer untold misery and horror to pay for my sin, and to make it possible for me to be reconciled to him, and yet I kind of like him? I think I understand the bit in Revelation where God says they are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm and so he wants to spit them out. Realizing that I merely like the Creator of the stars makes me sick to my stomach. I feel like wretching. Maybe God feels this way about me too at the moment.

I don't know how to go from that like to the love that I once had and the love that I never had, so I must abide and remain and ask the Savior of my soul to ignite the flame of love in me and never to let it wane.

May your new decade be blessed in every way, but most of all, may you know spiritual blessings. May you grow in love for God. May we grow in this together.

Happy Christmas to you all!

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It Costs More To Be A Woman

In response to the article: Why It Costs More To Be A Woman (click on the title to jump to the article.) I have written the following:

I have been lamenting lately the same thing, not an angry lament, more of a weary, this-is-how-the-world-is lament. I know these things are true and I don't like it, but what are you doing to do about it?

I rarely succumb to the temptation to purchase razors made "for women", as the cost per each is egregious. I find the cost of antiperspirants in general to be outrageous, but the smell of stale sweat coming from my armpits is not desirable, so I cough it up, though I have done trial and error until I only buy what works for me.

I have cut men and women's hair. The time factor is negligible. A man may be a little less fussy about the cut, though many men today are more fussy than ever, but there is the neck shaving and sometimes a facial shave as well. The justification is bogus. The services that take time are actually included in the price whether they are used or not. I mean I often shampoo my own hair because I sometimes have allergic reactions to shampoos. If it is a nice day out, the hairdresser may not fully style my hair, though that is included in the price at most places. Some, the ones that do ala carte services, are also the ones that seem to charge virtually the same whether you are male or female. In these places, I've had good and bad haircuts. The lady cutting my hair at Great Clips in Colorado Springs gave me about the best haircuts of my life. My most recent on at Great Clips in MD? The reviews aren't so good.

Many things are ridiculously expensive for women. I will happily use men's antiperspirant as long as it doesn't SMELL like a man. I can't wear their shirts without major tailoring and it is impossible to wear their jeans. My husband can get his jeans at Sam's Club for $13. The cut is standard and the denim is heavy. These jeans are a far better bargain than what is currently sold in any local store in the woman's department. Without my consent or approval, someone made the decision to eliminate heavyweight denim jeans with sturdy construction, in favor of "stretch denim", which is far less practical, lasts about a third as long, and costs the same as the old jeans I prefer. Where may I go to purchase the jeans I loved? I may have them custom made, or buy them through a catalog, now at least 2-3 times the cost of the jeans I bought a few years back. But my husband can buy his for $13.

Don't get me started on decent dressy work trousers. Again, try to find any made of a high quality sturdy material with a nice hand at ANY price made for a woman. But my husband can walk into any Ross or Marshalls and find a nice trouser for under $20 near any day of the week.

Can someone explain why I have to pay over $30 for a decent bra? Is making a bra some feat of engineering with construction so ingenious as to make it a difficult proposition? No. I used to work in a lingerie factory, and while I was never privy to the price points and manufacturing costs, I can assure you that they are in no way an expensive garment to manufacture.

At $30+ each, I must spend a minimum of $210 simply to have enough for a week. And are these garments long-lasting? According to the fitter in the lingerie department, none of these garments are designed to last more than 6 months. Nor can they hold up under normal laundry conditions. No, they must be hand-laundered and hung to dry, else they face an early extinction. If I want pretty or lacy or the latest sexy style, they are even more flimsily constructed and cost even more. Hooray.

There are some justifications for some of these price differences. A woman's tailoring is often a bit more detailed, a couple of darts or seams that a man's equivalent will not have, but otherwise, two identical items should have reasonably identical prices, right? What is the cost to put in a dart and a fitted seam? It doesn't take substantially longer, and should not justify the price difference.

When I was younger, I lived in a small town and it had a store with clothing for young men and a rack of clothing I can only call rodeo queen attire. I purchased men's jeans to fit my hips and took in 6 inches off the waist. I am no longer comfortable doing those kinds of alterations, as I am much more conscious of the quality of tailoring than I was in those days, and my own tailoring does not meet my standards.

Don't even get me started on hose.

I guess my point is that it costs to be a woman. Some men seem to think that women are frivolous or poor negotiators and pat themselves on the back for it, but what do you do when your dry cleaner charges an extra dollar each to dry clean your shirts? They all do it, and complaining hasn't yet gotten them to drop their prices. They very snottily talk about how difficult they are to press. Oh really? Seems like the equipment isn't made properly then. I dislike ironing, but find it no more difficult or time-consuming to iron my shirts than it does to iron my husband's.

It isn't the cut, because I can bring in a boxy women's blazer and get charged more for it than a man's Italian cut blazer, which surely is more difficult to handle than mine.

Oh, I'm not going to win any debate here, nor am I stating any new thing. But it isn't because women are poor negotiators. It is because certain things are expected of us that are NOT expected of a man. In one job it was not-so-subtly suggested that I should wear makeup for a professional appearance. At the time I was not having skin problems, and was always neatly and professionally attired and well-groomed. I did not then, nor do I now see the point of covering my skin with a load of expensive makeup that clogs my pores and causes me to break out, nor did I see the point of spending $50 a month on my nails as the other women in the office did.

If it is okay for John Doe to come in with a fresh-scrubbed face, neatly combed hair and a nice suit on, then that should work for me as well. I'm not manly, nor am I trying to make some feminist point, but I do sometimes resent that while I make far less than a man, my life costs more. Not because I am frivolous, but because the simple things in life are, for women, more expensive.

If I were to tell my husband he was required to spend $210 every six months on underwear, he would flip out. Why do these manufacturers and retailers DARE to charge this for me? So, what really am I to do about these things? Nothing I can do really, except make the wisest and most frugal decisions possible, and occasionally rant about the cost of being a woman.