SCRAPS.

As a general rule, I do not sew.  To me, sewing is frustrating, difficult, time consuming and, contrary to what a lot of people believe, expensive.  Plus, when you are all done with whatever you are making, there is always a pile of awkwardly shaped scraps left and it's hard to know what do with them.  Will I use them again?  Should I throw them away? Should I store them in the garage for 5-10 years  so I can use them when I do another sewing project?
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One of my friends often reminds me that God doesn't waste any experience in our lives: our joys, our trials, our boredom, our sin.  He uses everything we go through in life for his purposes.  To be honest, though this is true, it doesn't always FEEL true.  So often, when I spend an entire day or week sick on the couch, I feel like one of those little scraps...like a leftover piece cut from something that was once useful or meaningful.  However, this week, this idea of God not wasting anything in my life has started to make a little more sense to me.

As I have mentioned many times before, I love to write.  It is truly a passion of mine.  However, sometimes, I can sit down for hours and come out with something that I hope nobody ever reads. These past couple weeks, I have been thinking about some old stories that I wrote, but never finished.  I remember almost throwing them away, because I thought they were so terribly written.  But now that a little time has passed, I can see both their flaws and their merit.  It is making me want to turn those scraps of writing into something new, something useful.  If my health holds up enough, I think I will give it a try.  If they are not turning out, I might just tuck them away for another day... Either way, I am learning to appreciate the jagged and unfinished things in my life as projects to be used in the future-even if it takes 5 or 10 years to finish.

FOGGY.

For my 3-5 readers out there, I would like to apologize for not writing more last month.  As I mentioned in my last blog, I love to write and when I don't I feel like my thoughts are trapped. However, with the exception of this past week, I have what Lyme doctors call "brain fog."  Brain fog is pretty much what it sounds like: fuzziness in your brain.  It's difficult to focus, difficult to process and difficult to make quick decisions (which is why I rarely drive).  I have DEFINITELY had incredible progress in this area of my sickness over the past 3 months, which makes a world of difference in my day-to day life.  However, I still struggle some days with reading and always have a hard time driving.  Luckily, writing seems to be the easiest mental activity with brain fog, which is pretty much amazing!

This past week I have had the clearest mind I have had for months, which means I have been working as much as possible on my children's writing, which I absolutely love.  However, I have not been able to get to my blog too much.  For this, I apologize.  My brain fog is not something I foresee going away anytime soon, so my blog will probably be off-and-on.  However, please don't stop checking periodically for new entries.  Also, I really love feedback, thoughts, quotes, etc.  They encourage me to keep processing and writing all the things that God is teaching me and challenging me with in a difficult space in my life.    

ISOLATE.

(Photo by: N. Johnson)

Both sickness and writing create the same problem in my life: Isolation.  For a poor extrovert like myself,  this is a mild form of torture.  (Okay, perhaps I'm being a bit dramatic, but it has been a very long day and I am utterly exhausted.)


The problem is that I don't have a choice whether to be sick, so I can't really change that.  On my worst days of sickness, I honestly don't even like to talk very much.  (For those of you who know me- you know this is very strange indeed).  But writing is definitely my choice.  I mostly write children's stories, but also like to write poems and hope to write a novel someday. 

I recently went through all my old stuff in in my closet and found a ridiculous amount of journals- about 4 per year since I was in Junior High until now.  I can't help but let my thoughts out on paper.  I think my head would have exploded if I had all those thoughts inside of me from Junior High until now.


It is so strange to me that I often feel like writing as soon as I start feeling better.  You would think that an extrovert like myself would just want to get out and see people and talk (and believe me, on my good days, I do).  However, there is a part of my that is shut down or cut off when I am sick.  It is that part of me that cannot sleep until I write down my thoughts.  It is that part of me that like to analyze and make something new that has never been made before.  It is like my Lyme Disease traps that inside of me and it is just dying to get a breath of air.


Breathe.  Just breathe.

RESOLUTION.

There is no other time in the year when I think about the stupidity of mankind more than in the month of January.  It is almost too cliché to even write about how the gyms fill up in the New Year and the diet books sell like crazy…for one month any way.  I am tempted to use stronger language to express my frustration at this weakness, this shortsightedness…but I will refrain, since I myself fall into this craze.  I wonder if there is even one person on earth who has ever kept a New Year’s resolution for an entire year?  If you have ever done this, props to you.

The thing is that consistency and resolution are not exactly human virtues.  In fact, they go against the very grain of our sin nature.  And yet, there is something within that wants it and so we, in our feebleness and brokenness, reach and try to at least look as though we are intending to do a good thing. 

One thing I have been trying to incorporate into my life right now is a tiny bit of reading.  I know I am not an avid reader and probably never will be, but I do know that reading is a beneficial practice in life.  I have been reading two little books by Andrew Murray for the past week or two.  He is one of my favorite authors and I thought that perhaps he would inspire me to go deeper in my times of prayer and relationship with God, which, to be honest have been extremely stale these past month or so… One theme that I enjoy in Andrew Murray’s writing is the theme of sitting in God’s presence. 

About two weeks ago, I felt like God gave me an idea: to challenge my small group at church via email to sit in God’s presence for 20 minutes every day.  I told my friend about it and she nodded her head in agreement that this was a good idea.  But did I ever email my group?  No, I did not.  I tried to motivate myself to but to be honest, I didn’t know if I would be able to commit to it and the last thing that I wanted to do was to email my group and then not do it wholeheartedly myself.  So instead I decided to do it on my own and see how it went before involving others. 

I think sitting in God’s presence is probably one of the hardest things to do as Americans.  We are the most distractible of all people.   We don’t know how to sit.  The only reason we sit is in order to do something: to type, to write, to read, to play games on our phones, to talk on the phone, to text, to eat or even to do all of these things at one time…We have lost the art of sitting and we need to find it again.

I have found that when I sit to listen to God, it usually takes about 5 minutes of what feels like torture to quiet my mind.  It is the most unnatural thing to sit and not do.  I just don’t like it.  But there are few things that bond my heart to God better than when I let him infiltrate the synapses of my brain, the beat of my heart, the thoughts- evil and otherwise- of my mind… He can only break me into this space of closeness with him through extreme discipline.  To be honest, I do not do this enough.  I don’t think any of us do. But when he breaks through to my thoughts and comes near, there is nothing more worthwhile, nothing more satisfying… That is how it has been for me this week.  God has been breaking through my worries, my stress, my lack of stillness and meeting me in a wonderful way.  It’s the most amazing thing.  I know that I cannot reach God in this way on my own.  He must come near.  But I also think that if I hadn’t taken the time this week to sit, I don’t think I would have experienced God’s nearness in the same way.

Can you imagine how different our character, our words, our relationships would look if we all did this for a chunk of time each day?  I wish I could say this is my New Year’s resolution, but I know that if it was, I would only break it.   And so, my prayer is that God will continue to prompt my heart towards stillness in this new year, so that I can soak up his goodness, his words, his deep and brilliant purity. 

I am just as guilty of inconsistency and lack of discipline as anyone, but I think to give up is not an option.  I will keep trying and making time with God a priority.  But as my father so often says, “A priority without a plan is just a good intention…”

SAFETY.

Does it ever strike you how odd human patterns are?  For instance, for our entire elementary career, we are assigned seats where we must sit every day.  We are given a nametag and a pencil cup to place on our little desks to make it feel like our space...It’s quite nice.  But if you ask any little kid what they want, it will be a seat on the opposite side of the room.  No one- not even little kids want to be told where to sit or what to do.

When we reach college, we are given total freedom to sit wherever you want.  You can even choose a new chair every time you come in to class.  But inevitably, what do people choose?  They choose to sit in “their” chair (and get pretty annoyed when others try to steal it.) 

What is it within the human soul that craves freedom, yet wants the safety of what is known?

In this time of sickness in my life, I do not know which to desire- the safety or the freedom.  More than anything, I want the freedom. I want to be able to drive as far as I want without tiring.  I want to be able to move anywhere in the world. I desire to run without stopping. I dream of going back to Italy and teaching English.  These are my desires, but they do not line up with reality.

My reality right now is that I’m lucky if I can drive 20 minutes total in a week.  I have no options for where I can move or work because I am not physically able to work.  And so there is a restlessness that tells me that I am not living life to it’s fullest.  There is a voice in my head that says “you are settling and you can do nothing about it.”

And so I am left with a choice- be unsatisfied with my lack of freedom or embrace the safety of the life I have been given.  My parents have offered their home to me as long as I need to live here.  I have a nice little room where I display my photography.  I have enough income through my Social Security to pay my basic needs and medical expenses, for the most part.  I have one of my best friends in the world living in the room next to me.  And I have a man in my life whom I am very much in love with…  Not bad at all…

And so I live in the safety and blessings which I have been given in this time of hardship and physical suffering.  I take comfort in my nametag and my pencil cup….But there is always, always a nagging in my soul to go to the desk on the other side of the room.  Whether my body heals or not, I suspect that nagging will not leave me alone on this side of heaven.

ENTROPY.

There is something within me that wants for things in life to stay whole and untarnished, but this never seems to happen. I don’t think I am the only one who senses the tendency towards decay in the universe. This is true on a large scale for the universe of course. The world is constantly in a state of being polluted and overcrowded, not to mention that our natural resources are constantly dwindling. But even in the smallest things in my life, I notice this tendency. At some point, new cars break down, highlights grow out, fingernails chip, new clothes stretch out, cds scratch, ipod drop on the floor (total bummer!), food goes moldy, shampoo bottles run dry, rooms get messy…It’s really quite annoying. These small things may not seem like a big deal, but to me they are a symptom of a greater problem in the whole universe: the law of entropy.

I looked up the word entropy today on thesaurus.com and it gave me these synonyms: breakup, collapse, decay, decline, degeneration, destruction, falling apart, worsening. Each one of these words powerfully describes what is constantly happening on every level of the universe: from the decay of our teeth to the melting of the polar ice caps.

I think the most annoying side effect of this universal law is the breakdown of our own bodies. Our whole lives (after adolescence) are a process of our bodies breaking down. I think the sooner that we realize this, the better off we will be, because it will not surprise us when it happens.

It is interesting that in a time in my life when almost all my friends are in the best physical shape of their lives, I am absolutely a mess. While a lot of my friends are running marathons and triathalons, I am lucky if I can walk to the end of my street. Some days walking to the mailbox is a victory. While this may seem fairly depressing, it is kind of strange gift to me in a weird way. It is a daily reminder of my own lack of control over my own life and my ability to control anything. It also reminds me how fragile my body is. I know that I’m not invincible.

Being sick also does something good inside of me, in that it springs at least a little desire for something else: something beyond this world. It is so incredibly easy for me to be happy with just living and not thinking about eternity and the life that Christ calls us to if we have decided to submit our lives to him. But when your body is constantly hurting, it is a constant reminder that we are not made for this earth- that this is a broken system, a dim reflection of something greater.

In the meantime, our job is to keep our eyes open and do our best to allow God to renew our hearts, even while our bodies are falling apart.

Romans 8: 19-21

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

CONSTANTS.

One of my favorite phrases is “the only constant is change.” While it is true that life is always changing, I have found that there are certain things that I can count on to stay the same: the sun rising and setting, the seasons changing, my mom making Autumn soup in September, family getting together in November and December, etc…The older I get, the more I truly take comfort in these things. They give my life a sense of rhythm.

Another example is that when we change the clocks for Daylight Savings time, it always feels strange how it is dark so early. Without fail, the clocks are turned back on set on a specific day each fall. In our minds, we KNOW that it will get dark earlier. And yet, somehow, it will never cease to amaze us for that first week of adjustment that it is only 7 o’clock when it feels like at least 8 or 9. In a strange way, this comforts me.

And so I’ve concluded that during this season of sickness in my life, I want to create as many sensible “constants” in my life as I can. One of my constants is a cup of tea each day. It might sound ridiculous, but I take so much joy in both making and drinking my morning tea now. My latest tea habit consists of a lovely cup of British Breakfast tea, a squirt of honey and a splash of soymilk. It is quite delicious. Somehow, when I sit down for my morning tea, whether I am miserably sick or surprisingly energetic, it brings me a sense that I can make it through my day, whatever it will look like.