Have Cheap Luggage, Will Travel

We are always trying to draw lines in our lives to create order and stability and use these lines to understand our surroundings. The problem is…life. Life is dynamic and refuses to be dictated by what we think it should be because it includes things that can’t be controlled like people and God.

So back to lines. The biggest problem I have with lines is when we draw them to include and dis-include people in our lives.

The Blasphemy Challenge is a crafty word-of-mouth marketing campaign cooked up by a documentary company that recently released a documentary arguing that Jesus Christ is just a conspiracy and he never actually existed. They promoted this documentary by asking their followers to go on You Tube, record a video of themselves denying God and the Holy Spirit and send it in for a free DVD. So people by the thousands loaded their videos practically daring God to strike them with lightening on the spot. Below are links to some I found the most interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpS0B11mEBk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA1bETsBrl0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAeARb1UY6k

So back to lines. After watching those, I am sure that your eyes widened, you shook your head and started drawing some lines in your head about those people when maybe we should be thinking of these people in a different way.

One of my Celebrate Recovery principles is a good reminder to constantly re-evaluate what I think I “know”.

1 Corinthians 10:12
If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall.

Some common reactions to this video are that the blasphemers had better be afraid of what the Lord thinks about that, you’ll eventually have to answer for that and that of course I am better off with the Lord.

So back to lines. Before you draw lines to define “my circle is holier than your circle”, take a second to make sure you not lukewarm to the things of God which scripture clearly states is worse than denying the Lord on You Tube.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

Are you a show up to church once a week and nothing else person? How do you spend your time, thoughts and money on a daily basis and does that bring glory to God or does it terminate on yourself?

Maybe instead of pointing fingers, drawing lines and shaking our heads in disappointment for these people, we should wonder why our hearts don’t break for them and get us up off the couch to see if we can’t find some people like them to tell them the truths that have changed our lives.

Also, the reason that I wrote this blog is because finger pointing and line drawing was my first reaction.

My dad and I do not have a good relationship. I understand people by understanding their pasts and I understand why my dad is the way he is. The wonderful man that I know to be my grandpa to be is not the person my dad grew up with and that has very much influenced the man my dad is today. Nevertheless, the less than loving relationship that my father and I shared as a teenager is now plaguing my life as an adult. It comes up at weird times.

My little sister got married recently and I had to do some scripture readings during the ceremony. Which included this phrase…

“Forgive others as I have forgiven you

Snap. I instantly start crying because my father is sitting on the front row. Everybody thinks I am so sweet for being upset over my sister getting married and all I can think of is not right now God. Not a good time to talk about this. The question remains, why am I so upset about my dad?

I am beginning to understand how much a father’s relationship with his daughter will affect her self esteem and her tendency to be co-dependent which is where my self assessment has arrived at after a week off of work alone with my thoughts.

What does co-dependency look like?

- My good feelings about who I am stem from being loved by you
- My mental attention is focused on protecting you.
- My self-esteem is bolstered by solving your problems.
- I am not aware of how I feel.
- I am aware of how you feel.
- The dreams I have for my future are linked to you.
- My fear of rejection determines what I say or do.
- My social circle diminishes as I involve myself with you.
- I put my values aside in order to connect with you.
- The quality of my life is in direct relation to the quality of yours.

I can pretty much insert my ex-boy friend’s name into every you listed above and really I guess my dad as well. This where you end up when you don’t deal with you daddy issues until you are almost 30.

So what is next? Something called celebrate recovery at my church. It is a step program set up like AA. Hopefully it will help but I am worried about what I might dig up. Anyway, here I go. Maybe this will be a year of healing for me after all.

“Hi my name is Nichole and I struggle with co-dependency and low self-esteem”

After spending the last 9 days in Okinawa, Japan (a small island south of the mainland), I have so many blogs that are rolling around in my head but I will try to consolidate them to a collection of concise thoughts for now.

What I learned about Okinawans:

They pave their road in asphalt made of sea shells - They are surrounded by one of the largest coral reefs in the world and have a ton of it lying around. The Japanese know how to be efficient that is for sure.

They take a 2 hour naps in the afternoon – The crazy thing about their napping is that if they are working outside, they just lay down on the ground right there.

America nearly killed everyone on the island once – Being in Okinawa was really embarrassing for me most of the time I was in town because I was an American. First off, my brother-in-law is a Marine and is stationed there. 75% of our military presence in Japan is on the island of Okinawa and Okinawa constitutes less than 1/10 of the land mass for Japan. So basically, Americans have over run the island which is only 65 miles long. The worst part of this is why we are even there in the first place.

In the battle for the Pacific during WWII, we bombed the crap out of that island in order to get a foothold to attack. When I say that I really mean it. In the first 24 hours of the Battle of Okinawa, we dropped almost 4,000 tons of artillery shells on the island. More than 1/3 of the civilian population of Okinawa lost their lives. To be sure they took many of our soldiers with them, but it was still daunting to see.

I visited the underground tunnels where the Okinawan military made its last stand. They had a museum there that had pictures of the villagers that were maimed by the bombing. There were a lot of kids. Most of the 4,000 soldiers that made their last stand in those tunnels committed suicide over their defeat. I put my fingers in holes blasted in the tunnel walls from grenades that helped with those suicides. I felt a little bit like a Nazi visiting a Holocaust museum.

What I learned about me:

I want to be a mom worse than I knew - My sister has a 6 month girl and 4 year old boy. Sometimes when we would be running around, I would have my niece on my hip with my nephew’s hand in mine and I loved it. While I was there, I changed poopy diapers, kissed scrapes, made food. I tell my friends all the time about how I can’t wait to be a mom but that feeling just multiplied by a million.

I love my sister more than I knew – On the plane back home I felt what can only be described as intense sadness. I missed her and her family so bad that I wouldn’t let myself think about them for fear of bursting into tears. More than once while I was there, I considered what I would have to do to just stay over there. Running through scenarios of how I could dump my life in exchange for a life with them made me realize how bad I want her to live by me.

There is more to come but this is the stuff I needed to get off my chest right away.

My sister almost died when she was a teenager. She took a bunch of Tylenol and drank a quart of vodka but still woke up the next day.

I must admit after it happened, I was shook up but the realization that I could have only had one sister instead of two only hit me a few years ago.

On Friday my dad told me that he thinks that my sister took a weak pill like Tylenol because her suicide was “a fake” and she only wanted attention.

- No matter that most people that commit suicide with pills use Tylenol along with other drugs.

- No matter that suicide is the third leading cause of death for teenagers.

- And certainly no matter that my sister told me that she intended on dying that night.

I thought that when you had kids that you were on their side no matter what. Apparently I was wrong about that.

I am mad. Mad at the blackness that exists in this world but mostly mad that it has found its way into my family.