Heartless

Last week, I sat in a hospital room with a family I've known for years.  The mother lay in the hospital bed in her last days, actually hours, as she died two hours after I went home that night. 

 Two weeks ago, I was on vacation and got word that a missionary friend got sick and took a sudden turn for the worse and died without notice it was coming.  

Three weeks ago as I left for vacation I was missing the funeral for a friend who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and died two months later.

If you ask me, that's a lot of death to cross my path in one month.  I am an empath, which means I feel things.  I love and hate that fact about me.  It allows me to reach out to people and be a comfort in hard times, it allows me to see both sides of issues and find common ground, but it also can overwhelm me.

 I in no way ever want to make someone else's pain about me and take attention away from their grieving, but I still feel the suffering.  The reality is, as one who works in pastoral care for a church, my business is to be there.  I love to be there for others. I want it no other way, but as I sat and looked at a woman I had conversations with, and shared life with, I realized, I need to be careful.

I can't let the grief around me swallow me whole and leave me in depression city, but on the flip side I also can't let it turn me into someone heartless.  It could be easy to flip the switch and just stop feeling, but that would help no one.

I love this song by Adrien Reju! I heard it on a Hallmark movie, searched and found the song and artist.  I learned to play it on my guitar and sung it for a voice recital several years ago.  I think her words remind us of the importance of finding that balance in life between letting the turmoil around us take us down or alternatively, harden us.

Instead I have to find the balance. It takes work.  For me the relationship I have with Jesus and time in scripture help me.  My relationships with others is also a crucial component to my mental health and lastly, all things funny, help me keep my balance.  I have to be encouraged, loved on and laugh.

Have you ever thought about the extremes you are prone to?  What helps you live in balance?  What do you need to be careful of?  Are you paying attention to those things or just ignoring them and then getting discouraged when life seems to crash and burn?  Maybe its time to find what that looks like for you.  I know finding it for me, is crucial in life! Happy Wednesday! 

Don't Wait Til Its Too Late

Let's get real for a minute.  I have about 5 unfinished posts in drafts that will one day appear or will be deleted, and part of that is because I get thoughts ALL THE TIME!  Little flashes that if I don't write down right away will drift off never to be explored again, well at least not in the original state. So I have notes to myself everywhere.  If I can pick them up when I have time to write and the motivation behind it is still alive within me, then it becomes a post, but if that thought just feels stale when I go to write it, then it goes to my writing cemetery.

Yesterday, I got up and wrote a post, but decided it needed a bit more to be worthy of you, my reader.  So I had every intention of editing it to be read today, but instead, I opened my planner during staff meeting (yes, I still like paper) and noticed a thought I'd scribbled down a few weeks ago that I have yet to explore and decided that would be better to share.

The thought was this:

"By the time you feel thirst, you are already dehydrated."

I had heard this sentence in a video I had to watch before getting into the lottery for a permit for a hike a friend and I wanted to do on our trip this upcoming October (we didn't get the permit by the way - sad day).

The fact is, this is also true for life.  Often by the time we recognize an issue in our life, we are already in trouble.

As I have met with others in their own life messes lately and even sat in my own, I have discovered that too many of us life with our head in the sand when it comes to the obstacles that keep us from living the life we want.   We have to be intentional in understanding who we are, what we need, and where our weaknesses lie, so that we can protect them.

Guess what, the body needs water to survive, even if you aren't climbing a mountain in the desert.  If we fail to give our body what it needs it will shut down.  The same is true for our soul.  If we fail to recognize our emotional needs and push ourselves to the limits, we will break.

We are human.  Say it with me, "I am a human. I have limitations."

Its not okay to ignore reality and act like we are fine when we are not.  That doesn't mean we announce it to the world or introduce ourselves with our downfalls, because we are not defined by our weaknesses and shortcomings, but if we ignore them or hide them we only feed them and allow them to take over.

Asking for help is hard to do and admitting you have messed up or have issues can be humbling, but we all have them.  We need to start with reality and do what we need to thrive so we don't end up emotionally and spiritually dehydrated.

Are you prone to depression? Ignore your tendency to seclude yourself and build in a solid, encouraging community.

Do you overspend and leave yourself financially unstable?  Get rid of credit cards and have someone help you set a budget and hold you accountable to stick with it.

Are you an addict?  Get help from a counselor or treatment center.

Do you get stressed by over scheduling? (This is one of mine) Do less and give yourself the time you need to recover from the day to day.

Maybe this seems over simplified and on some level it might be because these are generalizations and you are an individual, but the truth is, we often get frozen by fears and lack of desire to change, when we need to just move in a positive direction.

Don't wait until you are dehydrated, but if you do, realize, at the state of dehydration, its beyond just drinking water, you may need medical attention.  If you have let an issue go too far, you are beyond the point of self-regulating and you need to involve trusted experts or medical professionals into the process.

Maybe you aren't yet dehydrated but you are on your way and you have to stop and drink some water.  That may just be admitting you are not giving enough attention to an issue in your life and creating a plan to make a change.  Just know you are worth it!  Fight for yourself! I'm here if you need to talk or need direction in where you need to turn, but just know we all have problems and issues and you are not alone.  Let's give our bodies, mind, spirit and emotions what they need to not just survive, but thrive.  Happy Wednesday!

Broken Child

When I was in high school, I went on a tour of Israel with a group of adults, led by my dad, as the Army post Chaplain.  The trip was truly remarkable! Beyond the Biblical sites we visited, our trip included some time at the Holocaust Museum. There are so many profound moments I can recall from that one place, but the one I will share with you today involves a statue on the property.  

It is the statue of Yanush Korzack surrounded by a mound of children, in honor of his work with kids.  As I stood before it and took it in, I heard God say, “Carrie, that is you.”  I felt in that moment that God gave me my mission in life to rescue children.  Honestly, it wasn’t something I fully understood in that moment, but have come to unpack its truth throughout my journey. 

Many years later, I was at a local camp during a women’s retreat leading a workshop over the weekend on, “Healing from the Pain in your Past.”  After the workshop, I stood and spoke with a few women as they were unpacking the pain in their hearts.  In that moment, I heard from God again - this time he said, “Some of the children you rescue will be little girls inside grown women.”  

What an amazing revelation?!  Have you ever seen someone share about a trauma in their childhood?  It doesn't matter their current age, its like they have transformed right before your eyes as the pain they carry has transported them to that exact moment years ago.  You can almost see that child before you.  

People are amazing to me, yes, we can stereotype and categorize and use those things to find commonalities and guess at how we will respond in certain situations and yet, being human means we are all unique, we can deviate from our norm at any time without known explanation.  

Two people can go through the exact same crisis - one will be crushed, another will use it as fuel to climb the next peak in life.  No matter what we see on the outside, we never really know the narrative that plays out in someone's heart and head. 

This profound truth struck me again tonight as I watched the latest episode of, “This Is Us.”  We can go on with life, find success and see our dreams revealed and yet no matter what, that child inside of us still lives.  Parts of us remain broken, unless we are intentional to fix it.   We can keep going and growing even with the brokenness remaining inside.  It resurfaces from time to time depending on the triggers we encounter, but it doesn’t go away.  

That is one the biggest lies we believe about our past - if we ignore it, it will go away.  It doesn’t!  

We have to be rescued or choose to rescue ourselves.  That is why I am passionate about helping people explore those broken pieces and allow God to lead them on a journey to put them back together.  We don’t have to live with the broken child, or broken adolescent inside of us our whole lives.  Sure, it will always be our story and affect the way we live but it doesn’t have to disable our thoughts, feelings and actions.  Living with the internal pain, despite the outward success, is unnecessary.  There is freedom.  

What does the little child inside of you need?  How can you be brave and examine what you most fear to face?  That, my friend, is the first step, but one we all must take if we want to live in freedom.  

The Grief Process

There are seven stages to grief. Shock, Denial, Bargaining, Guilt, Anger, Depression and finally, Acceptance.

With my recent miscarriage, I feel like I quickly experienced shock and denial and passed by bargaining and guilt straight to anger. I have parked my car there with a quick trip to depression on the occasion. I find myself spouting off things I can and can't do now that I am not pregnant. Kevin asked me who I was mad at and I don't have an answer for that, but I am angry. Angry my life just can't be easy at any step of the way. Nothing has come easy for me and that is frustrating. I am not angry at God because I know he knows what he is doing. I just wish it could be easier than it is. I have no desire to ask,"why" I just want to know, "what now?" What should my attitude be? How should I approach my life? These are all questions I don't have answers for, and I'm fine with that for now. My emotional process has been interupted by the current physical pain. I had no idea a miscarriage would be so painful. I didn't want to have to have a D&C as it would remind me of my past abortion, and I am thankful that I had the miscarriage a day after discovering it was my envitable future, but I did not expect both the pain the reality of all that would happen. It was shocking and slightly traumatic, but it was nice to have a distraction from my emotions for awhile as I let my body heal.