Gone!

"It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now"

Everything seems worse in the middle of the night. During the day we are busy with our routines and responsibilities and the sometimes overwhelming details of our lives get drowned out by our adrenaline charged activities. The problems are there but they seem manageable or we can push them to the back of our minds. But in the middle of the night it is quiet and there is nothing to distract us from seeing the magnitude of the situations we are facing; we are worn out and don't have any energy left for solving problems. Everything is out of proportion and discouragement looms over us like a dark cloud. Lady Antebellum's song "I Need You Now" is referring to a romantic relationship, but that's not what I hear - when the stresses of life keep me awake and threaten to overwhelm me with despair only turning to God can give me comfort and perspective. When we read or remember the strong and timeless promises in the Bible we can see the bigger picture and trust that God has an ultimate plan for our lives and the lives of our loved ones. Trust, that's really the key, and it's not easy!

It's human nature to want to control and plan every detail of our lives, it seems like the only responsible way to live. If we work hard enough this works pretty well most of the time, but then we somehow end up in a situation that is completely out of our control. Sometimes there is just no good solution to a problem, no obvious direction to go in, and every decision seems like the wrong one. We can expend a lot of energy struggling to regain control or we can take a step back, "let go and let God". We can't always see beyond the next step so we just have to pray, trust God's guidance, and step into the unknown. This reminds me of the Four Spiritual Laws that I learned as a child - we were supposed to learn them so we could easily witness to non-Christians and would always know the right thing to say. At one point I knew them all (though I don't ever remember using them to witness in any way) but now I only remember the first one: God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That is a pretty powerful statement to base your life on! He has a plan - it's not all up to us! So those overwhelming problems that we just can't figure out how to solve - hand them over to God and wait for guidance because his plans are so much better than we can ever imagine. It will take patience and it will take trust, but in the end it is the better way and often the only way. And that despair that threatens to overwhelm us? Gone!

gone

How did I get here? I'm in way over my head and I'm floundering. A year ago I was in a comfortable routine of work and home. I love my family and my church, but with three kids and a husband busy with an active church life could be chaotic! My job at the library was a welcome haven for me. I was confident in my abilities and loved the challenges of the reference desk and developing and maintaining my collections. The library was well run, the bar was set high for quality service and productivity, and my colleagues were responsible, competent, friendly, and fun-loving. I really couldn't have asked for a better work environment! And then we moved.

As I slowly eased myself out of my job, distributing my duties to various staff, I kept feeling like I was erasing myself from the library. Little by little I removed myself until I was gone. I told myself that surely I would be able to find a library job in our new rural home, but after nine months of job hunting nothing has turned up. And I feel lost. Every professional possibility that has appeared has been completely out of my comfort zone, and even those opportunities have been few and far between. So I'm contemplating applying to be an adjunct professor of Library Science at a nearby college. But every time I come close to applying I think "you haven't been in an academic setting in 25 years" and "what makes you think you can teach?" and "what about all the new databases you've never used?" Paralysis sets in and I don't call. Where did that confident professional go?

I'm volunteering at the local public library because I can't stay away from libraries - I love it so much I will work for free! Then the director suggested that I work on a grant proposal to update the health resources - great, I can do that, it's something I can really sink my teeth into! We met with a few community leaders and suddenly the project becomes about teaching youth how to evaluate the collection and choose new material - what the heck? This new direction makes no sense to me and I really don't want to work with a bunch of kids (not my strength). The director is vague on how to carry this out but keeps adding new people to the mix. Since when is collection development a group activity? But by now I am in too deep and I am committed (I should be committed!) So I am in way over my head. Where is my beloved career and my confidence? Gone. And there is a huge void. And I don't want to get up in the morning.

(Part 2 will be about how to snap out of it and trust God)

Friends

Facebook is an amazing phenomenon. At first I wasn't very interested in it; Megan created a page for me when she went to college so I could keep up with what she was doing and see her pictures, and I figured that I would check it once a week or so to see what she was up to. I quickly found out that facebook (or FB as we veterans refer to it) is not just for kids! New people were finding me and friending me every day, not only Megan's friends but my friends from various areas of my life - work, church, family, old friends, and new acquaintances - who knew I had so many "friends"!

I struggle with the idea of friendship. I am blessed to have many good friends but I don't know if I am a very good friend to have. Most of my childhood was spent in Africa as a missionaries' kid, and while this was a great experience in many ways, it meant that the friends I had were only in my life for one or two years at a time, not really enough time to form any kind of lasting relationships. By the time I hit high school in New Hampshire the list of friends made and lost was pretty long and I shied away from friendship of any kind. I did have one good friend in high school (thanks to her friendliness and persistence) and going to college together made the adjustment easier for both of us. College was a whirl of new friends and social activities for me, and I remember my senior year being a culmination of great experiences and relationships, but in the back of my mind I knew I would soon lose it all. A popular song at that time was from Michael W. Smith with this chorus:

And friends are friends forever

If the Lord's the Lord of them

And a friend will not say never

'Cause the welcome will not end

Though it's hard to let you go

In the Father's hands we know

That a lifetime's not too long to live as friends

I tried to believe it but in my experience once your friends are gone they are out of your life forever. And for awhile that was true.

Once I was out of the secure college environment I again struggled with finding and making friends - I tend to keep everyone at arm's length and I find it difficult to connect with anyone on more than just a surface level. I prefer to be in the background, watching the social interactions going on around me - I am naturally a shy, quiet person (publicly anyway - my family has had a different experience) which causes social awkwardness, which makes me more reticent... well you can see how this becomes a vicious cycle. I love the idea of being a "fly on the wall" - observing the social interaction around me but not having to participate in it - I'm a people watcher!

Which brings me back to Facebook. What a perfect social environment for someone like me! You can see what's going on in your friends' lives, observe the interactions with their friends and family, and you can choose to participate or not. It's fun to look at their photo albums, check out their interests and opinions, and read their status updates. And you know all of those friends that I lost track of over the years? I have re-connected with many of them, including friends from college, high school, the international school in Liberia (ACS), and even the Lutheran boarding school I attended in 4th and 5th grades in "up-country" Liberia (Phebe). We recently moved and Ed is serving a new church, and although it has been hard to leave friends and colleagues behind I can keep up with some of them on Facebook, and at the same time get to know some of my new church family in the same way! It truly represents a cross-section of my life, spanning the years of my life, places I have lived, and people I have known. Of course I still have to live in the real world and strive to develop and nurture friendships in person, but Facebook has added a whole new social dimension to my life and that can only be a good thing.

Mary's Boy Child

Christmas is a time for remembering. While driving to a family Christmas party today I heard one of my favorite Christmas songs on the radio - "Mary's Boy Child." Whenever I hear this song it brings me back to my childhood - I am 9 years old again, and at boarding school. As Methodist missionaries' kids in Liberia, West Africa, our best option for a good education was a Lutheran boarding school about an hour away from my home at the Ganta mission station, and my parents made the difficult decision to send my brother and me there at a young age. There were about 30 kids at the "hostel", as we called it, between the ages of 7 and 14, mostly missionaries' kids from around Liberia. We were cared for by our house parents, Uncle Ron and Aunt Elaine, and were bused to a school on a nearby college campus. Every night before bed we would all meet in the common area, a large living room between the girls hall and the boys hall, and have devotions. Sometimes a local teacher would come and tell us stories, and we would hang on her every word, eagerly waiting each night for the next installment of her story. Sometimes we would have music - I remember one night before Christmas vacation a young Peace Corps man came with his guitar and shared his music with us. "Long time ago in Bethlehem so the Holy Bible Say, Mary's boy child Jesus Christ was born on Christmas Day..." I had never heard this song before and I sat transfixed, soaking in the beautiful words and melody. "And man will live forevermore because of Christmas day." Such powerful words, and as young as I was I really felt the power of them that night. Thirty boys and girls, sitting in a circle in their pajamas on a warm African night, with the tropical sounds of frogs and fruit bats outside, quietly listening to a young man share the Christmas story. I will always remember the peace and purity of that moment and each Christmas when I hear "Mary's Boy Child" I am a little girl again, realizing for the first time the true meaning of Christmas.

The Promised Land

"I believe man was made for joy, Some men must find it in pain, some rivers flow in caves beneath the ground, sometimes there's sun in the rain." I recently rediscovered a favorite music group from my childhood - no, it's not a 70's heart throb group (the Partridge Family, anyone?) or a music icon like Michael Jackson or Bruce Springstein - my inspiration comes from a little known group called the Medical Mission Sisters. Yes, they are nuns, okay! Growing up on the mission field exposed me to many out of the ordinary experiences - I don't know what the typical American kid was listening to, but in my house the Medical Mission Sisters were often on the record player and I absorbed Bible stories and trust in God from their folksy, faith-filled music. Recent life changes have made stressful adjustments necessary, and when I needed something to lift my spirits their music came to mind. Listening to it again has been a joyful experience!

Joy is a hard concept for me to grasp. When everything in life is good it's easy to be joyful - it comes naturally - but when the hard times come (and they always do) joy can seem out of reach. It should be easier for me because I have had the best teachers on living a joyful life through serious adversity. Mom and Dad have struggled with the ravages of Dad's Parkinson's disease for over 20 years and they have often been frustrated and discouraged, if not despairing, but through all of their ups and downs (more downs than ups) they have never lost the joy that their faith in God has given them. Their friends and family feel terrible that Dad has been afflicted with this terrible disease, but I don't think anyone has lost sight of Mom in the background as wife, mother, caregiver, advocate, comforter, chauffeur, nurse, secretary, financial planner, personal shopper, family liaison, counselor, you name it, if Dad needs it she does it. What a toll it has taken on her! Her health, energy level, lifestyle, and moods have been drastically effected in spite of all of the positive steps she takes to care for herself. She begins each day with devotions, carefully plans nutritious meals, tries to exercise regularly, visits her doctors and counselor as needed, visits friends and family, participates in church activities, and keeps in touch with her support groups which include her Bible study group and her family. What more can anyone do?

A few weeks ago I reread the story in the Bible of when Joshua and the Israelites crossed the Jordan River and entered the Promised Land. The priests carried the Arc of the Covenant to the edge of the river and as they stepped in, the waters parted, leaving a huge wall of water on one side and a river flowing away on the other. The priests stood in the middle of the river while all of the Israelites (thousands? hundreds of thousands?) crossed safely to the other side. Of course the priests weren't holding the water back - God was doing that - but he used them to accomplish it and to give the Israelites the confidence to cross. This is a very compelling visual if you think about it, and when I think about it I see Mom. There she is, standing in the middle of the river of her and Dad's life while the waters of disease, stress, and fear pile up on one side of her and life flows away on the other. Meanwhile Dad slowly, laboriously crosses the river towards the promised land - and when he sees the overwhelmingly high wall of water he knows that Mom is there to stand between him and the fear and despair that threaten to engulf him. Mom is not holding the waters back, God is, but he chose her for the difficult job of helping Dad with his daily struggles. It's a life of sacrifice and anguish but she has also filled it with love and joy. People often say I look like my mother and that is a compliment, but it is more important to me to BE like her - to have her dedication and quiet, patient strength. And to somehow find the inner joy that shows through her life. Of course the answer is faith, and trust in God's ultimate plan for us.

To quote the Medical Mission Sisters: "Is there a song to ease our sorrow, to lead us along into tomorrow, to show us how to live in our now, Father thy will be done, Father thy will be done."

Diamonds

I watched the "Great Pumpkin" Halloween special the other night and I was struck again with how dark those stories really are. Good grief, Charlie Brown is a seriously depressed kid! In this one show he got rocks in his trick-or-treat bag when everyone else got candy, he got a party invitation by mistake - he was really on the "do not invite" list, he was taken in by Lucy's football gag again, and his friend Linus was laughed off the stage by his schoolmates. And yet we continue to watch these holiday specials every year and have a real affection for them - why is that? Maybe Charlie Brown represents something in all of us - our fears, our insecurities, our feelings of isolation, and even our tendency towards depression. If we can watch it on TV or read it in a comic strip then we can laugh at it and those feeling don't seem so terrible anymore.

I never thought much about depression until a few years ago. I had the usual ups and downs of life but nothing too serious or disturbing. My unstable childhood included moving every few years, many different schools, and never being able to maintain friendships (if I didn't move then my friends did), which resulted in shyness and insecurity. But because of my loving family and our Christian faith I was happy through all of the upheaval, and that provided a solid foundation to bring into my adulthood. Life swept me along through college, graduate school, marriage, three children, the ministry for Ed, and library jobs and I thought I was coping with everything pretty well. As the kids got older and moved towards college age the demands on my time multiplied and my ability to keep up started to slip, but how could I complain? I had no more on my plate than anyone else I knew, so I just kept trying to stay on top of everything and the pressure kept building.

Of course I finally reached a breaking point - I woke up one morning with the world spinning and thus began a nightmare of dizziness and exhaustion that lasted for months. I had to let go of everything because I was barely able to function - it was like I had been holding onto a bunch of balloons that got bigger and heavier until I got sick and had to let go of them all. What was left was a useless shell of a person, at least that is how I felt (my family says otherwise). And that is when depression came into my life. Maybe I was depressed before my illness - is being stressed and overwhelmed a kind of depression? I don't know, but it certainly eventually resulted in depression. I went for walks every day during my illness because only when I was walking did my head feel close to normal, but I always knew that I would have to stop walking eventually and the horrible dizziness would be back (I've heard it described as going up and down a spiral staircase under water). No one knew how close I came to stepping in front of a car during those walks - I couldn't bear the constant dizziness and I was sure my family would be better off without me - I was just a burden. That's how out of touch with reality I was because of course it would have been devastating to my family! Three things stopped me: I couldn't bear to do that to the driver of the car, a deep seated survival instinct, and the protective hand of God.

I finally emerged from the dark tunnel of illness and slowly gathered up the pieces of my life but I was not the same as before - I had a new awareness of the dark side of life and of how depression can creep up on us. I didn't want to shy away from the reality of depression, I wanted to look it in the face and acknowledge its existence. I was drawn to the song "Child Psychology" by Black Box Recorder with the line "Life is unfair, kill yourself or get over it" - I had to stop playing it because it was freaking the kids out! On the show Gilmore Girls Rory says she likes the song because it makes her "gloomy" but to me it is more about fighting against despair - the implication is that killing yourself is not an option so get over it.

Another song that struck a chord with me was "Into the Ocean" by Blue October, especially the lyrics in the chorus:

I want to swim away but don't know how

Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean

Let the waves up, take me down

Let the hurricane set in motion, yeah

Let the rain of what I feel right now come down

Somehow these words express how I felt before the vertigo hit, and how I still feel sometimes when life is too overwhelming and I'm having difficulty coping. Sometimes it seems like it would be a relief to just let go of all of the stress and worry, and allow myself to be swept away in a wave of feelings. And in a lot of ways that is exactly what I should do. Of course I still have to fulfill my responsibilities to my family, my church, and my career, but I need to let go of the stress and worry and trust my future to God. He says "come to me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest" and that is what we all have to do - rest in the knowledge that God really is in control and does have a plan. In other words "let go and let God!" It sounds too simplistic and it is not easy but it is the only way to keep from falling apart.

Depression is pretty widespread in our culture, and this is evident by how often we see it in pop culture, which is another way to say I found a third relavent song! A recent song by Rob Thomas addresses depression from a different point of view - that of those effected by the depression of a loved one. "Her Diamonds" expresses the helplessness of watching someone you love struggle with depression, at least that's what I hear in it:

By the light of the moon she rubs her eyes

Sits down on the bed and starts to cry

And there's something less about her

And I don't know what I’m supposed to do

So I sit down and I cry too

And don't let her see

And she says oooh I can't take no more

Her tears like diamonds on the floor

And her diamonds bring me down

Cuz I can't help her now

She’s down in it

She tried her best and now she can't win

It's hard to see them on the ground

Her diamonds falling down

There are a couple of things that struck me with this song. The line "And there's something less about her" is heartbreaking to me, because that is how you feel when you are sad and hopeless - like you are less than you were or you should be, and obviously that is how others see you as well, whether or not they admit it. "Her diamonds bring me down cuz I can't help her now" shows how agonizingly helpless it is to watch someone you love shut themselves into their sad world where you can't reach them to help, and the comparison of diamonds to tears emphasizes the preciousness of our relationships.

When things aren't going our way and our future is uncertain it is easy to wallow in sadness and apathy, but this behavior is a slippery slope that can lead to depression and a point of no return. We have to remember the ripple effect our actions have and focus on the positive things in our life and what we can do to change our situation. In other words don't give in - fight the negative thoughts! We can and must acknowledge the things in our lives that make us sad and stressed, and we can express our feelings in music, art, humor, writing, talking, and whatever else helps take the fear and stigma away. But most importantly we must cling to our family and our God for strength and security, because shutting them out is the worst thing we can to. Let's laugh at Charlie Brown, cry with Rob Thomas, and ride the waves of life knowing that God will always catch us when we fall, if we let him.

Gratitude

Dad doesn't have very many good days. Sometimes it seems like every time we visit we have to witness a new nightmare for him, whether it is mealtime messes, bathroom mishaps, mobility issues, or psychotic symptoms, just to name a few. It's hard to remember that this man was in charge of health care for the country of Liberia, then for the state of New Hampshire, and finally for the state of West Virginia. He needs round the clock care and he doesn't often express gratitude for the care he gets from the nursing home staff or his family - why is that? Maybe it's because after managing a staff of professionals for so many years he expects people to simply do their jobs; maybe it's because it takes so much of his energy to perform day to day functions that he has no energy left for gratitude; or maybe it's because when you need help for every little thing you do, every moment of every day, the burden of gratitude becomes too great, and he can't think about it anymore. Never-the-less I know it is disconcerting for my mother, who has done so much for him on a daily basis for over twenty years.

A few weeks ago Mom and I arrived at the nursing home to find Dad bent over double in his wheelchair, unable to move or call for help. We quickly went to find aides to help him into bed (it takes two people and a lift), and we realized that the medicines he had been given almost an hour ago were still in his mouth - he had been unable to swallow them. We called the nurse who insisted that he HAD swallowed them, while we tried to explain that we had found them in a wad in his mouth - confusion reigned. Until a quiet, authoritative voice from the bed said "what are you going to do about it?" We all paused and looked at the broken, helpless man who had calmly taken control of the situation. There he was, the man who had supervised the opening of clinics all over Liberia, who had worked with Liberian government leaders and New Hampshire and West Virginia governors and legislators, cutting right to the heart of the situation, as he had always done.

The nurse got him more medicine and we settled down for a visit. Dad could hardly move or talk, but when I showed him the candy I had brought him from Granite State Candy Shoppe, his favorite sugar mints, his eyes lighted up. He indicated that he wanted a piece, and opened his mouth as I placed a pink sugary disk on his tongue. He closed his mouth and his eyes and smiled ear to ear, looking completely content. Gratitude? Maybe. I know I was thankful to catch a glimpse of the father I grew up with and who is buried in his disease, and I treasure the memory of his contented face as he enjoyed a simple piece of candy.