Christmas Lights

So, Christmas has come and gone in the Carter home, and it was a season like many other Christmases before it - full of family, bustle, tugging and pulling and most importantly, love. Right now I'm alone and in recovery from the festivities, with a lot on my mind. If you know me, you know that I often do a "Year in review," as a tradition around this time, or early in the start of a new year. Today, I'm feeling reflective, and very aware of all the things I've not been aware of through the recent years. This isn't a recounting of the individual events of my 2014, but more a reflection of my feelings in this moment, having experienced everything that I have this year.

John Newton (1725-1807)

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.

And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home. 

The Lord has promised good to me.

His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall profess, within the vail,
A life of joy and peace.

My feelings in this moment are that God is gracious, and that in my very best moments, I am uninformed. There are many things that I wrestle with, and that wrestle with me but 2014 has been a year full of the most spectacular silences, the most meaningful distress and the most heart-wrenching disputes. This is life, and it is happening right now. I'm reflecting on the lyrics of Amazing Grace because of how popular a song it is, yet so seldom do I consider the lyrics line by line.

"The Lord has promised good to me, His word my hope secures" What conviction! What a reminder! One day, perhaps I will be brave enough to relate my experiences in detail, but for now let me say this truth. This year has seen me the most weary of all the Christianity being pummeled into people's existence - it's not God I've had problems with, but the church. I can't even say how often I've attended services this year, and no I'm not proud of that fact. I just have been going through some personal struggles that I could not trust the church to handle with care. Having said that, that's me relating an individual feeling about the church, it's not me saying "Hey everyone, I have a great idea! Let's all boycott church!"

What's been going on with me is that I needed to hear God more clearly and more loudly than I heard other people and their own personal opinions. It is the nature of people to become convinced by a passionate speaker, but it is really damaging in my opinion when people speak so certainly about things they don't have enough information to be convicted about. In my quiet time this year, in my looking around and in my silent contemplation I've seen myself moving and growing in ways that hold a lot of meaning for me. My revelations for the year have been simple, but really captivating for me. I'll share some here with you:

1.) One foot in front of the other. I started saying this to clients several years ago and found it especially helpful for clients experiencing anxiety. It can be overwhelming to attempt EVERYTHING all at once or even to think about everything in a single thought, but we all go down that road at some point. The end result is that either we pick up our heels and run from experiences that frighten us, or we simply fail to act. This year, I've started giving myself this reminder and I find it to be an excellent way to show myself some compassion. Sometimes, the small mercies we offer others, we refuse to allow ourselves. This brings me to:

2.) I deserve compassion also. I put a lot of pressure on myself generally, but this year was especially full of high stakes decisions and life choices for me. It was high pressure, and I had many ups and downs. After a particularly difficult "down," I realised that I wasn't giving myself any grace - there was no room for me to make a mistake or to have an off day, and I would NEVER treat a client or family member/loved one that way. Why treat myself so harshly? In the past, its worked for me to just ride myself until I completed everything plus two sweaters, but I actually saw this year what happens when you ride yourself into the ground and you fail at something. At some point you will have a physical, cognitive or emotional revolt where things will not work out in your favour by you simply pushing through every warning sign that you need to slow down. By the middle of the year, since I like keeping lists of what I'd like to accomplish, I started putting how I felt about myself at the top of my list. It has kept me accountable in the latter part of the year, and reminded me to consider myself in everything that I was doing. Do I need more exercise? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I having enough fun? This is not me saying that I'm perfect at this, this is me sharing what I am paying attention to working on in my own life.

3.) I mentioned it earlier, but it is definitely its own point: Life is happening right now. There are many a blog post here about my tendency to live in the future, and this year has seen me transition from constant horizon scanning to looking around in my most immediate space. I have been able to enjoy my moments, and also to be relieved of this fear that my worst moment will last forever. When you transition from constantly looking for the next thing to living in today, you realise more that you aren't guaranteed a tomorrow, therefore this is what you have - right here and right now. There's a huge difference between being hopeful for things and living for the future. One means that you're building on the life you have, and the other means that you're banking on the future in order to live. What happens to today? What happens to those relationships that will never have tomorrow? What happens if you don't make it to your next big thing?

4.) I need GRACE. I think that Newton's words sum this up best:

"T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home. " 

In terms of me receiving grace, I am truly humbled when I consider God's grace towards me. This is what I think the lyrics express so well. There is also the grace that I must offer myself. As people, it seems that one thing we struggle chronically with is a failure to forgive ourselves, to allow room for error and to allow room for the growth we are yet to have. I consider the last two lines of the quoted stanza and I am encouraged afresh to offer myself the safety to move forward, and to find my way home.  

Waiting For The Fog to Clear

Last week I was in Paramaribo, Suriname at a regional conference of psychologists, and on my way home, our plane was stranded by thick, unwavering fog. We boarded the plane, found our seats and were updated hourly on the status of our fog, flights and estimated new departure and arrival times. Three hours later, we took off bound for Piarco International Airport. As we waited, people became antsy, some stood and paced and others fell fitfully to sleep (like me). I heard someone behind me ask why we couldn't just fly through it, and the flight attendant responded that the Captain required a certain amount of visibility to take off safely. It was interesting to me how this safety precaution was a source of annoyance for everyone on board. Each hourly update of "Another hour, folks" was met with groans from the passengers. The general complaints "I have somewhere to be!""I'm going to miss my connection!" and "Who is going to compensate me for this delay!?"

Over the course of my week in Suriname, I found myself looking back at the last few years of my life. I saw so much personal fog clear that I had no choice but to be grateful for the times when I felt grounded on the tarmac, helplessly waiting for permission to fly. The interjections of the passengers sound very much like my own complaints while grounded - "I have somewhere (else) to be!" "I'm going to miss my connections (with others who aren't here)!" "Who is going to make (all this lost time) right with me?" It's interesting to me, because like all of us on that plane last Saturday, I can see the wisdom of being held for my own safety in retrospect.

1. What does it mean to be caught in a fog?
2. What does it mean to be protected?
3. What does it mean to know you were meant for more but seeing only less?
4. What does it mean to look into the lives of others and see what you hope to be?
5. What does it mean to move from having people around you that you don't notice to having a vibrant and lively support system?
6. What does it mean to truly believe in your purpose?

When talking of fog people often describe something that obscures and confuses a situation or someone's thought processes. It can also be used to describe a roadblock, or impassible space. There is not much talk on the benefits of fog, but this is a valuable part of the conversation. Fog has been said to be a picturesque addition to the landscape, and an important source of hydration. When thinking about the situations in life when we are caught, stranded, unable to see into the distance of our path, perhaps we should be thinking of fog like this. 

• Is there beauty in your current circumstance? 
• Are you parched, and needing hydration?

I think that we all get so busy doing things that we forget to look around for the good that is right there where we are. A man on the plane let me call Trinidad on his Surinamese phone because my phone didn't work. He didn't bat an eyelash before he offered me this kindness. In my years of being in a fog, I have gotten adult phase of life years with my parents, and it is a treasure. Today will be a short entry, as I think this is an area for you to come up with your own conclusions. I've asked several questions, which I hope you'll answer for yourself.

Fear of Flying

Source

                                           "Remind Me Who I Am"

When I lose my way,
And I forget my name,
Remind me who I am.
In the mirror all I see,
Is who I don't wanna be,
Remind me who I am.
In the loneliest places,
When I can't remember what grace is.

Tell me once again who I am to You,
Who I am to You.
Tell me lest I forget who I am to You,
That I belong to You.
To You.

When my heart is like a stone,
And I'm running far from home,
Remind me who I am.
When I can't receive Your love,
Afraid I'll never be enough,
Remind me who I am.
If I'm Your beloved,
Can You help me believe it.

Tell me once again who I am to You,
Who I am to You, whoa.
Tell me lest I forget who I am to You.
That I belong to You.
To You.

I'm the one you love,
I'm the one you love,
That will be enough,
I'm the one you love.

Tell me once again who I am to You.
Who I am to You.
Tell me lest I forget who I am to You,
That I belong to You, oh.

Tell me once again who I am to You.
Who I am to You.
Tell me lest I forget who I am to You,
That I belong to You.
To You.

Recently, I took a low-profile, international trip. I didn't talk much about the fact that I was going, and I didn't stay away for very long. I got on my morning flight, and I headed north. As the engines roared and the landing gear motored back into the belly of the plane, I found myself amazed at my own reaction; I was totally calm. To give you an important piece of history, there was a time when flying in a plane was a very bad experience for me. In my childhood, without the regular dose of Dramamine I would be guaranteed to lose one or more meals during the airplane journey, but for me this was not nearly the worst part.

 For me, takeoffs and landings were my worst nightmare. I remember one trip to London via St. Lucia like it was yesterday. The flight was full to St. Lucia and at this time (pre 09/11) "staff" passengers could use the flight attendant jump seat. My mother was an operating senior Flight Attendant or junior Purser at the time, and she and I were travelling alone on a mother-daughter work outing to London. Mum did this often, and there was a very strict set of guidelines that crew members (and their families!) had to adhere to while representing the airline. Mum had made it clear to all three of her children what the rules were when she was working. Sometimes, my dad would come and we'd all go, and sometimes mum would take one or more children on her own.

This was a system that worked amazingly well, and we went on trips often. It went well except for the odd mid-galley throw-up or this one trip to London via St. Lucia. I was put to sit in a vacant jump seat for the flight across to St. Lucia and I obediently sat and clicked myself in. As soon as we began to taxi down the runway, I felt the panic rising in my chest. On any flight going anywhere, this was my time to panic. On this particular flight, I was facing a crowd of people staring at me and taxiing to take-off while facing backward. This was far too much for my eight year old Pteromerhanophobic self to bear. Tears welled in my eyes, and spilled over. As we accelerated into our ascent, I gripped my seat and dug my heels into the floor, not that I thought it could save me. I was in the throws of fear, and didn't care who saw my terror.

At some point back then, I may have heard an adult say that I was afraid of heights because I didn't like roller-coasters or flying, but eventually I realised something very important about my experience. I realised that I loved travelling and seeing some new city. Since I was a little girl, I was thrilled by the prospect of travel and I never remembered my terror until we began to taxi or make our descent. In those moments, it always looked the same - clutch the seat, stab my heels into the floor and pray. By the time I was an early teen, I had developed a mental picture that got me through the panic. I imagined God holding the plane like a small child holds a toy plane and flies it down. I rationalised that if God is holding the plane then it cannot fall. If God has the whole plane in His hands then I won't die a frightful death on this joyride to wherever. This got me through the panic, but it didn't ever take it away. In fact, so bad was my panic that once when I was flying somewhere and I took my Dramamine a little early, it knocked me out before we took off (or landed). When I woke up, the torturous event had already occurred (we were either airborne or landed). I basked in the afterglow of that relief for years.

Another important part of this story is that I never shared this fear with anyone. I never told my mother that the reason I behaved so strangely on that jump-seat was because I was petrified. Actually, by the time I'd developed the mental picture of God, I was settled into the notion that this was what life looked like for me on a plane at take-off or landing. No one needed to know, and I didn't need any help. I had my mental picture and I had my chanted, delirious, silent praying. Good enough!

When I was 17, I had a bizarre experience that changed my thinking forever. I was on track to become a pilot at the time. I figured that, like driving, if I was in control of the process it would be less scary/upsetting for me. That year, I went on a camp retreat with my youth group, and a man was asked to come to the camp to "bring a word." Now if you're familiar with church lingo, this could mean anything from preaching a sermon to prophesying. The man turned out to be bringing a little bit of both. At a crescendo in his message, he began calling specific people up to the pulpit. The man excitedly called for a young lady who was becoming a pilot. Knowing that I was the only one who fit the description, I walked to the front with all the morbid curiosity of anyone brought up in the Pentecostal church. The man smiled at me as I approached, and he said all the things preacher men say ("Glory Hallelujah! Ooooh Thank Ya Jesus!") then he put a hand on my shoulder and he looked me in the eyes. He said "The Lord says that you don't have to be afraid anymore. He wants you to fly. Fly for Jesus!"

Whether you believe in the more mystical side of Christianity or not, there's a very important story here. This was a man that I had never met, and who had no idea of my struggle. While everyone else in the room probably thought that the words this man said meant something to me regarding my career, or some leap of faith I'd need to take in my future, all I heard was that the panic that consumed me every flight was not "good enough." What I heard was that it mattered that I was frightened to the point of panic. I feel exposed to say that this was one of my defining faith moments because I felt that it was God speaking directly to me. The greatest compulsion for my faith has always been how personal God is. Having said that, I feel exposed because many many years later, I've struggled to hear or understand the voice of God, and the skepticism of the world has sometimes clouded my faith. I'm telling this story because it was the idea that God cared about me being secretly, silently afraid about something that didn't even bother me anymore that escalated my belief in God's goodness and presence in my life.

Nothing really changed in terms of machinery or the way that I felt physically in a plane, but since that day, I have never panicked at a take-off or landing. The thing that changed was that I felt cared for - I felt acknowledged and understood in a way that made me feel secure. Security isn't always about a physical quality in the environment. Sometimes security is about being assured that you matter, and your feelings are important to someone else. This is the kind of experience that convinces me of God, but it also helps me feel secure in other relationships. When people show me that those little things that matter to me also matter to them, I feel secure to share and I feel secure to trust. My question to myself, having reflected on this experience is this: am I noticing the little things that matter to the people I love? I realise that when life starts getting hectic and there's no slowing down in sight, it's easy to let things slip. I'm guilty of this, and I don't want to be. I am going to try to make a greater effort to let the people in my life know that that little thing that matters to them, matters to me also. 

Today, You Are Enough.

Verse 1
Lord I'm split in two
Part of me loves the world
And the other loves You
So what do I do
I wanna be saved
But I got to stay cool too
And no I'm not a fool
I know eventually I'm gonna have to choose
And really I don't wanna lose
My ticket into heaven
And a chance to be used by You

Chorus

And if it's god I'm after
I can't serve two masters
And before something happens
I got to turn it all around
Because I know
I can't just have my cake and eat it too
Cause it's real easy to stay on the fence and still do you
And it'd be cool if we could love the Lord and still go do our thing
But see it doesn't work like that
I gotta to be white or black

Oh ooohh

Verse 2
Lord I've realized
when it comes to sin
You just don't compromise
It's a matter of death and life
Be weak and do wrong
Or be strong and do right
And I don't wanna keep going to church
Singing all about how much You're worth
And then continue doing my dirt
Living as if I didn't care if You're hurt

And if it's God that I'm after
I can't serve two masters
And before something happens
I gotta turn it all around
Because you know
You can't just have your cake and eat it too
Cause it's real easy to stay on the fence and still do You
And it'd be cool if we could love the Lord and still go do our thing
See it doesn't work like that
You got to be white or black

Oh Ohhh

Bridge
Im telling you that we Saints gotta
(get it together)
Mmmhmmm
We Just gotta
Get it together

Ohh Ohhhh

If it's God we're after
We gotta pick one master
And before something happens
We got to turn it all around
Because you know
You can't just have your cake and eat it too
(Ohhh Ohhhhhh)
Cause it's really easy to stay on the fence and still do you
And it'd be cool if we could love the Lord and still go do our thing
See it don't work like that
You gotta be white or black

Cause it don't work like that
You gotta pick white or black

No Gray
No shades of gray
No no no no no... no no no no no...

Don't work like that
You gotta be white or black

Read more: Jonathan Mcreynolds - No Gray Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

My silence is a result of my own struggles with walking the middle line. How can I look anyone in the face - or even anonymously sit there behind the words I publish when I am not living earnestly, but rather living ominously? 

I feel some amount of permission to come up for air after a long, stifling dive into the stagnant water of my own issues. I've been working hard lately, and I've never been more professionally fulfilled in my working life. That being said, I've never experienced more personal stunting than I have in the past three years. Do you ever have the experience of looking around one day and realising that where you used to have all these varied interests, now only a few things occupy your time? Perhaps someone points it out to you that you seem distracted or just not fully engaged? I've been there. 

I have been in a massive rut. I have been emotionally consumed and it got to the point where I felt hopeless and depressed about my life. Yes, I'm an existentialist, but this wasn't just questions about meaning, this was stubbornly digging my heels into the memories of a chapter that was over and saying "This is the only meaning that should be! This is ALL I want, and the only thing that will ever make me happy!" I don't know if you've ever had a situation like mine, but I can tell you what I've come out of this situation with: 

1.) You don't have to lose the positive experiences when you acknowledge that a season is over: One of the hardest things for me was feeling as though the best years of my life were over. The real issue here is a lack of faith- in myself, in God, in the world around me. Do I honestly believe that the best things in life have already happened? It can't be possible, but it's so easy to believe in a moment of desperation when it feels like you're losing everything. Having faith in yourself means that you understand that you haven't learned everything there is to know about yourself - far less of the world you live in and of God. The best is yet to come. If you don't believe this, just block off one month on your calendar and truly live your life. At the end of the month, look back and see if anything changed. 

2.) Don't forget to live. Sometimes, when things are not just the way you want them to be, you end up closing lots of other doors as you stand stubbornly in front of this one, shut, steel door. Even if this door was open to you, it wouldn't be your whole life. Even if you got the best thing you've always been dreaming of, you'd still need to call your mother/father, you'd still need to invest in your personal relationships, go to work, wet your plants, feed your animals, and wash your car. If you had your perfect scenario, hobbies would still be important. Don't assume that only the version of you who gets that one thing you're hoping for deserves to go riding in the bush, or hiking on a mountainside. This version of you who exists today - the one who is un/under employed, the one who isn't in his or her ideal romantic relationship or condominium - deserves hobbies and vacations and relationships with friends. Life is for YOU, and it is happening today.

3.) Grief is not the same as fixation. It's okay to grieve the loss of something, it is not okay to become fixated on it. It is natural and healthy to mourn your loss and you should allow yourself the room to weep. What is sometimes a risk here though is that transition from mournful about loss to being convinced that loss is all you have. When we lose something important to us, it sometimes happens that we start to assume that the feeling is ours, the pain is ours, and this is what life looks like now. Sometimes, we become convinced that the worst part of our grief is what life is going to feel like forever. Sometimes, we are sure that the only way to have what we've lost is to hold our grief tightly, and let that grief be the answer to all questions about why we're not living our lives. Saying "I'm heartbroken!" is an excellent realisation, but we should never let it become our identity. If we do, then our loss continues to accumulate over time, collecting new things that never happened because of it. Don't let grief become the most striking thing about you. 

4.) Life is ambiguous. The things that we are unclear about sometimes clarify themselves, but most times they require our hard work to become clear. Make sure that you are spending quality time with yourself and what you want.

5.) Life is NOT just about you. Try your best to notice who is around you, and make sure that you're doing all that you can to acknowledge, honour, appreciate and love your environment. When you are feeling better about yourself, it'll never be clearer how much others have been picking up your slack. Try your best to notice them in the moment.  

6.) You're enough. This is something I still struggle with, but it's such an important reminder. I am not my future, I am right now. I don't have to wait until whatever standards I set for myself are perfectly achieved in order to be acknowledged as a person. Look around your life and realise that today, you are enough. 

Who Builds the House

If Lord Jehovah does not build the house, its builders labor uselessly, and if Lord Jehovah does not keep the city, its keepers wake up uselessly. (Psalm 127:1)

Source

It's been way too long since I published something, and I have draft posts for four of the what? six months I've been silent here. Tonight's the night, folks! Here we go.

In my last published entry, I was talking about hope deferred. I guess I have been silent in this space because I've been wrestling in private. I've been wrestling with my own faith, with the circumstances of life and with a very suddenly busy schedule. On Tuesday, I got back to Trinidad from Texas and it was a hard journey for me because it was layered with all these different experiences that affected me deeply. Over the course of the last year, I've made some huge decisions for my life. I've quit a steady job and gone into full-time private practice, I went to Europe and visited Texas Twice. I was also approached to work out of another private practice and to be on-call at a private hospital. It's a lot, but it's a good lot.

I have been so busy lately that I have found myself very far away from things that are usually really important to me. I stopped blogging, I hardly went out, and I stopped dreaming. I am many things, but dispassionate is not one of them. When my "level head and logical" traits get to the point of making me seem unaffected by life, things have gone too far. This blog started because of a transition that I was making, and that I continue to make as we approach the four year mark. I've been struggling with this idea of free will versus destiny and I'm still in a quandary. Today at supervision, my clinical supervisor mentioned the scripture captioned above about building a house in vain. This stuck to me like glue, and even now the sticky pieces of it seem to cover me wholly. What does this mean?

Cross references to this verse suggest that the meaning of this scripture is more for the reassurance of good Christian folk. God will be with them (He will not let your foot slip - he who watches over you will not slumber, Ps. 121:3; Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them Ps. 126:6). On the other hand, it also acknowledges a meaning that frightens me (Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield crops, nor will the trees of your land yield their fruit Lev. 26:20). The latter verse is in direct reference to the consequences of disobedience, but what relevance does this have in my 2014 life? I am the kind of person who values my effort, and the effort of others. I like to know at the end of the day that I gave it my best. My parents always told me that that was the important thing - that you really gave it everything. As an adult, I want to know that I did everything that I could. Like an American Army reserve, I want to be all that I can be. It sounds like a cliched statement but it is a fervent hope of mine that I would be everything that I have the potential to be, and that I help as many people as I can to be all that they can be. In some ways, I am learning that this might be an unrealistic expectation.

Right now, I'm reading a book by Deborah L. Spar, an Ivy League professor who is exploring the possibility that our feminist revolution, while widely positive also left women everywhere with some skewed expectations of how we might actually manage our lives day-to-day. I'm not going to give a book review here as I'm not finished yet. I do want to mention my thoughts about expectations though. When expectations are based on positive ideals but they stretch a person beyond recognition, I think that the expectations need to be reevaluated. She talks about the struggle to be progressive and modern and how that means being a professional woman who also has a family and keeps a perfect home. She says that the picture paints a world where a woman has it all, and the reality is more accurately that she might have some combination of "it," but it is very nearly impossible to juggle the modern woman's agenda/schedule/expectation.

In my own life recently, I struggle with feeling as though I might be building a house, and that may or may not be useless. I think a mixture of the dynamics Deborah L. Spar is describing as well as ambiguous religious pressure is the cause of this. Am I the only one who doesn't really get how to be a good steward, as well as blindly obedient, as well as submissive, as well as progressive, as well as anything but single, as well as faithful?

Give me your thoughts, and look out for my follow-ups.