A Clean Escape

“As men of the world, we hardly know of the existence of the inner world: we barely remember dreams, and make little sense of them when we do…” – R. D. Laing

Experience in our waking hours can only take us so many places, and only in one direction in time. Like a movie or a novel, dreams can tell stories, make connections that we may not have seen before, travel to places we’re not normally able to go.

I believe in the significance of dreams, so be warned.  If you believe dreams to be irrelevant, their connection to our waking minds too tenuous, then skip this post. If you, like me, value your dreams and their ability to say something significant, then read on.

Last night, I dreamed that I was visiting someplace new, a large building with many people. Soon, the building was taken hostage by criminals bent on making a profit out of the many of people they had hostage. At first everyone was fearful. One or two killed even. But that feeling of fear didn’t last. Like Stockholm syndrome, we came to appreciate positive qualities of our captors. In fact, a lot of the captives came to prefer their captivity to their lives outside. (Inside, we had community and didn’t have to work. A few of us were hiding in an attic, so the criminals didn’t discover us for a while. Up there, a small group of us enjoyed having our own conversations, and spied on the criminal’s conversations below, and they didn’t seem so bad anyway.)

Due to some very odd zoning rules, something made this building off-bounds from military to come in and rescue us. Towards the end of the dream, the military negotiated so that groups of us could come out for paperwork, and go back in. Our rescuers also had a paper hidden amidst the other papers, reminding us that life was better outside. That was their strategy. To convince us that life outside was better and we should try to escape. In other words, it was all on us. We could escape, but if we got killed in the process from not following our armed captor’s orders, it was on us. We had to be each convinced that our lives outside were better and we should fight to get those lives back. Many were brainwashed or not convinced. But some were quickly shaken to reality and attempted to escape.

As several tried to get out, there was an explosion, one struck dead, but most attempting escape got out.

I tried to escape too. But in this part of the dream, I was not a grown up but a child. In my escape, I found a hidden, unusual path, and I was unseen, both by my captors and by those intending to rescue me. I made my way over to the bunker where the military buzzed with purpose of rescuing, but nobody seemed to notice my entrance. I was dirty, in the same clothes that I had to live in for weeks. Though I was subject this captivity, and safe now, I would have to speak up and explain myself to be restored to my life. I hung there, uncertain of what to say. And that’s where my dream stopped.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I can easily pick up on the significance of the dream.

One aspect was the captors. I think in some way, in society, many of us are unintentionally culpable for injustices. For the rescuers, many problems like that in the world–those that we can’t seem to reach–we’re aware of, but can’t fix. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

I also have a personal application for my dream.

In my life, I was homeschooled. Or sort of homeschooled, but mostly neglected. Due to laws in many states, parents are free to “homeschool” without any accountability, when  some parents use it as way to hide abuse–holding children and young adults captive to lives without education and with harmful dynamics, abuse, neglect.  Yet many of these same young people who are supposed to be “Homeschooled” have no one on their side. If they can read, they are held responsible for their own education, their own “escape.” Also, like the Stockholm Syndrome, we captives can’t see our abusers as such because they are our parents. When we do realize that our upbringing is captivity, and captivity is harmful, most of us have to overcome by our own wits. For me, it was my teenage years when I realized I had to start (by my own powers of reading/studying) making something of myself.

Just like the escapee in my dream, for a while, it felt like nobody realized that I’d escaped. Nobody knew, nobody could see, what I had lost (an education, socialization, a normal life)–nobody but me. In essence, I was uncounted. Either out, or in, it didn’t matter to anybody.

Of course, just like in the dream, until I speak of the escape, no one can know of this captivity. Nobody is to know what fears I braved, what passages I came through, and what I’m braving still, until I share my journey.

The Suburbanite Witch Trials

          Lately, I’ve been thinking critically about my past, asking questions about patterns in my family that never made sense to me. Throughout my youth, my mom had very strong opinions about magic; even Disney movies weren’t allowed in our house. My father’s NPR-listening made him un-Christian; she’d spout the words “That’s secular!” as if it was the worst thing. Even more mystifying was when my normal childhood obstinacy was blamed on an outside force, an evil neighbor who had supposedly messed with my mind when I was two. “This is witchcraft,” she would say.
          Even though she’s a long way from the knee-jerk black-and-white thinking that typified her through the 80’s and much of the 90’s, I still don’t trust her perspective. For a better angle, I’ve talked to my eldest brother, who was born in 1970, 12 years before me. I’ve also found a book, “We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980’s.” In it, investigative journalist Richard Beck describes the scare over Satanism during the 1980’s as being parallel to the Salem Witch Trials. The book also talks about how children were interviewed with a very strong bias, accepting only one answer to be correct. Unfortunately, something similar played out in my family in the 80’s, my mother charging neighbors with heinous and improbable crimes. But that’s not the whole story.
          My older brother tells me that one day my mom slapped him on the head with math book. At that moment, they saw a flash: mom thought the neighbors had had taken a picture. That’s when the neighbors became “evil.” Soon after, she cornered and questioned my four-year-old brother until he said that the neighbors had snuck into the house and done inappropriate things to us. The story somehow grew to include Satanic rituals.
          I’m no stranger to this driven and delusional side of my mother. Coercion came up again during my parents’ divorce, as she questioned my youngest brother about our father. With the suggestive-accusation, “What he did to you while alone in a bathroom?” my brother came up with, coloring on bear skin about the “guilty” party. At least, this time there was no trial involved.
         I believe that my mother had (and may still have) something called narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissists are unable to take responsibility: they see everything, even their own anger, as someone else’s fault. This was an insidious flaw, but in a way, the illusions she found—her fear of Satanism and witchcraft—gave her a focus that was mostly external to, instead of within, the family. Although she was intimidating and neglectful towards us, beyond my eldest brother, she wasn’t physically abusive, fighting most of her battles elsewhere. She founded a non-profit organization against “ritualistic abuse” and traveled to law enforcement and other conventions.
         In a way, I’m glad that I had to deal with her puzzling personality, resulting in my passion for psychology. I’m also glad that my youth and my introversion send me to insightful books with some very real questions in mind.

Guardians of Youth

“Adolescence is not the age of hatred or vengeance; it is the age of pity, mercy, and generosity. Yes, I maintain…a youth of good birth, one who has preserved his innocence up to the age of twenty, is at that age the best, most generous, the most loving, and the most lovable of men. … [Yet] I can well believe that philosophers such as you, brought up among the corruption of public schools, are unaware of it.” –Jean Jacque Rousseau (Emile, Book IV)

Every human endeavor is surrounded with pitfalls to avoid. While many of us today can see potential drawbacks to homeschooling, some parents are hesitant today to question their methods’ potential shortcomings. But why shouldn’t homeschooling families benefit from reading stories of common pitfalls?

The level of freedom in many states is cavernous. Like philosophers, modern homeschooling parents are free to question countless educational assumptions, asking questions like: Are tests really necessary, or all subjects necessary? But unlike the philosophers, the questioning is not purely theoretical: their ideas shape their children’s learning, development, and adjustment to the world. Without an eye to the potential pitfalls, how can they succeed?

The lives of the homeschooled are perhaps like a little like the lives of the rich and famous: there is a façade of success and having-it-all together that some fear breaking. And because of the overwhelming success of some homeschoolers, others consider themselves above scrutiny. Also criticism-resistant is homeschooling’s religious rhetoric of calling: as in, it’s a calling to guard and teach young minds. There is also a fear that asking for help might call a parent’s abilities, or freedom to educate their children, into question.

A Higher Calling

Parents are recruited in a highly affirming, “Anyone can do this!, or do-it-yourself language. Many have also been recruited via religious rhetoric. Yet there is also a clear thread of denial. Denial speaks in terms of “We don’t want to know,” as bad experiences are discredited as isolated and overblown. The comparison of public versus home school exists to tear down complaint: no bullies, better curriculum, etc, etc. And the disadvantages are minimized, made small and insignificant.

There is also a common thread among some homeschoolers of resistance to authority–the perception that the government cannot know best, so children are pulled from public school and parents school them themselves. While in many cases of incompetence, this might be warranted, but homeschooling, too, is vulnerable to abuses that can occur apart from the village–the accountability and checks-and-balances of others.

A Look at the Dark Side

Apart from government oversight, there is yet another alternative, and that is awareness of the common areas of problems, and as opting into increased accountability, groups that will help both parents and children. We must recognize that human beings need each other if we are to overcome the blind-spots that are easy to fall into. If we relegate experiences of those in the shadows to unknown, then we deny the problem. We must instead admit that problems can easily form in our own homeschooling groups, and even in our own houses.

The needs of a growing mind are complex. Like a natural scientist, we must look at the whole ecosystem to determine the needs of the plant. We must not allow roots to bind, too tightly, around short-sighted methods; we must see the shadows and the light, and place ourselves within the narrative of the larger potential for humanity.

A Curious Habitat

At some time in your youth, usually quite young, you learn that under a rock, life is crawling. It might not be the most colorful or loudest exhibition of life, but again and again, expectation nudges you to see if the dirt underneath is darker than the dirt that surrounds, and whether that dirt is crawling with worms and beetles and turreted pill bugs. Later you learn about something called a natural habitat. A place that encourages a uniquely adapted life. A home.

It’s within the nature of living things to seek out that which feels right. For the very small human, curiosity drives them to lift the rock—that’s what feels right. For the bug, what feels right is that cool underside of rock, moistened dirt, the protection from the sun. It’s natural to seek shelter—healthy, vital. But for darker parts of human nature, it’s also natural to hide; natural to want to maintain what is sick, to keep it hidden and not let it be discovered. And aware of it or not, this tendency places some in danger, and some permanently in the dark.

For those hidden away from scrutiny, away from critique, darkness might be the norm. Sunshine may be avoided, and in the shadows, away from the help of others, we grow sick. But there is hope–we might shine a light. It’s not impossible to be open to light where we are, by simply reading, by listening, to stories of darkness, of what to avoid. Mistakes are easy to make, and we all need outside guidance. Even if we think we’re alright.

Stories of Youth

When I think of my childhood, I think of motion, my brothers and I in the backseat of the car; if on foot, we were following closely by my mother’s side. In the big city-suburbia of Dallas, we somehow got by without really knowing anyone, without anyone knowing us to well; a string of loose connections, acquaintances at the business we regularly visited, my mother’s friends far off on the telephone in California and Louisiana. But nobody knew what schooling we really did. And I got used to being unknown, not being asked by my mom, or anybody, of my progress. And I got used to that, used to hiding, keeping what I learned, what I didn’t, to myself. I thought it would always be that way. But as Mark 4:22 quotes Jesus, Everything hidden will be revealed, and everything secret will come out into the open.”

We write our stories in in attempt to reveal these landscapes, these hidden places which have some strikingly similar pitfalls, in hopes that light might shine more completely. In the shadowy land with immense areas of of self-accountability, guardian-teachers need to see from not only their own angle, but from the light in their children’s eyes. Let the experiences of those who have been on this path before inform you. Learning how to overcome the limitation of parent’s eye-view, seeing from other angles may not feel natural at first, but it could make a huge difference in finding out what works best for the students in your care.

Stripping off the Paint

At a meeting with my therapist, she observed of my husband and me, “You really are quite different.” It’s something which I might not acknowledge often enough, because ever since she said it, I’ve been rolling it over in my mind again, realizing the implications.
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“You really are quite different.” I realize that I’ve been in denial about that.
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I want him to be more like me–more open-minded, gentler, more active, and helpful. But he’s not. And he tries to change, but he is who he is. He’s opinionated, sometimes abrasive, he likes to laugh. And that’s that.
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Just one thing that a therapist is skilled at doing is to help us notice patterns in our lives that we might not notice ourselves. I have a pattern of accommodating others at the expense of myself. Stepping carefully around the feelings of others, allowing them to be who they are without my interruption.
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I’m accepting to the point of being someone else’s canvas, their paint splashing across me at oblique angles. I didn’t speak much growing up, but tried very hard to accept what my mother said and to not upset her. And my mom’s paint has splashed across, in passionate, bright colors and I did my best to keep still, my best to not appear bothered by her loudness, or her silencing my opinions.
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Although I’ve stripped most of the paint from my past, and there’s more colors in my world now, and I know how to get alone and hear myself, it’s hard to be myself around others who are loud.
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I’m introspective; I’m open and intuitive I want to study psychology, philosophy, and be a writer. I want more education. My husband is accepting of this–only to a point. But he talks bad about the impracticality of those who major in art or philosophy. He feels that my college loan debt is already capped. I’m done. Which I understand his perspective, I can’t call it my own. I want to invest myself, to live my life, and not be afraid.
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Seems like little decisions can pull us apart. Andy and I like most churches that I’ve visited in this town. He’s unhappy, angry even, at a couple. I’m fine with looking elsewhere just because I’m open to go wherever the Spirit of God is. Yet, I say this, and I end up… wishing we were at the last church, even more than the others, because of their outreach to the lost, the rock-style worship music, and because they have a diverse crowd. Because the outcast is welcome there. I feel welcome there. But I don’t love going with Andy because he doesn’t enjoy it. He makes little spiteful comments about things he disagrees with.
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This weekend my husband and daughter went on a trip to my husband’s cousin’s wedding in another state. It was just me. I’m thankful that we’ve been visiting around and found a new church home with a terrific pastor; I went to two churches on Sunday, and both were great. On the way to pick Andy up from the airport, I felt peaceful. Yet as soon as he is in the car and talking I can feel the negative energy. Like little bubbles piercing, little bubbles of sadness. My stomach started to feel heavy. And I started feeling tense. Maybe I’m just noticing this now because of the therapy? He has an affect on me. And it’s not always good.
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Maybe all relationships, all labors, take a toll on our bubbles of happiness?  Or maybe not. I couldn’t help but feeling that generally, friendships should uplift each other. Share commonalities. Depth. Disagree in healthy ways. I can’t help but feel that maybe we’re more different than I realized, more different than I can safely settle into.
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Who am I really? What do I look like? And if I showed my full colors, would the world run away? Would they not like it that I was no longer blank before them, so they could no longer drench the space that felt so urgently their own?

Girl in a Pool

Growing up, it was just me and two of my three brothers all the time, isolated while homeschooling. The rare interaction with children outside of my home were magnified in significance and re-projected in my mind; however mundane, these moments were played again and again, hoarded in my memory.

I was 9 or 10, my family lived in a nice neighborhood with a pool. I was swimming along, minding my own business when a boy laughed at me and said, “You have boogers!”

In that moment I felt terrible.

I felt terrible because I was being laughed at because there was something apparently wrong with me. And I felt terrible because I didn’t even know what boogers were. And not knowing a word that another child would use (or, so confidently hurl at me) felt shameful.

I turned and floated away, I checked myself while in the water, pushed my hair back, squeezed water out of my nose, etc. A moment later, swimming around again, the boy looked at me and exclaimed, “She picked it, she picked it!”
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That’s when I figured out he was talking about my nose. I hadn’t “picked it” but I was nonetheless gross. The grossest. For having a “booger.”
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It seems sort of silly now: he was just a boy who felt a need to alert the world to boogers and what one might uncouthly do with them. But at the time, it wasn’t water off my back. At the time, cruelty gripped me, and embarrassment held me under.
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I was sensitive child, and contrary to my mom’s intention, I wasn’t “guarded” by my isolation; it just made those moments stand out more, made me feel worse for having no idea of how to respond.
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Without practice of social interactions, I had no self-confidence. I was unable to brush comments off. If someone said something to me, it pierced me: I was automatically afraid that I might not know how to respond, or what they were talking about.
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So I tried to keep myself hidden–and succeeded sometimes–in hiding the tears, the insecurities, and areas of ignorance.
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I know a lot more now, but I’m still anxious and sensitive. That didn’t change overnight–perhaps it never will. But I realize now that many people feel nervous, and we’re in this together. Writing my thoughts makes me stronger.
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Expressing what’s hidden can make us stronger. It’s okay to be hurt or afraid. We don’t have to carry our burdens on our own; we can share them. While they may become momentarily heavier while speaking up, some of that weight lets go when we share our troubles with a trusted friend.

Brain, Interrupted

Every night, the brain conjures up visions of places and faces and creatures. We are carried away, perhaps taking flight in the narrative produced by our minds. It’s no small production, a dream. When we break away from that vision, sometimes we grasp for it, feel its loss like a fall to the earth. Sometimes those first rays of light pierce through our awakening eyes to our bodies, and we recoil, cover our heads.

Everyday our brains conjures our surroundings, and we must navigate many distractions and interruptions, and attempt to maintain a coherent narrative, accomplish our goals. It’s taxing, isn’t it? Yet we forge ahead. We keep our faces straight and our bodies tall. No outward recoiling from the interruptions and little falls.

But what if the world is even more of an interruption than you can stomach? What if noise reaches in beneath your skin, so that the click-click-click of the clock is prick-prick-prick upon your nerves. What if intensity of the light increases to piercing like a hangover, though you weren’t out drinking the night before.

We say reality is subjective. We say the world is observed with our individual senses, but how often to we claim that people should be able to modulate their experiences of it? Play it cool? Someone can be too sensitive, as though sensitivity is a personal problem–not a human one. If the world is too hard, too loud, too bright, too crunch-and-munching (eating-you-alive), you just need to toughen up.

There’s a terrible habit among the not-as-sensitive to correct those who are sensitive, thinking that bearing with it will make us stronger. But it doesn’t happen. We don’t get tougher. Instead we lose a part of ourselves in trying to pretend we are fine. We lose touch with humanity by trying to pretend that we’re not bothered by elements of it.

Whoever unsympathetically reminds us to “ignore it” needs to be reminded about that incredible work of the brain. Whether dreaming or wide awake, conjuring the world before you (the noises, the sights, the smells) is not a simple task. Sometimes that noise is more than we can bear.

Your sense of safely existing demands a degree of stability. For most, a rollercoaster doesn’t offer enough enough stability, leaving heads spinning, leaving you feeling uneasy to the core. For some, smaller interruptions are too much. No one can get back to the stable, unshaking ground, by pretending that everything is okay.

The same way other people need food and drink, you may need a share of silence. Perhaps that’s why you pull away. Perhaps you’ve told people how you feel, but they just dismiss it. They call you inconvenient. Picky. Controlling. But you’re not any of these things. You’re different, and you’re human, too.

We all have this complicated equipment and cannot demand that it all functions exactly the same. Doing so would be tyrannical. Accommodations aren’t always too much to ask for. After all, each of us hold this narrative of ourselves; each carries forth a beautiful person inside–and in order to be ourselves, we need a safe environment.

Jingle Hell?

It was the Christmas service at Cheyenne Hills in Wyoming, the second or third song into the service. My husband’s (paternal) grandmother was with us, along with our daughter. We each had decorated cookies before us, and the service was a spectacle of lights, spoken word, dancing, and music. Silent Night began, slowly and reverently enough, a female voice, backed by a piano. But after the first verse, Silent Night changed. A funky beat started, and the speed picked up. To make matters worse, the band wasn’t so harmonious within itself.

Andy didn’t take it well. “What the hell!?” he said, loud enough for the row in front of us to hear. I sort of wished he’d hold off his comments till afterwards, but he felt the musical fault glaring enough to publicly denounce. He later says, “When people go to church on Christmas, they’re looking to sing traditional songs, the way they know them, because it’s the one time of year they can do so.” His meaning: the music shouldn’t get too creative or funky.

He was already on edge about not liking the music at Cheyenne Hills, saying that the worship leader was “performing” instead of “leading.” I didn’t feel the same. I could hear myself singing, as well as the congregation, sometimes, which was more than I could say for some other churches, drowned out by the loudness of the instruments. I liked hearing myself–because, why sing if I couldn’t? But I didn’t want Andy gritting his teeth throughout the first 20 minutes of every Sunday service, either; so that Christmas, after he said that he was “done” with Cheyenne Hills, I said okay.

We moved to another church, called Element. It was going pretty well. The preaching was not quite as good Cheyenne Hills, in our opinions, but still good. Our daughter liked the children’s service. he music was loud, like a rock concert. Me, being a sensitive, seeker of quiet, I didn’t always want to go, after I began to wear ear plugs, I began to enjoy it. Really enjoy it. But due to my school schedule and other things, we ended up missing a couple months and only going twice monthly. Then came the Christmas Eve service.

The Element Christmas Eve service was a bigger fail than Cheyenne Hills. Instead of playing “new renditions” of old songs, or old songs, or new Christmas songs, etc, they just played ordinary songs; there was one Christmas song and the rest was their regular stuff. This struck me strange. Why have a Christmas Eve Service if it’s the same as an ordinary Sunday service? I wasn’t there (had to pick up my mom from the airport), but I’m guessing there was was another “What the hell?!” moment from Andy. And he says that it wasn’t just him, but many in the congregation were looking around, confused about the band playing several regular songs on Christmas Eve.

Before that point, we weren’t 100% about Element Church; after that, Andy was pretty sure he wanted to visit elsewhere. By February, with a crunch like winter’s thinning ice, Andy’s slivered-thin-loyalty totally crumbled. During the sermon, I had gotten up to go to the bathroom because of an upset stomach (I have IBS), then after the bathroom, my stomach still uneasy, I talked to some friends I barely get to talk to out in the lobby, instead of going back into church. I missed the message, but it seems that I’d heard a variation of it before. Andy said that the pastor “shamed the entire church into going to the volunteer meeting.” Saying, the members of the church are, “Pretty much useless if they don’t volunteer.”

But this was in the car. Between the car and the sermon was the volunteer meeting. I was so eager to help with the little-bitties, and I hadn’t volunteered at a church since we’d left England; eager to feel more like a part of the church by helping out. (I hadn’t volunteered anywhere since England. Cheyenne Hills had a policy that you had to attend for at least 6 months before volunteering for children’s church, and we’d not been there quite that long.)

Andy was very upset.  The Voluntour guide, kept saying, “Wow, we’ve never had this many people on a Voluntour before!” After the tour, Andy said, “Every time he said that, I wanted to punch him in the face!” There were only so many people in the tour, he said, because of Jeff’s putative message towards non-volunteering church-goers.

I do suppose Pastor Jeff meant what he said about wanting everyone in the church to volunteer in some way. But don’t suppose that he meant to put down works and whole stories that he couldn’t see. Sure, more people should volunteer, because they are members of the body. But members of the body are perhaps called to work in different ways, and not all can volunteer in church.

Andy works in the Air Force, and he’s prickly about additional volunteer requirements. It should be enough to do a really good job. But it’s not anymore. The Air Force now judges its members based on additional works. And it’s hurting careers. Sometimes doing your job well is utterly exhausting, and to attempt to take on anything else would be wrong.

I don’t know where we’ll end up, though we’ve visited 5 other churches in the last couple months. Andy continues to vent frustration at the name of Element or Cheyenne Hills. I’m sure these wounds will heal, and future Christmas’s shall be better–at least musically, I suspect–than the last two.

Update: Here’s my correspondence with Element Church (around April 4th)
Pastor Jeff,
I’m writing to let you know that you touched on a sore spot with one of your messages a couple months ago. It was a call for volunteers–a call for the body of Christ to serve in some way or another, rather than just showing up on Sunday.
My husband works in the Air Force, and has little time apart from work and family to volunteer. Which is why he’s touchy about the subject of volunteering. In the Air Force today, it’s not enough to work incredibly hard, but you’re graded and promoted based on volunteer involvement, even if that takes away from your regular job demands and family. And for him, it would. A couple of his supervisors without families remind him how they stay til 6:30 each night, but if he did that, he would barely see our daughter before her bedtime during the week.
We had attended Element for a while, weren’t completely set on it as our church home. But since that Sunday my husband has been angry–begrudging really–about Element, saying that the sermon called the church audience “basically worthless” unless they volunteer. I don’t believe this was your intention at all, nonetheless, we have been looking for a new church since that February sermon.
Wherever we go, we should be willing to talk about what we don’t agree with; I have hope that we will find a a greater level of connection, so if the teaching’s words hit a sour note, we might talk about the frames of our varied experience, instead of walking out the door, angry.
My daughter and I still attend occasionally, and we’re blessed when we do. It has been A LOT more good than bad, for sure! Thank you so much.
Tiffany McGee

Hey Tiffany,

Thank you for sending a note to us about your concern.
I do fully understand your concern, and I understand the position your family is coming from, in fact I know many people who are in similar situations and it is genuinely difficult to balance all of those demands.
I think it’s important to understand that the challenge Pastor Jeff gave to serve in the church is laced with grace.  For some people, they’re able to serve every week, some once a month, others may start out by serving in one of our summer outreach opportunities.
For us, we believe as a church that believers who are fully committed to Element Church as their church home should serve in some capacity.  Certainly the scope of volunteering varies.  I understand that not everyone volunteers in the church, but I do believe the challenge to volunteer for believers who are committed to a local church is an appropriate challenge.
We don’t want for anyone to volunteer that doesn’t genuinely want to volunteer.  All are welcome to attend and participate in the church, regardless of their volunteering.
I’ll be praying for your family, that you connect where the Lord sees best for you.  You’re always welcome at Element Church, please let me know if you have any further questions.
Blessings on you,
Pastor Andy Hazelet

Thanks for the reply Andy. I agree, that was a reasonable challenge to the church to become more involved. I was hoping to volunteer too when my husband took message the wrong way. I was trying to reconcile his feelings but I really do think he overreacted.

Element has so much going right, though none of us are perfect. I’m sure we (my daughter and I) will see you again soon.
Tiffany McGee

 

The Louse-y Day

It’s not supposed to be this way, is it? You’re not supposed to feel better when met with an upsurgence of stress?

Maybe I crave change, ANY change, but when a setback came, I felt kind of glad. Content. Not saying I’ll feel that way next time, but when my droopy-lidded, sunlight-dreading eyes caught sight of a well-defined mission, I awoke, ready.

It was during the biggest chore of the morning: brushing the hair of my protesting, sensitive-scalped six-year-old that I met the uninvited: the six-legged grain-of-rice-like creature and her friends.

“Oh no.” I said, spotting one, and then another.

“Awww, it’s cute!” my daughter said.

“This is bad,” I said, quickly locating “lice” on the internet.

“So cute,” she said again.

“We must kill it. They are bad bugs–they should not be in your hair.”

“No school today?” she asked.

“Nope, no school today.” I answered as I called in.

“Yeah!” she said.

That day, she sat pretty still while I oiled and combed her hair in the bathtub; nor did she complain on the trip to Walmart to buy the lice-killer shampoo. Not much else mattered anymore. Kill the lice. Sure there was reading and writing and cooking dinner. But killing the lice was job one.

Thankfully, I was geared to handle this little bump in the road.

Someday I’ll have a job outside the home. And hopefully there will be no bugs in sight.

Somewhere Inside

There’s a voice that pervades everything you do, like a shooting pain for every step forward. It says, “Stop everything you’re doing. You are failing. You can’t express yourself. You’re an embarrassment.”

It took time, years, to overcome the oppression. The unnatural capture, the heavy chains that held you down. But you fight it now and grow stronger, because you refuse to remain hopeless. Although you’ve escaped the isolation, a sharp realization of the world around you pervades. In every open space, you sense danger, as your body remembers the shots of criticism of the past: “You can’t do this. You will fail.” Every time you speak, the seconds draw out, like the weight of your words are too much for you, for anyone else, to bear.

You allow a new narrative to call: in the sunshine, friendships bloom, and in bedside, in notebooks, you come upon something like a voice. Inside, there’s a person with feeling, someone who’s often naive, who hasn’t acquainted themselves with all that’s in the world, but a person who you love, a person you forgive, even if no one else will.

It’s not easy to be in the world, to show yourself: the insecurities, the doubts, the vast need for improvement. It’s easier to hide the doubts and hope they go away. But admitting imperfection is better than remaining in fear.

It’s better to let go of the need to maintain appearances and speak your most honest truth. It’s better to feed the wild horse your last meal, not knowing where it will carry you, than to quell your own belly, and stay where forever where you are.

You will make your own path: strange, unplanned, brave, and surprising to the ones who once thought they knew you.

Together or Apart

Sometimes being around people who don’t understand you is worse than being alone; Jean Paul Sartre went as far as to say that “Hell is other people” in his play No Escape.  Being stuck with people who do not appreciate or listen to you, or maybe, operate at a different speed than you, can be a trial. But it’s part of being on earth, being human, I suppose. We are born into families and later have roommates and colleagues and a spouse and children who are separate from us. The clink of the spoon on the bowl, the chewing in mouth across the table, the cell-phone conversation on the bus next to you, is more grating because it comes from an external and uncontrolled source. Psychologically, self-created-noise versus external noise, is a difference of order to chaos.

Some people need special diets, having to avoid too much of certain foods; and some people need to avoid environmental stressors. Too much noise, touch, scents, lights, all can be a hazard for someone with a sensitive nervous system–someone like me. I get headaches from too much light, I’m easily chilled, I need frequent snacks and bathroom breaks, need space away from it all sometimes. What can you do when your most basic needs speak so loudly–but listen?

But not everyone understands this inner urgency: they don’t know how blank and empty you–the extreme introvert–feel if you don’t have books and music and time to yourself. They don’t know how hunger pangs turn you upside-down; how the sound of chips crunching is equivalent to a building-demolition for your senses. And your husband doesn’t understand when you don’t want to be touched, because instead of being turned on by his caresses, a touch to your thigh alerts you to the contents of your bladder.

Misunderstanding is at the root of so much strife, annoyance. We don’t understand why; we can’t put ourselves in another’s shoes, so instead we stand exasperated, asking questions. Why do you need to go to the bathroom so often? Why does it take you so long to get all of your things (sweater, sunglasses, a water, a snack…etc…, when you go places? All these questions seem to boil down to the question of, “Why must you be so much trouble?”

I don’t know why. But I can’t avoid being myself. I can’t avoid suffering. The truth is…life is full of it. But didn’t those of us who got married sign up for a challenge? Didn’t we commit to respect–which is to say, to appreciate that others may have a different angle–and to love the other–which is to consider another’s needs sometimes above our own? Why should people be together if they only tear each other down?

For a short time, we were apart due to failures of love and respect. Now we’re together, and our together better than it’s ever been. He seems to understand my needs. And I still need alone time…but now he understands. Now we feel a little less repelled by all that annoys, more at peace with the humanity that we share.