Have Cheap Luggage, Will Travel

I get up everyday around 5:30 or 6 to read and drink coffee. My mornings are always great. I even wish I could get up earlier because I love them so much.

One of my friends quit drinking coffee last week and the way I found out is she literally threw herself on the floor of my cube complaining of nausea and headaches. The only way I could help is sprite, 2 aspirin and a good back rub. As I was nurturing my friend back to health, it occurred to me that I could be in the same position if I tried to quit drinking coffee. So, I decided to find out.

I am now on day two with only one small relapse of a ½ caff vanilla latte last night. Let me tell you, I understand what was happening to my friend. My neck is killing me, I have a constant dull headache and I have this nagging feeling of wanting to go back to bed all the time. Weird. I had no idea my body was this in love with caffeine.

Just for grins I consulted Google on the side effects of consistent caffeine intake. Nervousness, irritability, anxiety, muscle twitching, insomnia and heart palpitations. Hmmm…Here are even some people that are campaigning to have caffeine withdrawal classified as a psychiatric disorder.

Well, at least I know why I am crazy today.




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My favorite prayer is to thank God that this is my life and to ask that those words will move me 50 years from now as much as it does today. Sometimes when I pray that, I can’t stop the grateful tears from streaming down my face.

In case you think I am crazy, I was not looking to find a real God a few years ago but He was looking for me. Through a series of events that I can only explain by attributing it to divine intervention, my life now is so full that I can’t hardly believe that it is mine and this is just the beginning.

I think about this a lot but I thought about it almost every second of this weekend. Some would say that true friendship is hard to come by but I seem to have an overabundance of wonderful people in my life.

I spent the whole weekend knee deep in some thought provoking conversations and some conversations that made my cheeks hurt from laughing so much. I haven’t laughed that much in a long time.

I have seen some pretty amazing things happen over the last year that will not allow me to ever deny the existence of a real God but this weekend reminded me that he cares about all things in my life, including the desire for some really great friends.

So let’s tip our glasses to great friends that make your brain work and your cheeks hurt. If you don’t have friends like this, get out there and get some because it is not worth missing.

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”