Appreciation (and Germans)

I know it has been another long while since the last post, but you are going to have to get used to that.  I have a one year old who has a pact with sleep that she won't bother it if it won't bother her and a husband who likes to play games.  And a really messy house, but who am I kidding?  That is definitely not what is keeping me from blogging, it's not like I've been cleaning it.

I was singing in church on Sunday and I heard a line that really hit me and I thought that I should blog about it.  It's kind of funny, because there I was up on the stage thinking about blogging.  I was not the one singing at that exact moment, though, so I think it's okay.  I'll actually get to that line in the next paragraph, but I'm going to take a side trip here to tell you that as a "worship leader"  I am definitely not standing up there...hm.  I've been sitting here for a little while thinking about what you might think that I might be thinking about.  (Haha, let me know if you can figure that sentence out.)  I'm not sure, but I will tell you that I'm still the same me there as anywhere.  I'm having a hard time explaining this right now.  I can tell you that my worship is always from my heart, but not necessarily always from my head.  Like, there was also a point this week when I noticed that the slide on the video screen was an ocean wave and it reminded me of the dream I had had the night before where we lived happily on an island until the Germans took it over and our house burned down.  And I laughed to myself at the strangeness of the dream. 

But I definitely don't take it lightly (worship leading, that is, not the dream about the Germans... Okay, I lied, you have to wait one more paragraph before I tell you the line that inspired this post to begin with.)  Every time I get up on that stage (or very nearly so, I am not perfect) I am doing it because it is one of my acts of worship to God.  I don't sing a song that I don't believe and I try very hard to ensure that I never sing without thinking about it and what I am saying.  But that doesn't mean that I don't wince when someone hits a wrong note (myself included) or think "shoot, I hope I remember how this part goes," or "Yay!  The whole band remembered to come in on 1, not 4!"  I could go on and on, but that is not what I am here to talk about, so...

"All we are and all we have is all a gift from God that we receive."  There you go, that is the line that must change everything.  It is from the song, "Made to Worship" by Chris Tomlin.  I have spent so much of my life a little mad at God for who I am.  I have been ungrateful for the me He gave me.  I am not good at appreciating who I am.  I am not going to use the phrase "loving myself," because I think that society puts way too much emphasis on that now and it wouldn't bother me if it didn't result in people being complete assholes ahem, jerks to everyone else.  But the me that I am is the me that God made.  And I am alive.  Ha.  A-LIVE.  Living.  Sitting here just straight up BEING.  So there.  I have choices and I can choose to be grumpy about the way I am wired or I can just learn to be grateful that I am here.  I get to experience the marvelous wonder of my life.

"Hm," you might say, "this is quite a turn around from previous posts."  Well, yes, sort of.  I don't suddenly have a joyous outlook on my life, but I do recognize now that I think I can find the wonder in the little things that are maybe not so little.  I have the option to, anyway, maybe you can help me be accountable to doing so.  Or maybe I'll be upset and you can remind me that there is wonder in the simple state of being and I can be annoyed with you for bringing it up when I was perfectly content to be grumpy.  Either way, I know now that it will help my outlook if I am grateful for the me I am, rather than there being no me at all.

Well, this was a lengthy post, wasn't it?  Congratulations that you made it to the end.  Really, I do so appreciate you.  I think this is helping me quite a bit, getting everything written down and out there.  Thank you for listening and for the comments you have left.  You are really quite encouraging.

P.S.  I re-read this before I posted it, and if you made it past the paragraph with the thought about the blog and the Germans, then you deserve far more praise than I previously gave you for getting to the end.  Thanks.  :)

The Best Me

I just finished the pistachios that Brandt got for Christmas (well, all except the last four that weren't open enough to eat without some sort of tool).  He wasn't eating them anyway.

Whew.  Each of these last posts, I have put up on facebook and gone to bed.  Then I would think about them the next morning and decide I didn't want people to read them.  By the time I would try to do anything about it, I had received a comment or two or an email from someone and it encouraged me to keep going.  There is a war going on in my mind.  Why am I writing all of this crap about myself?  It is true, to be sure, but who wants to read that?  What good is it doing anyone?  The other side says, well, some people say they identify with it.  Maybe it is making them feel less alone.  But I think of all the other people who might read it who might not identify with it, and I think maybe I don't want them to read it and look at me funny.  But then I think, well, I am being real; this is who I am.  I guess they should know.  Or should they?  (I could go back and forth for a long time, but I will spare you.)

All of my life, I think, I have always wanted to be good.  I don't mean do good things, but actually BE good.  I'm not, though.  I am truly awful.  I have bad motives, I have a really hard time loving people, I worry ALL. OF. THE. TIME.  I am terribly lazy and unmotivated.  I get overwhelmed easily and I get super frustrated and take it out on other people.  I am sad most of the time.  I am totally disorganized and messy.  Most of the time, I just give up.  I have in my mind exactly the person I want to be, but I am no closer to being that person now than I was ever.  Maybe I'm even farther.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be someone I am not, but I want to be the best me.  I can't seem to figure out how to get there.

There is definitely a big part of me that is struggling with being a mom.  That is probably enough for a whole other post, so I will just say for now that I am starting off not operating on all cylinders.  I am exhausted from lack of sleep and depleted from lack of time to myself.  That doesn't help.  But the thing is, I am a mom, and, Lord willing, I will be for the rest of my life, so I need to figure out how to be the best me while being a mom.  This is the new normal and I don't want it to be second best.  I want to live this new life and love it.

I am really excited to be getting together later this week with a couple other moms who are in a similar situation.  I hope we can really talk about things and help each other out.  I really suck at talking about things like this in person, but sometimes when other people start, it makes it easier.  We'll see.  I'll try to write the mom post soon.

Goodnight.  (Hey, and thanks for reading, even if you are someone who is going to look at me funny).

If You Ask, I May Not Answer

Oops.  I waited too long to write again.  I'm not really sure where I'm going with it anyway.  It's funny how hard it is to write a follow up.  I got a few wonderful responses to my last posts.  They were so supportive and understanding.  A couple people knew how I was feeling because they felt that way too.  Now I don't really know what to say.  I feel glad that some people know and that it isn't quite as dark in here as it was, but I still feel crappy, too.  It's definitely not bright yet.  I always hit this block when someone reaches out to me.  B said it exactly right in his comment that I hold my cards pretty close to my chest.  I can't help it.  When someone notices me and really wants to know how I am, my immediate reaction is immense joy (what am I, a puppy?) followed so closely by "Nevermind, I'm fine," that they are almost simultaneous.  It's like my real self just shuts off and I can't even access it, let alone let someone else in. 

I think I feel ashamed.  I can't come up with one good reason that I feel so sad, so I feel guilty, like I'm stealing or cheapening someone else's right to feeling like this.  I didn't have a big tragedy happen to me.  I have a good life with a loving husband and a beautiful daughter and so many wonderful family and friends.  I have a place to live and food and clothing.  I have everything I need and more, so I must be a pretty ungrateful person to feel like this.  I think the biggest part of my sadness stems from frustration with myself.  It is not the outside that makes me unhappy; it is the inside.  It is ugly in here, and I feel really powerless to change it at all.  My thoughts are driven by fear.  I am so overwhelmed by life and the prospect of living it all that it makes me shut down.  I am paralyzed by it.  I can't be a good wife and mom, as I so desperately want to be, because I can't even be a good me.  I circle down.

Even as I read what I have written over, I am disgusted.  How self-centered that last paragraph was.  Absolutely every sentence had "I" or "me" in it several times.  Well, there you go, that is some of the ugly truth.  That is part of the answer to the question.  I don't like it, but I'm stuck here for now.  I feel really bad telling you because I don't want to put darkness in your life (not that I think that I am actually making your life worse or anything, but this is certainly not uplifting reading material, and I would so prefer that it was).  I think that I just need to be open a little with someone, so you are it.  Don't feel obligated to be the question asker. 

I have been sitting here way too long.  I'm going to go to bed now.  But I typed and deleted a sentence that I will use in an upcoming post, so maybe it will not be so long before I post again.  Thanks for listening.

Not Recommended. But...

Well, first I should tell you that I kind of changed my mind.  I think I maybe do want someone to read my blog.  Maybe I feel a little bit extra alone when I am not heard in cyberspace.  Gosh, I don't really want to say that, but I think that it is true, so I will leave it.  I am a bit self-consumed, so please forgive me.  Hopefully, I will work through that very soon.  I want someone to care.  I know that the moment I let people know that I have a blog, there will be people who care, but that is really hard to do, so I have not yet done it.  Plus, I want someone to care for the long haul, not just a day or two after they read that I am sad.  It will only make me more sad when they go back to the important people and things in their life.  I am not an easy person to get into, and I retreat the second I see signs of disinterest.  I will not stick around where I'm not wanted or force myself on anyone.  I also don't like letting people know how much I suck (Haha, I have typed and erased that line 3 or 4 times now.  All I can hear is a well-meaning person saying, "Oh, no, you don't suck, Kathy, don't say that," but really they would just be well-meaning and not recognize the fact that we all suck in some way or other, but that's what God's grace is for, isn't it?)

How narcissistic is it of me to write a blog about the crappy way I feel about my life and want people to read it to make me feel better?  And this is how I go back and forth, wearing a path further and further down into my loneliness.

Anyway, that was really all a side note, because today I wanted to write about leading worship from this state of being that I am in right now.  I sing on the worship team most weeks at church, and about once a month or so I lead the worship (like pick the songs, organize practice, and do the talking during the music at church, etc.).  I have been doing this in some form or other for most of my life.  There have definitely been seasons where I did not belong in that position, but I think that now is not one of them.  I have gone back and forth with this thought, and I can't say for sure that I am correct with my conclusion, but I will talk about it a little bit.  You are welcome to tell me your opinion, if you exist.  :-)

First, I believe God can and does use anybody.  He has no qualms about any of the things that we worry about when we are picking people for our team.  I think sometimes He even uses people who aren't on the team and don't want to play.  So I know that He can use me whatever state I am in.  However, that in itself doesn't mean that I should be leading other people to worship.

Today, though, I sang, "I may be down, but I will rise.  It may be dark, but God is light," and I meant it so thoroughly.  I picked the music today, and we surely weren't singing the Happy Song.  But we sang the prayer, "Let everything about me be hallelujah," and although I know that I am so broken and hurting right now, I meant it so hard.  We sang, "This is the place I've known - here in the arms of One Who Loves further than I could run," and I know it is true.  And when I sang, "When all else fades my soul will dance with You where the love lasts forever," I felt a little bit of hope.  Can you believe that?  I, the hopeless one, thought for a minute that maybe someday I would dance again and it would be joyous and good. 

I feel like the only thing I have to give right now is my singing, so I have to keep doing it.  Hopefully it really is a gift and not just another selfish thing that is taking over my life right now.  It is hard to tell sometimes.

I honestly am not writing any of this so that you feel bad for me, and I don't want you to say nice things to me just to make me feel better.  I would rather, if you are there and you want to say something, that you say helpful, true things, even if they are hard to hear.  You probably can't say anything more harsh than I have said to myself; maybe you could shed some light for me.

I guess that's it.  I'm going to post this on Facebook before I lose my nerve.  I think.

Because If I Don't...

Hey, I'm really not here to write anything lengthy at the moment. I really need to go to bed. But I figured if I really wanted to do this, then I need to write something more often than not. So there you go, here is my something. Remind me tomorrow or the next day that I next want to talk about worship leading at some point.

Goodnight.

I Don't Recommend Reading This Blog

I started this blog while I was pregnant at some point (I could look it up to find out exactly when, but I'm not that motivated). My daughter is 13 months old now and this is my third post. There you go. I have decided to start writing again (again), but I'm not making any promises. I have been reading a lot of people's blogs now, and I have mixed feelings about them. Some of them make me sooo jealous ("She has children and pets and a beautifully decorated, perfectly clean house, whereas I have to clear a path to walk through my living room on occasion. Okay, often.") Some of them make me feel a little better about myself ("Okay, if she came back from going to the bathroom to find her two year old up on the kitchen counter surrounded by knives taken from the block and the hot water on full blast and she is somehow doing alright with life, maybe there is hope for me."). And there are some that make me think about life and my relationship with God and things like that that are good for me.

Anyway, reading all of those made me kind of want to start writing a blog of my own. The thing is, I don't know how I feel about people reading it. I really don't mind if people do (it would be silly if I did, because I could just write in a journal or something and no one would see that), but I feel like it might not be pleasant to read at first. I think I might be sort of down and complain-y right now. So, I'm letting you know in advance that is what you might be in for if you continue to read.

I have been super struggling lately. I don't like my life and, even more so, I don't like me. I really don't. I think, actually, that I would love my life if I could get used to me being in it. I hate being ungrateful and whiny. I just feel so stuck in a vicious cycle that I can't get out of, and I am here completely alone. I feel unlovable and unlikeable (two totally different things). I hate the state of my house, which I think it is contributing to my state of mind, but I can't seem to change it. And I can't seem to get to God right now, or get Him to come to me. You can go right ahead and tell me that I need to surrender and allow Him to work through me or whatever, but He is pretty quiet right now, and I know it's my fault, but I can't seem to get myself to change, and He is not doing it. I'm not blaming Him, but that is just where I am right now.

I am terrible about using my time. I am terrible at using money. I am terrible at keeping up with just the normal things in life. I'm late to everything, behind with everything, and completely miss other things altogether.

Why write this blog? Maybe so I have someone to confess to? Someone to talk to? Even if that someone is no one, I think it is better than leaving it inside my head where it poisons me even further. Sorry to spread it to you, world. I remember when I used to look around and really see beauty everywhere. I was so good at finding the gorgeous things around me, and it made me giddy sometimes. Now, I seriously can't find it. I look at things that I know are beautiful and I can't feel it. All I can see are the scary, terrifying things of the world. It has become ugly and all I want to do is hide, which I do. That makes me so sad. Heartbroken.