Homesick

Today I have an unfamiliar twinge in my heart. My daydreams are flooded with nostalgia. . I'm sad...not like deep down, depths of my soul sad...but bittersweet tears of the memories of yesteryear are finding there way to my eyes this day. Tonight I am returning back to the only neighborhood that has ever felt like home to me...and I don't get to stay there...I am homesick.

You see, nearly six years ago, I left the town I had occupied for eleven years...my personal record. Before I moved to The Metro, where I currently reside, I was an Army brat. I went to nine schools in twelve years. I lived in thirteen or more different homes (mostly apartments).  "Home" was always my dad's hometown. We were "from" Central Kansas...even when we lived in a foreign nation. But I didn't KNOW this place. I hadn't lived there since I was a two year old. So essentially, wherever we lived, there was some far away, nearly mythical place where we were "from".

In the grand scheme of life, I understand that "home" is wherever the people you love are. But, I had never known a geographical place inside and out until my family moved to an older suburb in The Metro my senior year of high school. It was there I knew the names of my hardware store cashier, talked at length about life with the cake decorator at my grocery store, and saw various and sundry stores open and close and change hands. I could say, "Man, remember when that restaurant was a video store!" or "Wow, when we first moved here this giant Big Box anchored strip mall was just an empty field!" 

In this part of town I knew three or four ways to get to where I was going. I knew who had great Christmas lights and whose kids had a lemonade stand every Saturday. This little suburb is where I shared an apartment with my family...then with just my sister. It is where I met my best friends and my husband. It's where we bought our first house...had our first dog...and had our first baby. I just KNOW this place and have a deep connection with it. It's home. 

But, around the time my Big Boy was a year old, my husband and I felt compelled to move from the aged suburb we had started our marriage in to the urban heart of our metro-area. There were many reasons we wanted to change locations, but paramount were our desires to invest our lives in a neighborhood and a school system that needed some love.  

Because we are Christians, our first objective was to find a church who had the same heart for the city that we did. After a short search, we found one! When I read their "values" page on their website, I wept because I couldn't have written my values more beautifully. (They've since reworded the values and made them more concise and less poetic, which is a little sad to my writer's soul.) In this new church, the main messages were "God loves you!", "Because God loves you, you can love others!" and "Move to the city!".  We desired all of those things, so latching onto God's love, we sold our little 1950s ranch house in the suburbs and moved into a giant Victorian house in the city. 

We've continued attending this church.  We've built good relationships with our neighbors. We've jumped headlong into the school system. But, I still work in the suburb we left. Our parents and siblings still live in that suburban neighborhood. I shop and go to the doctor/dentist/hair salon in that suburb. So, I really feel like I live in two places.  And until recently, I've mostly been fine with it. 

Last year, our church (which has grown to be INSANELY large) has planted a church...LITERALLY...LITERALLY in the suburban neighborhood where we used to live...like BLOCKS from our old house. When I heard the new location for the church plant my heart clenched. Why? Why would God ask us to move when He was planning on planting a church that loved the city RIGHT in our old backyard? Why did I have to move miles away from my family and my work? Why did I have to leave the neighborhood that holds my record for "longest town lived in EVER" Frankly, I don't know. I have some spiritual suspicions about the move...but nothing I know for certain. 

Tonight, after I leave work (on the same street as the new church plant), I have to roll back into downtown, pick up my kids, and come back down to The Suburb for a meeting at the new church...the church that I KNOW used to be a school, but closed ten years ago...across from my old grocery store...down the street from my doctor's office...a church that I am not part of...and am not sure why. I'm hesitant to go to that meeting tonight. I'm probably going to cry. I miss my home. 

Hey J-J-Jaded

"Inside of every cynical person is a disappointed idealist." -George Carlin

In yesterday's (very good) sermon about race and The Gospel, our pastor described what it looked like to get burnt out on social justice. These burn outs are people who have labored and labored to bring reconciliation and peace to the people around them and have seen NO fruit. Not only have they seen zero results from their anguish, they have, figuratively, "had their teeth kicked in". He described this group of people as "cynical". That concept resonated with me...HARD.

Do you know what happens when you take a tenderhearted idealist and toss her head first into the gritty reality that is our world? It hurts her...frustrates her...grieves her. Being the Nerdy-Nerderson that I am, I looked up the definition of cynicism and felt it wasn't QUITE the word I would use to describe the soul-sick, faithless, hopeless, pessimist that I have become. No, the best term I could find that encompasses the nothing-left-ness of my heart is...jaded.

Of course, I didn't really realize this truth until it was presented to me objectively. I would have said that, like everyone else, I am a realist...and reality is cruel. On some level, that has to be true. But for someone whose life purpose has been to be a consummate helper, I think that reality somehow just SEEMS meaner. When the standard is for everyone to get along...for all people to feel valued and valuable...failure FEELS magnified.

It's taken a while for me to get to this point of full scale jaded-ness. I've been knocked down a healthy handful of times. Until Foster Failure, I had at least attempted to limp along. After I burned out as an inner city teacher, I was still able to muster up the strength to keep my toe in the world of education as a substitute teacher. After I went on several short term foreign mission trips and saw that we were NOT helping, I was still able to move to the heart of my home city, believing that I could make a difference with my life. After our we disrupted our first and only foster placement...I.just.couldn't. Everything hurt and nothing made sense anymore.

After Foster Failure, I cut everyone off. I literally snapped back into the safe walls of my own home. I stopped seeing my friends. I loathed going out...especially if I had to meet new people...especially any new person who might NEED anything from me. For the last three years, I have barely done more than the emotional minimum to sustain my life.  For whatever reason, that event took me from wounded idealist to full blown jaded...especially with regard to my faith.

I've been on shaky spiritual ground for three years. I mean, I've always been a little soft on being disciplined enough to read my Bible and carve out time to pray on a daily basis. But for the last three years I have been actively ANGRY with God...felt BETRAYED by God...and TERRIFIED to engage with Him because I am afraid He will CRUSH me again just to teach me another life lesson. I don't think I can handle it. So in an act of self preservation...I've cut Him off too.  

When I became a Christian, it wasn't after long, labored studies of comparative religions. I didn't research all of the theological and historical minutiae of the faith. What happened was, the Spirit of God whispered to my heart and I responded. Something OUTSIDE of me, called me into relationship with God. Yes, I CHOSE it, but I feel like it was what is called "irresistible grace". I had the freedom to walk away but why would I WANT to. The voice that spoke everything into existence was 

calling out to me. My soul knew His voice, so I believed. And...I believe still. It has been anguish to believe something to be true...but be too wounded and afraid to live in that truth.

I don't desire to be bitter and cynical. It's not a "pleasure from pain" kind of situation. I hate it and it's obvious to anyone who knows me well that it isn't my natural inclination. At the same time, however, I'm not sure how to both long to love people and nurse the intense grief that comes from the rejection of that love. I don't know how to both surrender myself to a God that I am CERTAIN loves me and walk with Him on a path that I am CERTAIN will destroy my heart. Because I don't know what to do...I've chosen to do nothing. That...I think...is the essence of being jaded. Wanting to care and being petrified to do it. 

This Body of Stress

This week has been quite emotional for me and my family. We have experienced two deaths within the span of only five days. My heart has been flooded with memories, sadness, and grief. My little brain has persisted under a barrage of logistical tasks and preparations for getting myself and my family through two funerals. In general, I'd say that I am managing my emotions and stress in a healthy way...yes, I'D say that...but my body tells a different story. This flesh that I occupy has a ridiculously low threshold for stress.

Every time I am presented with an ounce more stress than I can handle, my teeth clench, my shoulders tense, my muscles ache, then I either get a raging cold or an intestinal bug. And it might be a little bit of an overshare, but in the last few years, even my cycle gets all goobered up by any amount of stress...which is a delight, let me tell you. I have wasted about a dozen pregnancy tests in the last two years. The only thing that really helps combat these "illnesses" is sleep. But, who wants a wife, mother, or friend that just sleeps all the time like a big sloth?

As with my mental health challenges, I can trace this all the way back to my childhood. When I was little my school nurse diagnosed me with a "nervous stomach". Looking back on it now, it was just a kind of genteel way of saying I was a stressed out kid. In high school I went through a battery of tests because I was having the painful symptoms of an ulcer. Of course it didn't occur to me that my extremely rigorous class and extracurricular schedule were probably more than I should be handling. During every holiday break from college I was plagued by a persistent, nasty cold/flu....EVERY one. As an adult, I feel like I am sick ALL of the time. Like...ALWAYS sick. I feel a little like a hypochondriac...except I have actual illnesses.

It makes me feel weak and ashamed to have a zero ability to handle stress. Who the hell gets sick from the normal rhythm of life? Me. That's who. I am not really sure how to combat this problem. I see a therapist, am on an antidepressant, and try really hard to manage the trouble of the everyday in healthy ways. What else can I do?