Merry Christmas

Well to all of you I wish the blessings of the season. Have fun, be safe and remember that we celebrate Christmas for a reason...thank you God for the gift of your son.

To all of you I just want to say you are loved.

Peace

What To Blog?

Okay play is finished and hubby is gigging. Book is also finished and I said I wouldn't go to bed before blogging...Guess we all need to set ourselves goals that are attainable.

So I'm still thinking about the book blog, it'd be kids and YA stuff coz that's my work thing. I've even managed to find a bit of time to write some more for both stories I'm working on and that's a good thing.

The other good thing is I've just about done my Christmas shopping, it's not finished because finding enough time to do it when the girls aren't around isn't easy. Oh and the spa is working properly again...yay!

Other things have been happening that have got my brain turning over. Friends and work and interpersonal skills that people have or don't. As well as relationships and ultimatums. So there is plenty of stuff to write about the thing at the moment is putting a book, any book, down for long enough to actually write it down. I wonder sometimes if I have so much going on that the creative side of me gets all mixed up. A while ago it was like I had ideas dripping out of my brain, I couldn't contain them all. Now I have work to do the ideas sometimes float by but I can't grasp them to consider them because I'm supposed to be working. Also I at least have the theatre to channel my creative juices. I think overall it's a good thing because I can be a little more focussed than working on 10 ideas at once. Then again how many ideas just end up floating away from me because I have bills to pay and work to take care of?

Well enough introspection for one night. I'm hoping that once the new year starts I will be able to refocus myself. What a laugh...how many people think that do you wonder.

At least though I hit my goal and blogged before going to bed.

Good night all.

Peace

What Happened To The Last Month?

Wow the silly season is upon us and all is chaos. Good thing I do okay in chaos. I've been neck deep in reading recently not so much on writing, but we all need to change things up every now and then. I am also 2 weeks into a 3 week run for a Christmas play I'm acting in. So between that and work and getting ready for Christmas... well I've kinda dropped the ball when it comes to blogging. The play finishes next weekend so I'm planning on getting back into writing then. I also may be starting up a book blog for work... I'm not totally decided yet, mostly coz I already put in extra unpaid hours I'm not sure I want to add to it. Besides they keep adding crap to my section like plastic piggy banks and watering cans in the shapes of snails and poodles...what the hell I work in a bookstore not a gardening centre or a bank. I love my job I'm just not too happy with certain things at the mo...every job is like that though, good and bad days. I'm ever so thankful for the great guys I work with though, so no point complaining (much) just need to get on with it.

Till next time

Love

God loves you. Do we understand the depths of that simple statement? I think for most of us we understand but the shadow of the whole. So much depends on our understanding of love. For many of us the subtleties and outward manifestations differ. Now that may sound like a crock but I know from experience that I get more out of certain expressions than my man does and likewise for him.

Here’s the kicker though, we don’t always give each other what speaks most to us. It is so easy to get caught up in the feeling rather than the meaning of love. We get tossed around in the shallows rather than dive through and explore the depths.

We focus on the passion in the kiss, the number of times we’re complimented or touched, rather than the fact that the perfect place to be when the chips are down is with the ones we love. I can be exhausted and frustrated and yet the girls’ laugh, or the words ‘I love you’ or a hug make everything more balanced again. Likewise I can be emotional, stressed, annoyed and yet the one place I’d really like to be at the end of the day is curled up in my hubby’s arms.

My hubby accepts me as I am and that is a comforting and intoxicating thing. He doesn’t try to change me. He doesn’t try to get me to be more tidy, or a more organised house wife and I don’t get him to be less phlegmatic and relaxed. Of course being that way is his nature but sometimes his ‘I’ll get to it’ attitude frustrates me. It’s taken 12 years but I’ve finally started to step back and let him do it in his own time.

The thing to remember is that he’s not perfect but neither am I, together we work at our relationship and because of that we have a safe place together and for our girls and us to be who we are – good days and bad. There is a lot of freedom in that. The catch is that kind of freedom has a price. It requires trust and honesty. I think a lot of us struggle with those things, in both our personal relationships and our relationship with God.

I’d have to say I don’t struggle with trusting my hubby but in other relationships I certainly do still have a hard time trusting. Say if someone still occasionally have a hard time trusting that people like me for me…the damage done in school can have effects that last for a long time.

Now back to the topic I started with. What and how does this relate to faith? I think it directly relates to the depth and richness of that relationship. (For me faith is a relationship)

Don’t read this thinking I come from some place of great theological depths and a well balanced perfect relationship with God. I don’t. Sometimes I struggle mightily with my faith. I’ve had a fair share of desert times, but I’ve also learnt a few things. I’ve learnt that God wants to spend time with me even with all my flaws. Even knowing all my secrets he doesn’t run from me. He also doesn’t need me to pretty things up or pretend the crap in my life hasn’t happened. He doesn’t want me to pretend to be someone I’m not. He knows I’ve gotten drunk, done a couple of lines of cocaine, used to cut myself, was possibly abused. He knows my friend has bad taste in guys always seeming to pick the ones who want to hurt her. He knows about stupid mistakes and dumb choices and yet He still is there for me. He still lets me pour my heart out to Him. And I am so different to you.

God will still wrap His presence around us when we sit curled up in a corner of a dark room crying because it hurts so much, or we feel so lost or out of control. Does He like or approve of everything we do? No, no more than I do with my girls. But that doesn’t change His love for us, like it doesn’t change my love for them. Would he like us to change some of our habits and methods? Yes, that’s part of growing up, maturing. Does He want us to change who we are at our inner core? I don’t believe He does. He made us, gifted us and called us all to be unique and worthy. Sometimes we get trapped or sidetracked into things that ultimately aren’t good for us. And He still loves us.

Do we really understand how incredible that gift is? We stand before Him stripped down – all laid bare and he steps towards us, arms wide and pulls us into the biggest bear hug. His love is that deep it holds onto us in our darkest moments and when we try to run and hide. For this moment allow yourself to accept that. Embrace that feeling. Swim into the depths of a love that doesn’t hesitate to give it’s life for you. Love at it’s purest and it’s there for you.

Focus to Write

I have these things I want to write but the topics seem so big at the moment that I can't figure out how to start. It seems also that finding the time to tackle them is a bit of a problem. 20 minutes on the train to and from work means I find it hard to get started and then pick it up again. With rehearsals I'm also out a couple of nights a week. Weekend days are not so good because the girls don't really leave me alone long enough and while that is occasionally frustrating I don't begrudge them that because I'm not home during the week. Then of course the nights I am home without hubby I have great intentions but lack follow through, I just flake. Then when he's home I either watch something with him or sit in his studio reading while he surfs, writes or plays with his photos.

I need to have better discipline.

Freedom of Religion

Pictures of a recent peace rally in the UK have been circulating on-line. Now I’m not about to forward the e-mail to everyone on my contact list because I’m not convinced it would do much except cause greater separation between certain people groups. So if I feel that way why do I want to address it in this format? Because a picture may be worth a thousand words but it can also be open to wide interpretation.

I find it incredibly sad that people feel the need to express themselves so negatively (i.e. death to…). How sad to have to say conform to my faith or you should/will die. I’m not naïve enough to say this from some holy hallowed ground because my faith has periods of that in it’s history.

I’m thankful I live in a time and place where I am free to choose how and what I worship, because quite frankly I wouldn’t make a very good fundamentalist Muslim. I don’t even make a good fundamentalist Christian. I am way too opinionated.

I have come to a period in my life where I say I am a Christian. I believe in God but I’m not about to get into a slanging match with you about if He is real. I can’t prove God to you. God isn’t quantitative for me he is experiential. I don’t think God needs me to make excuses for Him.

I am simply glad I don’t feel the need to spew violence and hatred on people who don’t share my faith, the way these people at the rally did. What is also very sad is that people like these get accepted as the totality of that faith, when that is simply not so.

Pain

I know this is a repost but I have been feeling that it was something I needed to do, so here it is.

I have scars. They are faint and unless you were looking you wouldn’t know they were there. These scars I’m talking about were self inflicted. Self harm has almost become a trendy topic, in some circles to the point were it’s talked about and played with as something to do. The truth is the reasons behind it can be much darker and deeper. Self harm isn’t something you should do to fit in and a lot of people that do it don’t talk about it. If you ever see their cuts or scars they may dismiss them, make light of them. But with or without the bravado it’s a cry for help.

For me it wasn’t something I was proud of or something I wanted others to know. My one friend who saw the cuts did so because I rolled up my sleeves one day without thinking. Was she nice and sensitive about it? Hell no. She ripped into me demanding answers and when I wouldn’t give them to her she kept pushing. She then insisted if I ever felt like doing that again I had to call her. I don’t think I ever cut myself again.

I’ve known girls who self harm to shrug it off, saying it’s unimportant. They display all this bravado but honestly if there wasn’t something wrong they wouldn’t be doing it.

As far as this topic goes, for me a blade wasn’t my big thing. If you’d asked I would have said I did it because I was curious but let’s face it what normal kind of person is curious about being cut by a knife. They just aren’t. My more common method of self harm was my hands, to be precise I use to hit things, big solid surfaces. It didn’t tend to leave obvious marks, sometimes grazes and bruises but nothing as noticeable as scabbed up cuts.

It’s important to note that self harm isn’t always about cutting yourself nor is it always connected to attempted suicide. I never thought about ending my life. Which then leads to the obvious question – what was it about then? The one word answer is pain. That probably doesn’t tell you much though. A better way of putting it is pain management. I had a lot of baggage, a lot of stuff I didn’t know how to deal with properly, years of insecurities that culminated for me in my twenties. I was never popular, I was teased a lot and had self image problems, all hidden behind walls I’d built around my emotions. In early high school guys weren’t particularly mean, they just ignored me for the most part but the girls were really nasty. Later on though there were a few guys who seemed to like nothing better than attacking me verbally in any way they thought was funny. I always had things to say back to them and never let them see the damage they caused, but just because they didn’t see the pain didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Later on I used my physical assets to get attention, but attention and good healthy relationships are two vastly different things. The attention made me feel better momentarily but didn’t do anything for me deep down. Deep inside I felt alone, as though no-one cared to know the real me. That’s the danger when you live to get approval from people in general. When your happiness is reliant on the external and you live to get surface gratification, you find it only lasts for a brief moment. We all really want someone to care for us deep down, not just like us for our breasts or because we will put out.

I had plenty of people hitting on me but that didn’t stop me feeling depressed and alone. I’d walk home after a night out with my girlfriends and I’d punch the rough rock walls because I felt so miserable on the inside and for a brief while, the pain caused by the rocks overshadowed the pain I felt on the inside. I think this is at the heart of self harm. It is a way to cover up inner pain. If we are going to deal with something like this we have to learn to deal with the underlying problems. We need to look at what is causing the pain and how each person deals with it.

There are healthy ways to deal with the pain life throws at us. Of course not all of us have parents or friends we can go to or even someone we feel we can trust with out innermost, dirtiest, scariest secrets. So instead we build internal walls and hide our emotions away. We don’t deal with our problems in an effective way and as a result at the very least cause ourselves no small amount of hurt. Sure you could say we don’t do it to ourselves it’s others that have done it to us but the truth is the only one who can decide how to play the hand we’ve been dealt is ourselves.

I suppose the next thing you might be curious about is how I overcame it. Well my friend was a good start. Like I said I don’t think I cut myself again but it’s worth considering that cutting was something I’d escalated up to so it’s possible that if my friend hadn’t stepped in when and how she did I could have kept going. That one conversation with her didn’t stop all my self harm and it didn’t stop the depression and loneliness but it was a step in the right direction.

The depression and loneliness followed me back to Australia (I spent a couple of years in my early twenties in the UK) and I kept living a lifestyle that sought approval and gratification from the people around me. I still lived a very superficial life. I wasn’t happy and I knew it. One day I accepted this and decided I was the only one who could change it. I didn’t do it alone but I needed to make the decision and I needed to take responsibility.

For me faith in God was something I grew up with so when I decided to sort out my life I knew it was my spiritual life I needed to deal with first. I went to a camp and used the time and environment (away from the city, work and all the influences that cluttered my days, drawing me into a superficial life) to deal with my issues. How did I do that? I cried out to God. I swore off men and took my loneliness, hurts and frustrations to the cross. This was a turning point in my life. Many things changed that weekend, not least of which being that I met the man I would be engaged to six weeks later. But that’s another story for another time.

All this was ten years ago and just so you know not all my problems vanished in an instant. I made the decision to change and took steps to do so. I also realised I needed a better way of dealing with things. It took time but I found my better way through faith and doing the things I love – for me performing is a great way to get rid of built up stress. Of course meeting my future husband meant the man thing wasn’t much of an issue anymore. The depression became much less of a thing as well. I still suffer bouts of it but it no longer drags me down for days on end and causes me to stop functioning effectively. Now I know there is a way out. I still feel lonely sometimes but now I know not all of us can surround ourselves with friends and be happy all the time. And of course my life still has many frustrations but they help me move forward, even if I do occasionally feel like punching a wall when I am at my most frustrated.

Bottom line is even though things don’t always go my way, or the way I think they should, I know now how to deal with my problems better and if I feel unattractive, useless or hurt I have someone I can pour my emotions out on. Even if my husband doesn’t understand or know what to say, God does. He knows the intimate parts of me including the darkest parts of my heart and he loves me still.

Not everyone’s path is the same but none of us need to deal with things alone. There is light at the end of the tunnel but we have to choose to walk to it and continue in it.