Why I love Pratum

Apparently there was a big fight after school today. The football game at the after school program turned a bit frustrating for a particular boy, and he was mean, and said some bad words. Or, so says Josiah. Now, let me just make it clear that in telling this story in a humorous way, I am by no means belittling Josiah or making light of the fact that this was a big deal to him. He talked with both Jeff and I about the trauma of the experience and even told Jeff he wasn't playing football again with these boys because of the conflict. The point of this short post is to make a point about why I love Pratum.

See, when I questioned Josiah about these "bad words" that the "mean" boy said, the somewhat shamefaced reply (kind of like, "I shouldn't be repeating anything this bad") was "Shut up you pie face!"

And this is why I continue to love Pratum!!!

Symptoms

I've had a thought percolating for a few days, and I've wanted to share it with you. Unfortunately, my kids don't think now is a good time for me to blog. Something about wanting breakfast. However, I really want to get this thought out there for you to be chewing on with me. . . so I think I'm going to go for it. If it seems disjointed, or cuts off abruptly, just know that I succumbed to the mother in me and decided to make the kids some toast.

A few years ago I was struggling with a different issue. This particular issue had been on the front burner of my emotions and mind for what seemed like far too long. I remember being in church one day, during worship, and begging God to take away my anger, confusion, frustration and ongoing angst over this issue. (I had been seeing a counselor for over a year at this point) As I stood there, God spoke gently to my heart, and his loving words were something like this, "My child, the pain you feel, the anger and angst and confusion, are just symptoms of the deeper problem, which is still there. If I answer your prayer and take away these symptoms, it will remove your motivation to work on the deeper problem. And if that deeper issue stays rooted in your heart, it will continue to impact and influence your life in negative ways. So, no, I will not remove your pain, angst, anger, confusion. . . yet."

It dawned on me, like the sun burning through the fog on a summer morning at the lake, that my pain was God's grace. That what I had labeled as "not good," was actually a demonstration of God's amazing goodness to me. The goodness to look at the long-term, and not just patch up my short-term.

As I've been "sitting in it" for the last couple weeks, I've come back to this idea of "symptoms." Symptoms are the things in our lives that we don't like, but which motivate us to change. I think part of the reason God is calling me to stay in this place of self-examination, and not rush off, is because I need to recognize how my symptoms truly impact my family and me. It gives me the motivation to continue doing the hard work of change.

In the last few days I've started thanking God for my symptoms, the things in my life that I usually beat myself up over - like staying up way too late surfing the internet and then being too tired in the morning to be sharp for my kids. My usual pattern is to give in to the compulsion, feel guilty about it, try harder to discipline myself not to do it, and kick myself for a few days. Lately, I've been more calm about it, looking objectively at it and saying, "Oh look, my symptoms are showing. I need to keep on the path of sitting in this emotional pain so that God can get out the ENTIRE root of this problem."

I fully believe that at the end of this stage of this journey (for the journey itself, I believe, is life) I will have hope and healing and a new way of doing daily life. As my friend Joyce said in her comment a few days ago, "Take courage, this is all 'death unto life' stuff."

Breakfast time!

Snotty baby and a kitchen knife

I was looking for an old e-mail with a story about my dirty laundry (remind me to post that one sometime) when I found this. It's an e-mail I sent in July of 2007 (when Abby was 10 months). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! :)

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Hi friends -

I have a short story I just have to tell.

Last night I was working on dinner and Abby was laying on the floor crying. She'd been there for awhile. It had been a hard day. Truth be told, it's been a hard month for me - emotionally and spiritually. Just have a case of the doldrums I think. God is slowly and subtly renewing my spirit. He is good.

Anyway, back to last night - hard day, crying baby. I'm trying to cut up watermelon and heat up leftovers and feed the boys. Jeff is at the farm, continuously. :) ('Tis the season! ) Abby's still crying on the floor. I keep throwing toys and kitchen gadgets her direction - hoping she'll become interested enough to quit crying. But she's had enough wisks and jar openers for the day and she want one thing. And one thing only. The only thing is - the one the she wants is the only thing she can't have. . . . ME!!

I contemplate putting on the front pack, as I've done recently at dinner time, but my back is tired, my brain is weary, and besides, I'm wielding a large knife to cut up watermelon. Somehow baby in front pack and mom with large knife just doesn't seem like a good fit. I look down at her pathetic self - red eyes, darling pouty lips, and snotty nose - and I'm at my wits end.

So I start to thinkin', and I'm like, "She wants me and she can't have me, how do I help her when I can't offer anything. What will she do as she grows older? Where will I teach her to turn when she is in need? Duh. . . God. But that doesn't really apply in this situation, does it? Baby crying on the floor, mom making dinner with a large knife, how can God enter in and fix this?" But, oh me of little faith, I still throw up a prayer. "God, could you please enter in on Abby's behalf and soothe her? She wants her mom right now, could you come with your presence and offer comfort to her heart and hold her as a mom?"

I didn't get past "please", in that short prayer, before Abby stopped crying. Cold turkey, just stopped. No whimpers, no last dirty looks at me, just calm and content. Rolled over and started playing with the last toy I had thrown at her. (I use the term "thrown at her" loosely - I wasn't really hurling toys at my baby girl!) I startled at the amazingly fast answer to my prayer (Customer service agencies could take a lesson here) got a big grin on my face and shed a small tear. "God, you really do care about us. How do you enter in to such a little thing as this. You're amazing!"

And that's almost the end of the story - but 10 minutes later she whimpered a little, and I'm ashamed to admit that I thought, "Surely God won't do it again, surely it's my responsibility now to pick her up and take care of her." But dinner wasn't quite on the table yet, so I said another quick prayer, and, as if He just wanted to prove His point, God gave Abby the peace to play on her own for another 15 minutes. I kid you not!

After a long month of internal wrestling and weariness. After a week of self-questioning and feeling guilty about all the things I'm not accomplishing most days. After 3 weeks of the busiest season of the farming year (5 more busy weeks to go and then we're headed back to sanity) At a low of lows, God used a snotty faced baby and a kitchen knife to reveal His power and love to me. The God of the universe came to my kitchen and held my baby while I cooked dinner. Now that's some powerful love. And that's some budding faith. I can sense the weight lifting and the Spring coming. Not because I am smart or obedient or organized, but because that God, He's Good.

May you see God's goodness in the smallest of details in your life today - Jen :)

Tuesday

Just can't leave my blog with a Monday taste in it's mouth! Tuesday is a bit more promising at the moment. Popped out of bed a bit easier. Seems my head is working a little clearer. Have a sense of purpose for the day. . . now if I can just get off this computer and go start the day with the kiddos. :)

Monday

Do you ever wake up with the distinct feeling that it's going to be a long day?

A song

So yesterday I turned on some worship music and started working in the kitchen. You know the state of my heart lately - that I've been doing a lot of soul searching. So I started listening to the words on the iPod, and I found myself astounded at God's goodness and creative ways of getting the truth into my heart. Just thought I would share it with you. It's a song called Rain Down, from the album "In Our Day" which is live worship by various artists.

Looks like tonight the sky is heavy

Feels like the winds are gonna change

Beneath my feet the earth is ready

I know it’s time for heaven’s rain

It’s gonna rain

Cause it’s living water we desire

To flood our hearts

Holy fire

Rain down

All around the world we’re singing

Rain down

Can you hear the earth is singing

Rain down

My heart is dry but still I’m singing

Rain down, rain it down

Back to the start

my heart is heavy

Feels like it’s time to dream again

I see the clouds and yes I’m ready

To dance upon this barren land

Hope in my hand

Cause it’s living water we desire

To flood our hearts

Holy fire

Rain down . . .

Do not shut

do not shut

do not shut the heavens

But open up

open up

open up our hearts

Rain down . . .

Give me strength to cross this water

Keep my heart upon your alter

Rain down, rain down

Give me strength to cross this water

Keep my feet don’t let me falter

Rain down, rain down

Rain down . . .

Sit in it

Several years ago, I had a sharp, recurring pain in my knee. Turns out I had some bone in my joint scraping the back of my kneecap. It was excruciating. When the pain in my knee would hit, my body would simultaneously do whatever it took to remove the pain. Call it a "knee jerk" reaction. Kind of like sticking your hand on a hot surface. You don't have to think about it. No one has to tell you. You just jerk your hand off that burning spot as a reflex. An unplanned response. Not pre-meditated, just automatic. My knee was like that. My body had an automatic response - when the bone hit bone, my knee would give out. In an attempt to relieve the pain as quickly as possible, the muscles, ligaments and joint in question would stage a coup on my brain and quit doing their job. "Release pressure to knee" was the message relayed along the front line of the rebelling body parts. "Do not follow through on the brain order to sit. Do not maintain standard procedure of muscle control in legs. All systems shut down. At all costs, stop this pain." More than once I crashed onto the chair, or toilet, onto which I had been lowering myself. I was concerned that my knee was truly giving out and that there was something anatomically wrong. The doctor explained that, other than the bone problem - which was remedied with some physical therapy - I did not have a knee weakness. It was psychological. It was my body's way of avoiding pain.

Along similar lines, I realize I have developed certain life-long habits to protect my right ankle. If you've been reading this blog long you know that I've had a weak ankle since I was a freshman in high school. (which, by the way, was in 1986!) You also know that God has done a healing in that ankle and it is stable and strong. In the year since my healing, I have noticed some habits I developed without really thinking of it. For example, I don't buy skinny heel shoes, because they're too tipsy. I hesitate to walk on severely bumpy surfaces, because their unpredictable slopes can be an ankle twister. When stepping down from a high place, I step left foot first, so the pressure is born on the stronger foot. Likewise, when walking on a steep slope, I always keep my left foot down hill. These habits are unconscious. Unnoticed. Unplanned. I did not decide to live this way, with a built-in protection for one body part that puts uneven stress on other body parts (hips, left foot, etc. . . ) I simply protected my weakness. I built structures around certain life activities in order to protect myself from repeated pain and injury.

I think the same can be said of me, and us, emotionally. Stay with me here. We all have emotional injuries: moments we haven't thought of for years, but which hurt none-the-less. Some of these are obvious - broken marriage, loss of job, accusation - and some are less obvious - a subtle shift in a friend's attitude, a childhood rejection buried for years, a dream surrendered, or even shattered. . . I'm not sure what it is for you, but I'm discovering what it is for me.

In the pain of our emotional injuries, we have some unplanned, not pre-meditated, knee jerk, "At all costs, stop this pain!!" self-protection responses. Something gives out. We withdraw from a relationship and pull our heart deeper into ourselves. We vow, "I'll never make the mistake of trusting so-and-so, or such-and-such, again." We build structures of self-protection around certain life activities and situations in order to protect ourselves from repeated pain and injury. These walls, or fortresses, can be invisible obstacles in the deepest part of our being. So we find, in our current relationships, that there are these odd places where we get stuck. They make no sense. The people in our lives now are trustworthy, kind, loving, protecting. . . yet we overreact in certain situations. We get angry. Or we withdraw. Or we become judgmental, impatient, critical, negative, insecure, depressed. . . We can objectively look at the situation and see that it does not merit the depth of anguish we feel, but we cannot make sense of it. OR we don't feel a depth of anguish, we are curiously removed from the situation. We know it should impact us somehow differently, but there seems to be an impenetrable wall separating us from our emotions.

How does this happen? What has happened? Here is my hypothesis: Like an acute pain, we have learned to jerk away from emotional pain. When we start to sense the inevitable progression of emotions, we turn off before we get too close to the pain. Various situations can trigger old pain, and we revert into default, self-protection settings. We are so good at self-protection that we can turn on a dime - divert the emotional traffic in contorted detours - and the amazing thing is that these detours can make sense to us, or be undetected by us, because it's all part of the knee jerk reaction that says, "At all costs, avoid this pain." In other words, "I've been there before and I'm not ever going back."

And like a recurring injury, we build habits into our lives that help keep us from coming close to that kind of pain again. We walk a different way. We stiffen our back at the right time. We close our ears and minds to certain conversations. We avoid certain people and situations. Perhaps we harden our heart during worship because we know if we are vulnerable, it will open a floodgate. Perhaps we keep ourselves busy because if we don't have time to examine our hearts, we won't have to face the pain. Perhaps we spend our days critiquing others, being quick to see their weaknesses and failures, because to look at our own is too painful.

The reason I'm writing about all this is because I've discovered a hidden pain in my life. I mentioned last week that my weaknesses are showing, and that I've been struggling. One of the emerging truths is that, while I have finally created space in my life by taking control of my schedule, I do not know how to use that time and space for true rest. I divert to the internet, or iPod games, or a good book, or. . . rather than sit still. I've suspected for months that there must be something I'm hiding from, if I so astutely avoid personal introspection. I can do spiritual introspection. I can do Bible Study. But to simply be still, doing nothing - leaves too much room for painful past experiences to percolate to the surface. The funny thing was, I had no idea what it was I might be hiding from. I'm well aware that my life has been far from painless. I have no delusions of perfection. In fact, I have several areas that have already endured serious soul-searching. However, I could not, for the life of me, begin to sort out what the root of this lack of rest might be.

This weekend God began to expose a piece of it. Just the hem of the garment, I suspect. Silly as it may sound, much of it goes back to my grade school years. Even high school and college. A recurring thread of "Jennifer, you're not cool enough to be my friend." The not-so-secret crush who asked me to "Go with him" and was eagerly accepted, only to declare it a joke and reveal the hidden presence of several of my "friends" - who ran off laughing. The "best friend" of one month who declared, "I thought you were the one to be friends with to be cool, but I was wrong." The roommate who moved in expecting we were a social hub, only to find it fairly boring and move out, in search of a living situation more to her liking. Small things with big emotional impact. I found myself weeping over memories of loss and rejection. Yet why would even this have an impact in my life now. I have friends, a wonderful husband, lovely children, success on several levels. Why now? Why this way? And how in the world is this related to my inability to find rest?

Because I'm hiding. I'm hiding the deepest part of me from myself, and others, because it's too hard to have my true heart rejected. It's terribly painful to be told over and over again, in various dialects, "You're not enough." It's terribly painful to wear your heart on your sleeve, an eager friend, and come up short over and over again. As this began to come clear, I asked God, "So now what? I see the pain. I believe it's a piece of the puzzle. What do I do with it? How do I get over it, be healed, and be unstuck?" God lovingly, gently said to my soul, "You sit in it. You sit with the pain until you can see it clearly." In essence, He was saying, "You stay in this place until you can feel it fully. You resist the knee jerk reaction to withdraw from pain, and you stay long enough to discover the walls you've put up in order protect yourself."

For the walls erected to protect my heart, also keep out life and light, and God cannot touch and heal what is in the dark. When it is brought into the light, then He can heal it. Pain that we hide from because it's too hard to face, is pain in the dark. It's festering, hurting, impacting us in unseen places, popping up in unpredictable ways. Pain left in a dark corner of our heart, behind protective walls, is often the root of other problems in life. Shame, perfectionism, compulsive behaviors, drivenness, depression. . . I wonder how much of it could be traced back to hidden pain? Pain that on the outside we say, "Oh, that's no big deal, I'm over it." But just like my healed ankle, we have a lifetime of habits set up to work around the injury and protect it from further aggravation. Those protection strategies worked well for the original pain, but they wreak havoc on life as we know it. We think we're "fine," but the truth is we're anything but fine.

I'm not recommending that you go get an emotional shovel and start digging for trouble. I am suggesting that if you, like me, have some stuck spots in your life - if you have a knee jerk reaction to avoid to certain issues in your life, or if you're a professional at emotional detours - you may want to look a little closer. Do the risky work of asking God to expose any hidden pain, and then sit in it long enough to see your way out. That's where I'm sitting these days, so you're in good company.

p.s. Did I tell you all I'm going back to STEPS? It seems it's time for a refresher course.