So I think I should write

But what do I write? I could do a year in review but to be honest, I don't know that I could entirely remember my year.

It's a weird life, this single parent thing.Trying to balance the needs of my children, help them with their relationships and struggles, weigh out whats best for them and advise them accordingly, while monitoring my own needs and desires in addition to working and school while providing the kids with food, shelter, clothing, but most of all GOOD memories, fun times and a sense of safety and normality.

For you see, the pciture of the "perfect" family, you know the one, withtwo parents still together, hunts us and haunts us at every turn.

Each birthday is a reminder, we are broken. Each mothers day, fathers day, easter, thanksgiving, christmas hallowe'en, canada day, summer vacation, spring break, christmas holidays, christmas recital, spring ply graduation, dance competition, it sits there silently screaming we are different, we are broken.

And so this single parenthood thing is no picnic . For I have to make us NORMAL. Which means creating family memories that they will remember where mom is smiling and laughing on the outside while not letting them see, glimpse or even dream that the insides might be screaming and howling at the unfairness and the not normalness of the whole situation. Not let them see that things should be different and that I failed them in this way. Not letting them know that a broken heart beats and with each beat bleeds tears about all that I want to give to them......expecially the knowledge that they, that we are NOT different and that our life is just fine and perfect.

And yet, when those tears come, those heart wrenching tears cuz they don't want to go to dads cuz it means leaving mom and they cannot balance the two, I have to hold them and tell them all is well and everything will be fine even though I myself am screaming that it is NOT fine. And then after they are smiling, I turn, drive home and weep silently in the dark at all in our life that is NOT fine.

The demons of single parenthood greet us at every turn, taunting and teasing me...

And so I pray, God make our 2011 a year when we can be NORMAL. When the demons no longer taunt, when we can know that we stand in your favour and your blessing and when our dreams of a normal family become reality.

Make Me A Channel

Make Me A Channel


Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me bring your love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord
And where there's doubt, true faith in you.

Chorus:
Oh, Master grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace
Where there's despair in life, let me bring hope
Where there is darkness, only light
And where there's sadness, ever joy.

Chorus:

Make me a channel of your peace
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
In giving to all men that we receive
And in dying that we're born to eternal life.

I was a little girl. Eleven years old to be exact. In the CRC (Christian Reformed Church), babies were baptized and then once you got older, you professed your faith (a public declaration). The equivalent would be dedication and baptism.This is about the same time that I read "The Cross and the Switchblade" and knew that I wanted to work with at risk youth (although that's not what I called them then)

So my dad asks me: did I want to do my profession of faith. And my heart leapt. Yes I did!. Little did I know....oh, little did I know....

What that entailed was that I sit weekly (likely for 6-8 weeks) before the elder board of the church (who ran EVERY meeting with ALL of them dressed in suits) and defend my faith and explain what I wanted to do this. Additionally, to be quizzed as to my biblical knowledge. Talk about terrifying and traumatizing a little girl.

Anyhow, I successfully "passed" and so the date was set. I was to stand before the church and profess my faith. And then I heard this song. And I KNEW that this song needed to be a part of this process. So in my little trembling, wobbly 11 year old  girl voice, I now stood before the congregation, terrified and sang out this song from my heart. And did I mean it. I meant EVERY WORD that I sang. I truly wanted to be the epitome of that song.

Fast foward many years. And now I am hearing about everyone having a life verse. And my heart is desperate for one. And so awakens that desire.

Fast forward to now. As I sit and reflect on the words of that song, a few things jump out at me. One? That prayer, that song is my life verse. It is what I want to do. It is my hearts deepest desire to bring that forth, call that out and release people into that. And so I sing and pray:

Make me a channel of your peace.

Where there is hatred let me bring your love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord
And where there's doubt, true faith in you.

Make me a channel of your peace

Where there's despair in life, let me bring hope
Where there is darkness, only light
And where there's sadness, ever joy.

Oh, Master grant that I may never seek

So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul.


I sit here and blog this, pour my heart into this post and weep. My heart longs to do this and I believe that in my counselling practice, I do do so. And in light of some recent personal sceanrios, I do believe that I live this. However, I also know there are areas that I have not done my best. Certain things have gotten in the way, and I have reacted instead of acted.

When I was a young girl of 11, this was my heart. However, little did I know that the training ground would be so terribly painful, would be so filled with aunguish.

But, if I want to impart love, I need to know and have EXPERIENCED hatred. If I want to impart forgiveness and pardon, I NEED to know injury. If I want to shine of truth faith, my own MUST have been shaken.

If I want to impart hope, I must have held hands with despair. If I want to reflect the light of the King, I must have walked in the darkness. And if I want to shift paradigms to that of joy, I must be bent to my knees with sadness and grief.

The training ground is hard. But today as I sit, a woman of 37, and this is still my heart's intent.

Listen as I sing along:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtJeI4Q9nBE

I'll be honest

I am being flooded. I am being flooded with a myriad of emotions. I had lost connection with many important people to me, and today brought a reconnection with some of those people. As a result, I am being flooded with memories, with emotions, and with lost hopes and dreams. I am realizing now, what in my stupidity, I lost back then.

Life is weird. Many times I have looked back and wondered what I lost and in doing so, realizing that if I was different, interpreted things differently many many things would be different in my life. Friendships I had would not be lost, relationships that mattered would be prominent still.

Life throws many curves, and I have found out that many times we act in the moment and find out years later we regret what we did, that seemed right at the time.....but in hindsight we wished we did differently.

I find myself in one such situation. I am mourning what I now realize I lost, and yet thankful for the grace of God to give me a portion of what I lost. It is not what it was, but I treasure what it is now. Why? Because I realize what I almost lost completely and I am thankful for what I have now although it wasn't what I had then. I realize the treasure I lost and am thankful for any part of that I have now.

And so as I move forward, I hope that I can remember this lesson, and learn to treasure what I have, although it may not be what I wish. For many times, I find that when I lost what I had, although it wasn't what I wished, when and if I am able to regain it, I am thankful for the lesser that I have, and regretful that I was blind to the treasure I had.

The Lord gives.....

and the Lord takes away. It can be a comforting verse. In fact, it was a verse I clung to during my separation with my x. The Lord gave me my x, and then my three children, and then he took my x away. And for me that was the better thing.

And yet now.........

Now I am faced with a situation where the Lord took away......and it makes no sense to me as to the why.... I have always been a person that, if given a reason why, if given some rational or logical understanding, then I can accept a lot of things. Even the things that are most hated.

And yet, I struggle. I struggle with the seemingly nonsensical things that occur. The things that I cannot reason. The things that I cannot understand. It makes me question a lot of things.

Does it make me question my faith? Does it make me question my God? No!

Why you ask?

Well the reasons run something along the lines of this. I do not know God's reason. In fact, many times God and I have arguments as to the why and wherefore of things. In fact, we have had many a heated argument as to His reasoning.

But what I must remember, even in the face of this tragedy, is that God is in control. He knows best and He has His reasons.

Oftentimes, as parents, we ask our children to do certain things that they neither like nor understand. Yet we demand it of them. To us it is reasonable, to them, they think we are punishing them.

In the coming weeks, that is what I must remember. When I hold my crying sister, when I comfort her little ones, that is what I must remember.

When I hide my tears from my children, when I sob into and fall asleep on a tear soaked pillow, that is what I must remember.

And to be honest? It SUCKS and I HATE IT. AND I AM ANGRY AND HURT AND I ACHE MORE THAN CAN BE DESCRIBED

and i trust and hold onto a hope and believe and pray and try to remember to  breathe.......

Birthdays

So I remember birthdays when I was young and the biggest thing that I remember is that the only two times in the entire year that I felt "special," that I felt important or that I felt that I had something of value was during my birthday and during Christmas. Those were the ONLY TWO days out of 365 days that I felt celebrated. I think that that contributes to why I am so anal about both my birthday and Christmas. I hate it when it gets passed over and nothing happens (speaking of my birthday) and I hate it when there is not big celebrations that I can go to around Christmas. Those things deeply sadden me and I feel empty.

I think that that is why I ensure that my children's birthdays are so celebrated and are something that they can remember. At the beginning of the school year, we were at an event at the school and Missy was discussing with her friends her birthday party this year. And as she was doing this, her friends were running through all her birthdays.....her wine and cheese party, her princess party, her Clue mystery party...to name a few. This year, I had an esthetician come in and do a Mani / Pedi party. Unfortunately, we didn't get to the Pedi's so we have a Part II to Missy's birthday in February. The girls got to pick their colors and got rhinestones and/or decals on their toes. They played Twister and a few other games. They had appetizers and punch in champagne glasses and all in all I believe it was a successful party! One remark was "this was the best party I have ever been to!" I consider that a success.

Maybe it's not fair of me to put so much into a birthday party based on my own needs. It is one of the things that we are warned of as parents. Living out our dreams through our children whether it fits them or not. I am not sure whether something like this counts or not? What I do know is that my daughter had a fabulous birthday, she enjoyed it and her friends enjoyed it and for a child who struggle socially,  I think this is a good thing!!!!

What makes you hide?

"Don't ask or demand that someone be something/someone they are not. Authenticity is rare, we should encourage and nurture it! ~ Natalie Brown

This quote from a friend of mine, got me thinking. What is it about authenticity, about transparency that scares us so much? Is it the fear that our skeletons will be found out and we shall be judged based only on our skeletons? Is that why we hide?

Trust me, I have far more than my fair share of skeletons and yet, there is freedom in being me. There is liberation in being true to what I think and feel and not allowing myself to allow others to determine who or what I am. We all have skeletons, mine may or may not be worse than yours. What would that matter anyway? You have yours, I have mine, let's call it even and call it a day. Because, (and here is the key) what nearly destroys me, you may sail through fine, and what I sail through without a second thought could very well be what brings you to your knees. I think therein lies the truth: I am affected by things differently than you are and as a result, I have no right to judge whether your struggles are suitable struggles because you know what? For YOU they ARE. So what makes me the judge and jury of what you should or should not struggle with. I have not lived your experience, I have not suffered your hurts and pains, so based on that and that alone, I have no right to even suggest that what affects you should not affect you.

So, that aside, what makes us hide? Is it our fear that others are better than us? That we are somehow more evil or more "bad" and if we were transparent than people would see that?

I had this conversation with my intern supervisor and what we both agreed on is this: the world suffers from a global self esteem complex and yet we all firmly believe that we are isolated in this regard. We look at our neighbour, friend or family member and compare ourselves. We see in them things we want for ourselves and this then highlights our shortcomings and the things we don't like within ourselves. Result" we end up hating oursleves and experiencing a self esteem issue or an inferiority complex and believe that we are the only ones that feel this way.  So we hide. And yet, in doing so we miss so much richness in our lives. We miss seeing the treasure that others are and we miss the treasure that lies within ourselves. Think of the things you could accomplish if you really knew who you were and believed it. And then granted others the same thing?

Is it he belief that in order for us to be successful, we have to maintain that facade whether or not we believe it? Fake it til you make it? Do we really believe that even if we don't feel secure, if we act it, we will be secure? The problem with this is that we come off as arrogant, prideful, self centered and superior. And then, as much as we long to be in relationship with people, we end up pushing them away instead. So in our attempt to fake it till we make it, we end up losing the one thing that we so deeply and intensely desire to gain. We put up walls around our pain, we seal it off and appear inpenetrateable to others. But you see, when we wall our pain in, we wall ourselves in and then we lose the  relationships and deep soul intimacies we long for

Or are we really just that shallow? Are we so disillusioned with life and what this world has to offer and the state of humanity that we choose to live a shallow passionless existence. Have we subscribed to apathy in order to dismiss the fact that we should stand up for those around us? Do we feel so powerless in the face of evil that it becomes easier to look the other way to maintain a semblance of comfort? If that is true than I would ask this: is the sacrifice of giving up yourself and living a passionless, shallow existence worth the comfort that looking away brings? For me, it doesn't. I simply cannot stand aside and see human suffering. I am COMPELLED to act. Yes it hurts to do so. In doing so I am transparent, I am vulnerable and I risk being wounded. But I gain LIFE and passion and a zest for living and a deep stirring in my soul.

So what makes you hide?

I HATE TRAUMA

in case you missed that, let me say it again, I HATE TRAUMA....

I hate that it robs you of life.

I hate that it instills in you fears uminmaginabble.

I hate that it makes you go around constantly watching every move that every one around you makes.

I hate that you never feel safe.

I hate that you can't sleep at night for the fear of something bad" happneing.

I hate that it makes you alter your life patterns to keep safe.

I hate that it ma kes yoiu turn against yourself and subesequently hate yourself.

I hate that its a wound few choose to see.

I hate that you don't know how to "be" normal.

Did I mention that I hate trauma?

I hate that it steals innocence.

I hate that it causes uncontrollable panic.

I hate that taht it often ends up looking like ADHD and ADD....oh.....that sneaky beast trauma.

And most of all?

I HATE THAT IT STEALS LIFE.

PS. did I mention I hate trauma?