Cynthia
From time to time, I become overwhelmed with my doubts. I began to lose sight of what faith can be, of the hope that it can inspire. But I am not willing to shove those doubts in a box, package them away, just because they have become difficult to deal with. I have to give them more of a place, let the light of love shine on them, the light that is present in others so that I can see them more clearly. In that light, the fear surrounding my doubts diminishes and they regain their proper place.

I can't do this alone. I don't want to do this alone. Today, Patti Digh shared this clip from the movie, Doubt with Phillip Seymour Hoffman:




"There are those of you in church today who know exactly the crisis of faith I describe. And I want to say to you: DOUBT can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone."


Patti goes on to say, "Perhaps this is why people write and read blogs, to make their own pain a public experience, to share the wound." Yes, this is why I write, this is why I read. I can't do this alone and I don't want to do this alone. I need my online friends and I am finding more and more that I need a face to face community of faith and doubt.

At the beginning of this year, I threw out an invitation on meetup.com for those in our area who are people of faith and doubt to come together and have a conversation. Upstate Emergence has grown, large and small, but most importantly, deeper. These are the people who help hold the doubts in the light of love and who are helping me lose the fear of my doubts, to believe strongly again, to develop a hopeful faith.

Speaking of a community of faith and doubt or maybe I should say a tribe of community and faith, OH how I wish I could have gone to the Christianity 21 conference last weekend. Emerging Women has a list of blog responses from the conference but it certainly seems that most people are having trouble putting their experiences into words. That speaks volumes to me. I am saving my pennies to purchase the media pack so that I can at least hear the ideas that were presented. It won't be the same because I know that the biggest impact seems to have come from being there, participating in the conversation. Maybe next time.

I would like to share this highlight video from the event and as a final thought about doubt, quote and applaud Makeesha Fisher




"We are more often than not people of doubt who have beliefs
than people of faith who have moments of doubt.
"

Cynthia
So, did you read my post, How am I?  If you did, then you know about my little trip to the hospital where they pumped me up on steroids.  Yeah, pumped me up, up, UP!  I am still flying.  I have not slept at all and am in high gear still.  Can't sit still, sleep is not even lurking in the shadows, you'd think I could get something productive done. Nope. My thoughts are pinging all over the place like a pinball machine.  My moods are swinging from high to low.  One minute I am super happy joyful the next I feel like I could stomp my people into the ground. 

Ugh.

The question I keep asking ...

why, why, WHY would anyone do this to themselves voluntarily.  Whether it is steroids or amphetamines or methamphetamines, I just can't understand why anyone would want to feel this way.  Like I said, it might be one thing if I could actually accomplish anything but I can't focus as all. 

I wonder where I will be when I finally crash.  Hope it's somewhere safe.
 

Cynthia
Who am I?  How am I?  Just a few letters rearranged and the dynamics of that question change dramatically.  I can make a running list of who I am ... a woman, a wife, a mother, a friend, an artist, a daughter, a sister.  Maybe I even want to speak more poetically and say that I am a thinker, a dreamer, a believer, a doubter.  But how am I?  That makes me strip down the masks, the labels, the roles and become vulnerable.  Maybe it's easier to write about what I do or even what I think or believe than to write about how I am.  That's the stuff for diaries and journals, right?

But Barb asked and I am going to attempt to answer.

Today, I am stronger than I ever dreamed I could be yet at the same time, as unsure of myself as ever.  My insecurities speak so loudly in my head that I find myself bound in immature thought processes and behaviors.  That pains me.  I am midlife, forty-five years old, with nine children and two grandchildren.  Certainly, I should be more grown up than this.  Even as I type, I question why I would want to admit to the blogging world (all five of you who read) that what you see in me may just be a facade.  Am I looking for affirmation?  for acceptance?  Will I ever be free of the opinions of others?

What do you see when you look at me? 

A strong woman, with thoughts and opinions.  But most of the time, I feel a hundred steps behind other women of my generation.  Those confident words that I speak  are just me trying to convince myself that I have something of worth to say.  I try to compensate for my lack of education, for my years of being taught that my voice was not important, for my spiritual and cultural upbringing that weighs me down with low expectation.  When I am not trying to convey my knowledge, I am apologizing for my lack.  Neither of these things reflect a true inner strength.  I am stronger than I was but not strong enough yet.

Do you see the wife that I am becoming?  Do you hear me when I say that I adore my husband?  Can you believe how deeply that I love this man?  So deeply that it frightens me.  I mean that, seriously.  That fear causes me to react in unloving ways sometimes. I  want to protect myself from ....

Note: This post was interrupted by a trip to the hospital.  While I was writing, I  began having an allergic reaction to something ... possibly a peach I ate an hour earlier.  Itching, rash, tongue swelling, difficulty breathing, take benadryl while daughter calls 911, feeling faint, ride in an ambulance, get motion sickness, it's always impressive to be vomiting while they are rolling you into the hospital, wait for an hour plus, IV fluids, anti nausea medicine, vomit more, wait one more hour, doctor finally comes in, prescribes a nice dose of steroids and pepcid by IV, twenty minutes later, I am signing out and heading to hear Susan Isaacs and Donald Miller on the Million Miles in a Thousand Years book tour.  (Barb, hows that for letting you know how I am doing?)


Post continued:
I want to protect myself from loving too much.  It makes me feel too vulnerable to love him as much as I do.  This is probably the first time I am speaking this aloud, even to him.  Granted, we have had our difficulties, like every marriage will.  Some times have been more difficult than others and yes, there were moments that we didn't know if we would make it.  But we did and I am so grateful.  I can't imagine my life without him.  The moments of believing beyond a shadow of a doubt that he gets me, he understands me more than anyone else sustain me. 

This mother that you see before you now is not the mother that I always was.  This is one area which that fear has lost it's grip.  Are there concerns sometimes, are there doubts?  Yes  but those concerns and doubts are not the overwhelming fear that paralyzed me before, the fear that dictated every moment of my parenting journey.  Mainly, I feared failure, my own personal failure.  I saw it as my job to raise them up in the instruction of the Lord and any time they seemed to be falling short, I took the blame.  There was never a day that I felt good enough as their mother.  That was then and this is now.  Today, I know that I am a good mother.  I am NOT perfect; I mess up a alot and I hope that I ask for forgiveness a lot.  Today, it is easier for me to see the wonderful people that my chlidren are, the adults that they are, the people that they have been becoming since their first breath.

As the emerging artist, I am moving beyond the first tentative new steps and starting to take bold, strong steps.  I talk with certainty about what I do and what I want to do.  But battling the inner critic is ever present in my life.  It's difficult to take my own advice and believe that it's never too late to develop this skill, that what I do is good and important because it speaks of my inner creative spirit, that making art for my own edification is a good enough reason.  It's not all about visual art.  Even with my writing here and elsewhere.  Too many things have been left unwritten because I have let the inner critic silence me.  I figure someone else has already answered a question or said what I have to say so why be redundant?  No one can tell my story though.  That is why this is important.  It is why it is important to take up my pencils, my pens, my paints, my glue and create the visual images of my story.

Probably, one of the things that is less visible about me, is my spiritual life.  I am not an overt Christian any longer.  Wow, I cringed when I wrote that.  How many ways could that be misinterpreted.  Let me try to explain because this is important to answers that question, "How are you?".  For many years, the measure of a person's Christianity was what they could say that they think and believe, what they could prove and defend.  It was the rule I placed on myself and on others.  It's the standard that most Christians use to judge others.  But, I came to realize that there was much that I was saying and not much that I was doing.  In fact, during a most difficult season with my husband, I stopped telling him that I loved him.  I had to because my actions were not lining up with my words.  I wasn't patient.  I wasn't kind.  I was keeping record of wrong doing.  Now I have turned down the volume on my spiritual life, my Christian life.  It is known to me and to those who know me very well.  And I am working on the practice of faith, not as just something I believe but as something that I do, especially when it comes to acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with my God.

Well, there it is, question answered at 4:00 in the morning since I can't sleep due to the steroids they gave me.  I think I really agree with Barb regarding the questions we ask though.  So, now ... tell me ... How are YOU?


Cynthia
Strike while the iron is hot.  According to thefreedictionary.com, the definition of this idiom is: when you have an opportunity to do something, do it before you lose your chance.  Yep.  Good advice, I think, especially when the forty-five year old brain runs a little slower than it used to.

A couple of weeks ago, I composed a post in my head, while I was driving.  It was going to be a wonderful post.  My friend told me to write it as a reminder to her.  Problem is, I didn't strike while the iron was hot and now I don't remember what the post was about.

I think it had something to do with women and the role of women in society and overcoming the oppressive messages that embed from an early age.  This is a recent focus for me after spending years submitting to a false faith system that ranged from overtly treating women as second class citizens, if citizens at all, to cloaking a domineering mentality in such beguiling language it lured me and held me captive by my own good motives.

Today I am learning that I am valuable as a person and as woman.  The most important person that I need to recognize that ... is ME!  Today I am considering myself important enough to make a commitment to ...

  • a commitment to write those blog posts here, not just in my head.
  • a commitment to pick up the brush and create, for the sake of me.
  • a commitment to live the life that I love, learning and laughing with my family.
Priming the rusty pipe of my mind tonight has not brought forth that lost post.  That's ok.  If it is important to say, I can trust that my soul will push it forth in due time.



Cynthia
Friday nights are the highlight of my week. Despite the difficulty that I have sitting still, not multitasking and focusing my attention for 90 - 120 minutes on a movie, I have a firm commitment with my children each Friday. We have homeschool co-op in the morning and afternoon, then we go pick up groceries, buying pizza for dinner then home to watch a movie together.

I have watched tons of movies with them through the years but usually while doing something else, making lists, reading, catching up on emails. But about two years ago, I decided that they deserve my whole attention and I have disciplined myself to sit with them, without distractions.

It has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.

Tonight, we watched Disney's Tarzan. I marvel that my eighteen year old daughter and my sixteen year old son still want to watch these family movies. In fact, the sixteen year old son chose Tarzan tonight and sometime in the near future, I think Beauty and the Beast is on the agenda. I love that they love this movie mostly for the music, that they know and love Phil Collins. I have to say it ... I have the coolest kids!

Here's to family pizza/movie night!


Cynthia



Sometimes words just feel fun in your mouth when you say them ... or maybe I am just weird that way. Here's a list of thirteen words that I like to say just because of how fun they are to say:

  1. conundrum
  2. magnanimous
  3. cacophony
  4. discombobulated
  5. decrepit
  6. snarky
  7. persnickety
  8. schnitzel
  9. shenanigans
  10. phantasmagoria
  11. lolly gag
  12. serendipity
  13. falafel
Cynthia
Peaceful Bridge