Five

1. Exercise.

I go to free exercise classes twice a week at Mark’s school’s fitness center; one of the perks of him working there. Shaina, the director, whose classes I like the best / find most challenging and effective, has just announced that she’s leaving in May to start her own studio. Must be exciting for her — but I’m seriously bummed (pun perhaps intended) and wondering what all will change.

2. Garden.

I’ve started planting in the garden, and need to start hardening off some seedlings, and planting more, and starting more. And looking for sprouts under the mulch where I’ve planted. I’ve moved the hydrangea and removed the irises that were taking up space in the garden.

I bought new fencing material — chicken wire and u-posts — and want to get the fence up as soon as possible, before there are delicious things for the rabbits to desire. First, though, I want to square up the garden and am not quite sure how. I’m guessing I’ll first measure what seems to be the longest side, and work out from there. I need to figure out how to brace the corners (I’ve learned about the diagonal wire and a stick of wood to tighten it, but not sure what to use (if anything) for the horizontal brace) and decide where I want to put the fake gate (loose piece of chicken wire tacked to a vertical board, hooked or tied to a u-post to close the gate). And I’ll need Mark’s help to put up the new fence.

3. Hands.

My hands are hurting a little again — noticing especially left wrist and the inner crease of the thumb, and a little on the right hand especially using the iron. It could be that the digging and such I’ve been doing in the garden, and perhaps especially the hauling of wet straw bales (with help, but still), has aggravated the situation. It could also be a week of hormonal shift that sometimes seems to increase hypermobility. Regardless, I need to take a break from knitting and even, sadly, working on the quilt, which I didn’t think would be as hard on my hands as knitting. I need to get off the computer, too. And not nap excessively. Of course I’m getting back to the neglected stretches and massage, and once the pain is gone I’ll (try) to get back to the strengthening exercises.

4. Listening.

The little voice that cries “Meaningless!” has been speaking up a little lately. I know enough now that it doesn’t bother me unduly; it’s “just” a sign I need to rest more, waste less time, invest less energy in willfulness, cultivate gratitude, seek God, speak truth to myself, play with Amy more. The approaching end of Mark’s and Amy’s spring breaks might be a factor; transitions are traditionally sort of disconcerting or disruptive.

5. Grain.

On Thursday, I started a jar of sunflower seeds and a jar of wheat for sprouting. The sunflower seeds shed their skins and half of them float. No other activity. The wheat seems to be maybe 30-40% sprouting, but very slow to grow, and some of the sprouts seem to have broken off. I’ll wait another day or two, and after that just use them in some bread regardless.

Today Mark watched Fathead on his computer. It’s a movie made by a guy who wanted to refute various things from Supersize Me. For one thing, the Fathead guy argues that the lipid hypothesis — the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol are responsible for heart disease — is incorrect. Animal fats and palm and coconut oils are not unhealthy; rancid heat-processed and especially hydrogenated vegetable oils are. He also talks about grains… I forget what Mark told me he said, though, but it was along the same lines as what the Weston Price people and the primal / paleo people say — that whole grains are difficult on bodies, at least the way we conventionally do them. Maybe I’ll have to watch it myself while I’m resting my hands.

Spiritual oppression

On Saturday I took my friend out to lunch for her birthday. We spent a good bit of the hour drive in prayer — among other things she prayed against my chronically recurring sense of being overlooked, marginal, left out. She clearly considered it one of Satan’s favorite tricks for me.

Later, I insulted my friend.

I then spent the next two days loathing myself for the things I say, trying to accept the already offered forgiveness of my friend as well as that promised by God, but not really believing in either.

Sunday morning — I woke up from a dream about spiritual oppression. I don’t even remember what happened in the dream or where I was, but that phrase was stamped on the dream in bold letters.

That night, a phone call from my friend helped settle me somewhat in the security of her forgiveness.

Yesterday, at a different friend’s house for a playdate, along with yet another friend, my child spent most of the morning all by herself. The other two kids were inseparable, giggly and running around and even talking to each other. I’m pretty sure I even remember mine going into the room where they were, and they immediately left. Meanwhile, I sat listening as my two friends talked — they had a lot to talk about, and I didn’t have any two cents to add.

I left feeling vaguely but sharply heartbroken — my little girl already the outcast I’ve always been, the one who walks into a room and sends the others fleeing.

Last night I wrote this in my journal:

Either A) I’m fine and within the range of acceptability — there will be things people don’t like about me but they can still love me anyway, and in a real and true way, and, the corollary, it’s okay for me to act like I think I’m normal and acceptable and lovable, and expect to be loved and appreciated and welcome for the most part.

Or B) I really AM one of the Undesirables, and many people really don’t care for me although they can politely tolerate me and tell me all the right self-esteemy things even though we all know those things aren’t really applicable to the Undesirables, and, the corollary, I had better acknowledge my place with due shame and stay out of the important people’s way, and acting like a normal person will only strain the tolerance and politeness limits of others and make them scorn me more deeply. And asking for reassurance? Expressing my insecurity? Definite faux-pas — that’ll force them to be more polite than they want to be, make me even more a burden than I already am.

And do I actually have any incontrovertible evidence for either position? Not really — what evidence there is is subject to interpretation based on presuppositions.

I need, desperately right now, to have my presuppositions corrected. A sane corner voice tells me B) is a damned lie, and that when I categorize other people as Undesirables that is a projection of my own insecurity and not evidence that such a category really exists.

About evidence and presuppositions — to a normal, happily secure person, the playdate description would present no problems. So one kid is somewhat solitary and the others play together more often. So two mamas had a conversation and the third just didn’t have anything to add. But start with a presupposition that I am an Undesirable and my kid is therefore doomed to be one, too, and the picture looks sinister.

———

Anyway, most of the time I adopt the idea that I really am within the realm of normal acceptable humanity and that people might actually like me sometimes. Today, for example, I’ve mostly been feeling fine.

When this other idea revisits, though, it’s brutal! And it always comes back, sooner or later, and it is really hard to challenge the presuppositions, because they circularly make the evidence look awfully persuasive of the presuppositions’ truth. Arguing in the other direction just doesn’t seem anywhere nearly so likely. And there’s no evidence that can change presuppositions, anyway — that change has to come from somewhere, something, Someone else.

And the consequences of being wrong about A), of thinking A) when B) is really true, seem devastatingly vulnerable and shameful. One must NOT be mistaken in assuming the truth of A).

———

I used my DBT skills pretty well, I think. I observed and named my feelings. I explored my thoughts about them, and challenged them as well as I could. I reminded myself that hormonal changes make my social paranoia worse once or twice a month. I reminded myself that night time is when I am most vulnerable to negative thoughts. I reminded myself that even if the entire human race DOES hate me, God delights in me, and that really is more than enough. I allowed myself to cry, and didn’t get too alarmed by my crying and intensity of feeling — didn’t get sucked into the future catastrophizing of “This is only going to get worse, this is a ball rolling down a steep hill, here comes the pit, and if I tell anyone I’ll just ruin everything AGAIN” — I let myself cry and write and pray, and then I put myself to bed and rested. (After doing my entire BSF lesson for the week, in one sitting.)

———

This whole episode reminds me so much of “The Rules”:

In Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott tells about the “five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston.”

* The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different.
* The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible.
* The third rule is that if you can’t get over it, you must pretend that you have.
* The fourth rule is that if you can’t even pretend that you have, you shouldn’t show up. You should stay home, because it’s hard for everyone else to have you around.
* And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.

Then she says that she and her therapist “decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.”

Practicing

This weekend was fall break — Mark was off from school on Thursday and Friday, so it was a long weekend together.

Last night I had a small panic attack.

As seems usual, the fear was unspecific — a sense of doom, of hopelessness, confusion, uncertainty, and just plain fear.

It was an opportunity to practice some skills.

I noticed that the fear was unspecific, and told myself that’s a sign that the fear is not worth being alarmed by, but just something to experience and let pass.

I breathed — worked on calming the physiological symptoms of anxiety instead of letting them escalate the fear in my mind.

I considered the suspicion that I must be missing something, that the fear must have something to tell me, that if only I could figure it out, I’d learn something important, and if I don’t figure it out, something terrible will happen. Or that maybe I need something and that something will turn out to be unavailable for some reason or other. I told myself that God is not about confusion, and if there is something I need to know, he will tell me more clearly than by vague unease. It’s not like I’m consciously ignoring anything or closing myself off to anything. I’m willing to listen — as far as I know, anyway. I also told myself that if there is something I need, there will also be a way to get it. Certainly I don’t need to get caught up in worrying about it being unavailable until it’s proven so.

A little while later I woke up, and after a few minutes, I suddenly remembered how afraid I’d been, and I smiled.

Today the meaninglessnesses and depression and anxiety have murmured here and there, and I am doing my best to trust they will pass and stay engaged with present reality.

I am also trying to not let my mood dictate my behavior. This is a relatively new idea for me (from DBT) — that there’s a big difference between pretending to be what you’re not, and acting one way despite feeling another. It’s actually possible to have a feeling, acknowledge it, fully experience it, and still act differently — to take a shower, get dressed, prepare and eat food despite being depressed and unmotivated and wanting to stay in bed, for example. Such action doesn’t have to mean denying or trying to transcend the feelings — it just means acting differently even in the midst of the feelings.

Fizzled

I spent most of yesterday working on our photo album. It’s a bittersweet activity.

I came across the wedding picture of friends we’re no longer in touch with. I don’t really remember clearly what happened, but I remember we felt out of touch with them for a while before we stopped seeing one another. I seem to have a vague memory of conducting the “breakup” badly. I miss these folks, or at least I miss the wonderful friendship we had with them before things fizzled. Why do friendships fizzle? Is it because they had kids and we didn’t? Is it because their spiritual ideas were going in an opposite direction? Is it because of some things we were going through at the time that made us too demanding, too scared, too easily disappointed, too selfish? You would think a good friendship could survive all that. I’m really sad that this one didn’t. Part of me wants to look them up and apologize and try to reconnect. Part of me warns that whatever made this friendship fizzle would still be there, and that the geographical distance would make it difficult to really reconnect.

This got me started on the whole friendship thing again. We still don’t have any real friends here. (It’s been three years.) Maybe we haven’t tried hard enough. Maybe people here are just too busy and have enough friends and don’t want new ones. Maybe there isn’t anyone likeminded or likesouled enough to be suitable deep close friends with us. I miss the friendships I used to have. I hate fizzling. If I had known that making friends as an adult would be so hard, would I have worked so much harder not to let friendships fizzle? Could I really have prevented any of them from fizzling? Meanwhile I’m being careful and creative with this photo album in order to share it with — myself?

Matthew Boedy wrote the other day about Henri Nouwen’s Intimacy, including Nouwen’s statement that boredom can arise from risklessness. I’ve been bored for a long time. I’ve also learned over the years to take fewer risks. I think in some ways I have learned some wisdom: just because it’s a risk doesn’t mean it should be taken. I was too quick to be vulnerable with people who did not handle my trust well, for a variety of reasons, some my fault and some theirs. But now perhaps one reason I have no friends here is that I’m too terrified of myself, God, and other people to take the risks necessary to form new friendships.

Matthew’s post today is about Nouwen again, but this time from Nouwen’s journal. The post includes the word “raw” — reminds me of my recurring self-image as sharp-edged — like a rock with lots of bits jutting out at hard and pointy angles, not soft, cuddly, or warm. And lo and behold, it was a fizzled friendship that started Nouwen down that road of anguish, an anguish of insatiable thirst for intimacy.

…soon I discovered that the enormous space that had been opened for me could not be filled by the one who had opened it.

The enormous space feels empty now, when we have no friends here and only occasional contact with friends elsewhere. But if I’m honest, even when we’ve been in the same location as our friends, and seen them often, it’s not enough. I’d like to think I’ve learned better how to appreciate our friends for who and what they are, and not idolize them or otherwise demand too much. But I shouldn’t allow myself to think everything would be wonderful if we moved back to where we used to live, or if we found close friends here. Better. But not perfect, not full, not yet satisfied.

Did you know Psalm 88 is the only complaining psalm that doesn’t have any “pull-myself-up-by-the-bootstraps” statements of praise? It’s also interesting that in the psalmist’s case, he thinks God’s the one who has taken away his friends and made him repulsive to them, and he seems to think it’s a flood of God’s wrath against him.

Meaningless

Meaninglessness lurks in my life, and looms up huge every once in a while.

Not only will what I’m currently doing seem meaningless — being alone, passing the time until another day can be over, tuning, spending too much time online, watching TV, whatever — but everything else seems meaningless too — being with friends, worshiping God, serving someone, writing a letter, whatever.

The Westminster Catechism tells us the chief end of humankind is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Sometimes even that seems meaningless. And that makes me wonder what exactly I mean by meaning and meaninglessness — what exactly I am looking for.

It’s not so much that I’m searching for happiness. I think more often I’m afraid of happiness than desiring it. I don’t want happiness at the expense of truth and reality, and I think I’d rather have significance with misery than happiness with insignificance.

I think I want to know that it all matters. That it matters that I am who I am and that I do what I do. That it matters that there is a God and a universe and other people. Matters? To whom? It seems the first part is that I want to know I matter to God, and perhaps the second part is that I want to know that God matters to me. That seems a little weird.

The more I think about it, usually the less sure I am that I mean anything by meaninglessness or meaning. I think it’s really just an expression of loneliness, frustration, fear, and depression.

I’m usually tempted to do something about it. Often that takes the form of becoming busy. There’s some truth to the adage that idle hands are the devil’s tools — it’s when we have the most leisure that we seem most likely to be depressed or worried or to get into other kinds of trouble, and getting busy takes our attention away from trouble. On the other hand, keeping out of trouble is not the same thing as solving the problem; avoiding or distracting ourselves from depression is not the same thing as healing.

Becoming busy takes so many forms. Doing something physical — going for a walk, exercising, working in the garden. Doing something spiritual — praying, reading, meditating, journaling. Doing something relational — going out with friends, doing some kind of service, writing letters or emails or calling someone. None of these things are bad in themselves, but all of them can become mere busy-ness when we use them to avoid time and space.

Time and space. These things I’m afraid of. A whole day looms up empty before me, and I am anxious for the husband to get home so I’ll know the day is almost over and I can relax and rest until the next one looms up. If I try for perspective, thinking about the big picture, time and space get even larger — weeks, months, years, eternity, the whole universe and God’s whole life and purposes. It’s terrifying.

Sometimes I think the best response to meaninglessness — emptiness — is to face it squarely. Go sit in my broken cistern with eyes wide open, feel the weight of all the emptiness I’ve hoarded, feel the oppression of its stuffiness (I forgot to mention yesterday that sitting in a tent is awful — even with screens at the top and in the door, there’s just not enough air movement, and the tent traps body heat… probably good in the fall and spring but not nice in the summer).

Thus says the LORD, “What injustice did your fathers find in Me, that they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty (Jeremiah 2:5)?

How wayward I am! Chasing after emptiness, trying to hunt down meaningless, as if I could catch it and kill it, and win meaning, fullness, significance. You can’t catch emptiness any more than you can dig up a hole. You can’t achieve meaning by aiming at it.

Hunting for meaning via the big picture leads only to empty and vast time and space. Hunting for meaning via the little picture of self alone also leads to emptiness, in infinite smallness and shortness. Somehow it has to be both: the dignity of the self with God, the self that matters in the vastness of the universe and God’s great glory, but not the self alone on the pinnacle.

Meaninglessness lurks in my life, and looms up huge once in a while, and it’s yet another sign of my overactive will, and of my waywardness, and of my great fear. Lord, lift me up out of my broken cistern, out of the miry clay, and set my feet on the rock. Set my eyes on Jesus, and not on Meaning, and comfort (and sanctify) my fearful, willful, wayward heart.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for thy courts above.

“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” by Robert Robinson