what keeps me up

So, I should be sleeping. And maybe if I were, I wouldn't be thinking about this. And then it wouldn't be a problem. Oh the circles I go in. I don't know what it means. I wonder if I'll be irritated with this tomorrow. I want to be better. I want to be whole. I want to not be put on probation for being weird. I want to be able to do what normal people do, and I want to be able to be trusted with tasks that are important and involve other people. I am ashamed of myself for what I did, I can't explain it, or why, but please, God, help me not do it again. I still haven't figured out the agency of God in the world, although no one else should be able to claim they have either. But if that were the path I am to take, shouldn't it have opened up at some point? Doesn't the fact that it keeps dead-ending mean that I should move to another option? Surely there is only so much persistence that can be expected. If one persists and only runs into dead ends, the healthy thing it seems is to move in a different direction. No? I hope so. That's what I'm doing. I have realized I've lived a lot in my head lately. I have had little conscious interaction with the physical world around me. I hadn't even remembered exactly what was in my room. Not details. I hadn't thought about it. Maybe I should move out of the living room. I haven't really moved in there, but I spend all my time in that one spot on the couch. I don't quite know why. That's just where I've been. I don't always understand where this all comes from, or where it goes when it's gone, and I haven't been able to find anyone who could give me a satisfactory explanation. I need grace like whoa, and hopefully I can find it. Jesus save me. I constantly am finding that patience is a virtue for good reason. And I want to find that fulfillment I so desperately at times seek. If I could get a few clues as to what it is, that would be good. Possibly quite helpful to know what I'm working toward. I would like to hope that, if I must stay here for another couple of years at least, that KAMX will present an opportunity, or even Ritz Camera again. I am beginning to be more comfortable with myself, which is helpful. And finding someone to love could be helpful, hard to say. There are advantages and disadvantages to being single. One seems to be that I am alone. Not entirely alone, but there is no one that I have the guarantee of maintaining a relationship with. I know that technically even being 'in love' with someone makes no guarantees, but I'd like to think that I'm serious enough about what love means that I would take it seriously and make it work because that's the way it's meant to be. And while being alone presents opportunities to do what I want, to not have to worry about taking into consideration another's hopes and dreams, it can also be a bit lonely at times. No one in a position to be there for you no matter what. I have good people in my life, and I am grateful for them. And maybe as I grow, and become more comfortable with myself, I will learn how to trust others more, and better. I just need a little help to get there. And that's what I pray for. Fortunately this writing has accomplished what I hoped it would. I have regained a sense of peace or something, at any rate a sense of comfort that I can now fall asleep and wake up tomorrow and face the day and be human. God please bring wholeness to my life, I need it so badly. Please heal my wounds and mend my breaks. And thank you for the grace to keep going every day. Amen.

thoughts on authority and other musings

Last night I saw a video made about the trial of Pastor Bradley Schmeling for being a pastor and in a committed relationship with another man. It was very well done, both informationally and artistically. And at one point in the movie Pr. Schmeling is speaking to his congregation, and he says that as a boy he was always taught that when in trouble find someone in authority, like a police officer, to help you out. And that he wishes even still that that were the case. And he is not the only person who has been told that. I was taught that in elementary school. I'm sure most of the world was told that. Sadly, however, as we grow up and get older, we find that is only a delusion, an ideal that is rarely reached. There are plenty of people in authority positions such as firemen and police officers who are good people and would help a lost child. But there are too many, because even one is too many, who are not looking out for the interests of others. And this trial of a pastor is one example. It is unimportant that this man has been an excellent pastor to this congregation, it is unimportant that the congregation asked him to be there and wants him there and theologically speaking he is really not in any violations. There are some man made rules, and some people are just uncomfortable, so those two men and that entire congregation get punished for it. And one man interviewed in the video commented when he first got to know Bradley that they got a mercedes with a bent fender, and Bradley replied, we all have bent fenders. An excellent answer. Very true. We are all sinners, we all have issues. Fortunately Lutheran theology specifically speaks to this, that sin does not have the final say, grace does, because God came down to humanity. The biggest problem I see here is people talking about something they have no first hand experience with. That is forever a problem in the world. People try to regulate things they do not understand, people try to make claims about things they do not understand, and people enforce policies on others when they do not understand. And all that happens is people get hurt. And the world is broken enough as it is. Sometimes, thinking about accepting everyone is uncomfortable. Sometimes we are uncomfortable accepting parts of ourselves. But we are all so far from perfect, yet God has accepted us all anyway, already, that how can we do anything less, when we have already received a gift far beyond what we deserve? Selfish hoarding of this gift only diminishes its appreciability. How can you feel good about being accepted when you reject others? And sadly, the people we have in charge of things, specifically those in charge of church bodies, should be examples to the rest of us, but often they fall short of that calling. Yes, it is hard to live in such public light all the time, but honesty should be valued that much more because of it. Maybe I'm too much of a purist there. I just wish we didn't all have to be so scared of showing others who we really are. We would possibly all be a lot healthier. I pray that God works in a helpful way for this upcoming churchwide assembly, and I pray for everyone involved, and those hurt by these events and those confused and those with closed hearts and minds. And all the rest of us, God knows we all need it. Amen.

step: next

Those people can all go to hell. I don't know who's at fault, me or them. But I hate it. I hate it, I hate it. And I don't want to do it anymore. So I quit. I'm done. God, I'm sorry if that's what you're offering, I don't want it. I'd rather live with my realities than have them treated like that. Maybe these are just the quirks I need to embrace. And hopefully they won't take me with them. Please, help me somehow, but not like that. It's not right. It can't be. Not like that. Please.

we lost Jesus..

Sunday I did the children's sermon during the church service. The substitute pastor said he liked it, and even referred to it some in his own sermon that day, which I imagine is a decent affirmation. And the pastor of the congregation, who was on a trip with the teenagers that day, had suggested earlier in the week the possibility of my dispelling the myths of Mary Magdalene being a prostitute, or somehow mentioning how women are important too, but I just couldn't figure out how to bring those issues to a 5 year old level. Fortunately the pastor mentioned those in his sermon, so I didn't even need to consider worrying. But anyway, preparation for any sermon, for kids or the congregation or whatever, involves first reading the text(s) of the day from the lectionary (in the case of denominations that do that, or when preparing a Bible class lesson with particular texts), and then reflecting upon those texts and attempting to come up with some tidbit of a message that could be expounded upon. I think often this happens in conversation with another, whether on purpose or not. I received some inspiration from my roommate, who had the benefit of attending many children's sermons in her lifetime; I did not grow up in a denomination that had children's sermons. So she suggested I talk about how Jesus is there even when we don't know it. (the text was Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb, finding it empty, weeping, and then seeing Jesus standing outside--John 20:1-2, 11-18) So I thought about that for a while. It sounded good to me. So I asked the kids, "have you ever lost anything?" Fortunately they said yes, so I went on with "in this story Mary and some apostles go to the tomb, because Jesus had died, and he wasn't there. And they were like, great, we lost Jesus." So then I asked them if they had ever not been able to find anything, but then it was right there in front of them. The one boy got this grin on his face like it was a secret admission, and said yes. It was a great expression. He is already getting to the age where he understands embarrassment, but how it can be freeing to admit things like that when it is a shared admission. He was 5 or 6, I can't remember exactly. Anyway, I continued with telling them how even though we don't see Jesus like the people did back then, we can be Jesus by doing things that Jesus would do, and being kind to others and helping others when they need it. But the pastor, in his sermon, seemed to really appreciate the way I said they had lost Jesus. Which then got me thinking some more, about how it is true even now. We are constantly losing Jesus, because we get distracted by things happing in our lives and we forget Jesus is there too. So we all too often are weeping and looking for Jesus, and turn around to ask someone if they have seen Him, and realize it is Him we are talking to. Just the way Mary did in the story. It isn't the actual flesh and blood Jesus who walked the earth 2000 some odd years ago, maybe, but it is Jesus nonetheless. We all have opportunity to help others find Jesus when they lose Him, and we will be visited by another who will help us do the same. This life can be a messy business but we have help, and we can make it through. Help from God, help from the other two members of the Trinity, and help from the rest of God's creation, living out their calling to be the hands and feet of God in the world.

facing reality

I went with my roommate, who works at the same place I do but she is a news reporter, and we heard an accident come over the scanner, so her coworker told us to hurry there and take photos b/c it was very close. It ended up being one of my other coworkers involved, he was ok, but the passenger in the other car was taken away in an ambulance likely with a broken arm and other minor injuries, and being a photographer I was told to take photos. I have a hard time with that though, emotionally it was somewhat difficult to do. And sadly I am feeling that I am getting to the breaking point again, that feeling I get where I could cry over something that I shouldn't. All it would take is something to scare me, something else like that accident, or any particular stress that suddenly overwhelms me. And I stopped taking the antidepressants I have been on for a little over a year, of which I am still suffering a bit from withdrawal symptoms, but the antidepressant was not really helping anymore. I don't think I'm supposed to go through one a year. So I pray to God that I will survive this truth, and be able to get past it and over it, and survive as a child of God.

in which we realize our life isn't so crappy as we once feared...

My roommate has been having car troubles for quite a bit of time, and today was a final blow. I had to go pick her up off the side of the road b/c her car died again and she absolutely could not get it started. So I took her back to work then, and then we went to IHOP, because her grandparents and father live off a stretch of the new SH130 and they finally got an offer that matched what her grandparents were asking for the property. Except for some reason today her grandfather decided he wanted more money. They are already getting an exorbitant amount of money for their property with this offer, yet he decided he needed more. My roommate needs a new car, and her grandparents will not give the money for it. It is the most amazing, strangest thing I have ever heard. I know my own grandmother has plenty of money, she has invested well, the man she is married to now invests well, but they give money to many good causes and I know if I were in this position of needing a new car she would not hesitate to help. My roommate's grandparents' scruples make me realize how fortunate I am, even with all the insanity and weirdness that is my family. How money can do that to people is amazing. Incredible, and horrible. How having more than you could ever hope to spend and that still not being enough, and yet you will not share it with anyone, not even your own flesh and blood when they are in need. The money is useless as it is, and they are in no shape to go on any extravagant vacations or spend the money in any way, and yet they sit on it and pay lawyers and stock people too much money when they don't need to, and they allow the government to take too much of it in taxes, because they have become so greedy or whatever unexplicable malady has befallen them that they would rather sit on it and watch it rot than see it put to good use and actually do something benevolent for their family members. How something like that can happen I do not understand, nor does my roommate, and she suffers while this happens. It is like her grandparents are no longer people, something else has taken hold of them. And thus I realize the blessings I have, and work to embrace them and learn and grow.

you gave me a rainbow dangit

Dear God. You gave me a rainbow yesterday. I'm tired of doing all this on my end, it's Your turn. Thanks. -Elise

Yes well, I hope it works like that. I need a faith overhaul, and I'm starting yesterday. I also say the hell with depression and those demons can go back to from whence they came. Dear God I want it to work for good. Please. You gave me a rainbow yesterday. Yes, I know everyone else saw it too. But rainbows are a promise. Noah got the first rainbow. And it was a promise. So I want my rainbow too. My promise. I know I have to do work too. But God please. This is important. I know everything is important. O God, I want to do things, I want to be a person, I want to be Your person, but I need Your help, I need help. I know I can't do this on my own, and that to hope that now will be any different is hoping for a miracle, but hey, You're the one to go to for a miracle, right? My name means consecrated to God. I no longer believe that was just a coincidence. Please, help me stay focused, help me stay strong. I know things will happen that I will be unable to control, and things will go wrong, and be bad, but please please, dear God for the love of all things holy, please keep the rainbow promise. Please be with me, please help me remember You are always with me, and please keep the demons at a safe distance. Please help me love and be loved again. O God only You can do and be what I need, and You know. Amen.