Self-Esteem: The S Word

I remember hearing once when I was a child - in a sermon or a Sunday school lesson or maybe a home group Bible study - that self-esteem should never be a focus in raising children. Making a point to raise a child's self-esteem was teaching them to look inside themselves for worth instead of finding it the Lord. Teach children to find their worth in Jesus, and they will instead develop a sense of value far greater than any "self-esteem" or "self help" book ever could.

I don't think this a mainstream Christian teaching, but that message stuck with me for a very long time. It's incredible how one little message, as off base as it may be, can shape the way you view yourself. The term "self-esteem" was a bit of a dirty word to me growing up, and I avoided it. In fact, any "self" word, unless it was self-denial or self-control, carried bad connotations for me. In all my formative years, I shunned the concept of self-esteem as New Age hocus pocus. As I grew older, I rarely talked about my self-esteem but couched the concept in euphemisms like "worth" or "significance" found in Christ. Mentioning any problems with my self-esteem felt too focused on me and not focused enough on the Savior in whom my worth was found. If I had a "self-esteem" problem, it was more likely that what I really had was a pride and sin problem.

I think even the healthiest of us struggle with self-esteem. We have all received messages through our lives that have told us we are not good enough at this or not important enough for that. Too fat, too skinny, too stupid, too nerdy, too bossy, too sensitive. How can anyone deflect all the messages that are thrown at us all the time by everyone and everything around us? But even more so, when the very foundation of your belief system is based on the message that you are inherently wicked, how can you possibly develop any kind of self-love? 

For years, I believed my worth was entirely found in Christ. Without Christ, I was worthless and depraved, my good deeds were like filthy rags. These were the more sophisticated messages I absorbed as I grew into an adult. As a child, I just knew I was a sinner that needed to be saved. As I grew in my faith and in my study of Scripture, I internalized these foundational messages about my origins to immunize myself against pride and any truly self-centered esteem I may have for myself. The term "self-esteem" no longer seemed a dirty word, just a very worldly way of trying to fill the hole of depravity in ourselves that only Christ could fill.

My "self" esteem was actually "salvation" esteem. So when I lost my faith, I also lost my source of value. 

When your self-esteem is built upon a strong foundation of self-denial, self-deprecation, or even self-loathing, and is designed by materials that come from a source outside yourself, you are at risk of collapse. If your self-worth is built from someone else's view of you - a significant other, a parent, a deity - and that external source of worth falters or disappears from your life, you will be lost. When I my source of esteem disintegrated, I had no idea who I was or where my value came from. Without Christ, I believed I was nothing! I went through a period of time feeling very lost and purposeless. I had faced the fact that I didn't believe in God anymore, but even though I could see my past worth had been based on something unreal, I was still left with an emptiness I could not fill. It still seemed so self-centered and arrogant to assume I could find worth from within myself, but if it wasn't in God either, could I possibly be worth anything at all?

I no longer found worth in Christ but still saw myself as intensely wicked. I wanted to explore aspects of myself that had always been deemed sinful and displeasing to God, but I couldn't do so without hating myself for having those feelings or questions. Without the Bible telling me these things were wrong, I was able to evaluate so many things through a different, more objective lens, but not without guilt and shame. 

I've talked about it before, because it was such a liberating moment, but things began to change with the simple lyrics to a song* I had been listening to:

But luckily I held out long enough to see

everybody really makes their own destiny.

It's a beautiful thing.

It's just you and me, exactly where we belong,

and there's nothing inherently wrong with us.

Suddenly it all fell into place. Not only could I put away the judgment and guilt I'd heaped upon myself for all those years, but I could put away the very notion that I was born depraved and sinful. I had the capacity to make decisions for myself, good or bad. I had the sense to figure out what made something good or bad. I began to redefine all "good and evil" in very basic terms - is it harmful to others or myself? Are there negative consequences that will outweight the benefits? Realizing that I was capable in and of myself to make good choices and be a good human being were the first seeds of true self-esteem building for me.

I look at my children now. I see myself in them, different parts of me in different ones. I see the lack of self-esteem in one child in particular. How could I look at this little human being that I've brought into a harsh world full of harsh messages that will tear her down and try to destroy her and not put intense focus on building her self-esteem? I see the seeds of self-loathing already sprouting, and there's nothing I want more than to choke those seeds out and plant new seeds of self-love in their place. I want to teach my kids to take care of themselves, something I struggle to do myself. I can't imagine anything more important to focus on than a healthy self-esteem that comes from believing they are inherently good and are the masters of the decisions they make. They may make bad choices and do bad things, but that does not make them bad people. 

Not all people of faith believe themselves to be so inherently wicked, but that is the message of the Bible - that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. That's the bad news that has to be accepted before the good news of Jesus on the cross can be needed. Some people are far better at not internalizing that message as deeply as I did, but I can't take that chance with my own kids. I can see which ones would internalize that message and define themselves by it, the way I did. So I must - it's my responsibility as a parent - fight against not only the messages the world will send my children that they are too much of this or not enough of that, but also the message they are not inherently good. I must put positive self-esteem at the top of things to develop in them, so that they can easily tap into the good they recognize in themselves when choosing between right and wrong. And when they inevitably must forgive themselves for taking the wrong path, their genuine sense of self-worth must be intact. 

*The Black Sheep & the Shepherd by Quiet Company

I Am An Empath; And No, I Don't Believe In That

I'm not a spiritual person. I don't believe in the supernatural, the paranormal, the other-worldly. I don't believe in auras or Karma or energies. I don't believe in angels or spirits or demons. I believe in a tangible world with a earthbound history and cosmic origins. I believe we came from stardust and to stardust we'll return.

But.

I like to wonder. I like to imagine. I enjoy being swept up in fantasy and being whisked away by magical moments. So when I talk about star signs, I don't believe that when the Sun reaches the northern vernal equinox, the babies born are all frank, fierce and fiery. But I enjoy reveling in being an Aries and fitting that description. I enjoy finding out what others' star signs are and seeing how they fit with their own astrological characteristics.

I don't believe (in a religious sense) in astrology, but I believe (in a fantastical sense) in astrology.

Similarly, I don't believe that any of us are actually connected spiritually by energies or in some spiritual realm. But I do believe (in the Disney magic sort of way) that we are somehow connected. It's a contradiction that makes no sense, but it makes sense to me.

A year or so ago, I came across the concept of an "empath". I love the dictionary definition of an empath:

(chiefly in science fiction) a person with the paranormal ability to apprehend the mental or emotional state of another individual

I've already stated I don't believe in the paranormal. We evolved from who knows what and somewhere along the way developed sentience. Very cool. But not other-worldly.

However. 

In this magical mystical mind of mine, I can't help but be drawn to this concept. I have and give no evidence that a person can be an empath, but I can float away outside my skeptic's brain and call myself an empath with only a smidgen of sarcasm.

I feel things so deeply. I sense the feelings of those around me, and their feelings impact my feelings. No, more than impact. They intrude. I'd even go so far as to say the feelings of those not near me, but somehow connected to me, intrude upon my own feelings. The emotions of others influence me so greatly that often I have no room for my own feelings. And this leads to a constant state of emotion overload.

I have to state this again. Fellow skeptics, I know. It's irrational. It's unprovable. It is not based on scientific fact. But I'm living in my version of a spiritual world, so give me my mystical moment.

I have always felt this intensity of emotion. I have been told since I was a child "You're soooo sensitive." Everything in my life causes immense pleasure or pain. I don't live anywhere in the middle. To the point I've wondered if I have a psychiatric illness.

I'd rather believe I'm an empath.

I can tell when someone is hiding something, no matter how well they hide it. I can sense an unease in a room just by walking in, even if there is no obvious tension. Without even trying, I find myself leveling with others emotionally to get on their wavelength and understand what they are feeling. 

(And the Aries in me? Makes me want to drive in like a bull - or perhaps a ram? - and call it out for what it is. And the empath in me reminds me that no one wants me to do that, and I need to be sensitive to the feelings of others. And then my impulsiveness usually ends up calling the shots.)

I'd be a terrible judge, because I can understand just about any misdeed of any miscreant, if I just get a moment to spend with them. I am too empathetic sometimes, to the point that I let people abuse me, because I'm too busy thinking about what it feels like to be in their shoes. I forget that I'm actually currently in my own shoes and have my own feelings as well. Then when my own feelings bubble to the surface after having experienced the feelings of someone else for so long, I look at myself and wonder how I can be so stupid, so spineless, so infantile, as to be caught in a situation where I let myself be treated that way. I think how naive I am, how weak and pathetic.

Or conversely, I'll realize that I am a GREAT person, a BEAUTIFUL person, a HAPPY person, and I'll wonder why I ever let myself ever be dragged down by the negativity of another! I prefer when that happens. I also prefer when those around me influence me positively and give my feelings a shot of espresso, boosting me to the sky. That's when I experience such intense love and pleasure that I feel like a hot air balloon floating among the clouds.

I wish I could turn this emotional susceptibility off like a spigot or turn down the volume of all the emotions around me and just tune into my own for a while. Every now and then I can, but never for long. I am constantly overwhelmed by the three varying emotional landscapes of my children, those of my coworkers, those of my friends and even sometimes those of acquaintances or strangers who come into my "force field". (I'm using science fiction terms now, because yes, I know.) 

So okay. There is likely a scientific, rational reason for why I am influenced by others so easily. I'm just more situationally aware? Empathy is a real thing, sure. I'm just overly empathetic. Whatever.

What it doesn't change is how overwhelming and exhausting it is to be in my body.

These past few months have been the most emotionally intense months of my life, short of my deconversion. Two new jobs in seven months, both with a humanitarian organization that responds daily to human suffering, and a divorce ending my 12-year marriage in the midst of it. My ups have been UP and my downs have been DOWN. Those are just my own feelings by themselves, let alone the impact, influence, intrusion of all the others around me. My body is physically worn out by the barrage of feelings during this past half-a-year.

I'm sure that's scientific too. Body and mind are daily being proven to be significantly linked, right?

But for the empath (or highly sensitive person or intuitive or whatever quirky woo name you want to give us), there is no mere link. Every bit of mind and body are inextricably the same thing. They're called feelings, because of how much we feel them.

Why am I writing this? 

Because:

1) Writing (and talking) it out is the only way I know how to rid my body of this intensity of feelings.

2) I revel in the contradiction of what I believe and what I believe.

Why do I hesitate to write this? 

Because:

1) I know other skeptics will scoff at me and tell me this is stupid, and everyone feels this way. (But do they? Do they?)

2) Because it's stupid and self-absorbed and utter nonsense.

But you know what? I feel lighter now, the things that have been weighing me down don't feel so heavy after writing about how overwhelming it's been. You know what writing feels like to me?

What praying used to feel like.

And my penchant for praying to the Universe as an atheist like I used to pray to God as a Christian will be the topic of a future post involving my rational vs. irrational mind.

Know My Own Strength

"You're a strong woman. Act like it."

These are the words I said to my reflection in the bathroom mirror a couple of days ago. Staring back at myself, I looked into my own eyes, pointed my finger at my reverse image and told myself it's time.

There have been days lately where I've felt like an Elizabethan criminal, being torn apart in four different directions by four horses. There have been days I've felt literally unable to go on, that my life had fallen apart so irreparably that my heart was simply going to stop beating. There have been days where the biggest struggle of my life were getting out of bed, putting on clean clothes and eating a Pop Tart, much less go to work and perform at my best. There have been days where I've actually considered Googling "Can you go blind from crying too much?"  (I haven't Googled it yet. I'm just hoping no.)

But it's time for all of that to stop. I'm a strong woman. It's time to act like it.

I'm not saying the grieving period has to be over. Grieving does its own thing and operates in its own time. There is no rushing the grieving process and no reason to try to do so. But wallowing has a shelf life, and that shelf life has expired.

I have learned a lot about myself in the past several months. I've learned that I can be arrogant and smug. I've learned that I can be horribly selfish. I've learned that I make mistakes and am no better than anyone else. (In truth, none of these things were truly new insights; I've always been my own harshest critic and have always seen myself as so far from perfect that it's plunged me into despair. But I have learned these things about myself in new ways recently.)  I've also learned that I haven't always been as independent as I thought myself. I've learned I am uncomfortable in my own skin. I've learned that I have an anxiety about solitude that is unhealthy. And I've learned that sometimes the people you thought were your closest friends are not, and ones you never thought would come through, do.

But I've also learned that I am strong and have more strength than I realize. I just have to believe it.

For the past four or five Octobers, having done the October Dress Project, I've emerged with a "theme" for the upcoming year - a word or phrase that sums up what I want to work on for the next 365 days. I didn't do ODP last year and never developed a theme for 2017. But I'm seeing a few themes emerge organically - healing and self-love.

This year, that's my goal. I have a lot of things from my life I need to heal from, and I need to grow to love myself by myself. I need to learn that from here on out, there is no one looking out for me except myself and therefore, I've got to be my own biggest fan and supporter.

A co-worker who has been divorced herself told me that after her divorce she committed to a year of loving herself. She didn't date anyone - didn't even entertain the thought - and just grew to know and love herself. She said it was the best thing she'd ever done, and now in her relationships she'll never be as vulnerable as she'd been in her first.

I've decided to do this as well, including making a commitment this year of getting out of my comfort zone, discovering who I am and what I like, and developing a genuine strength that goes deeper than just a thick outer shell. I have decided not to date or even think about dating for the rest of the year, so that I can focus on getting to know myself and my own needs. As I've grown older, I've become like an egg - hard on the outside but easily broken. I want to be more like a tree. Steadfast even at its core, but living, growing and changing, accepting the seasons of life with dignity and grace. Whether flowering or barren, it is unwavering.

I'm overcoming my fear of planning and doing things alone. I am taking back the power to decide how I feel rather than let others control that. I am giving myself space to make mistakes and be imperfect. I am learning to celebrate my wins instead of obsess over my losses. I am protecting my heart and identifying who I can truly trust and who it's okay to just be ordinary friends with (and who needs to go completely). 

This is going to be a long hike. It's going to take more than just one year; it will likely be a recurring, lifelong series of steps forwards and backwards. But the journey starts here, and it starts with these specific landmarks:

- I ran/walked (mostly walked) a half marathon, and I wasn't even the last person to cross the finish line! Thanks to the support and shared agony (the following evening was brutal) of my friend Elizabeth, I was able to cross this item off my bucket list. Crossing that finish line was a huge personal accomplishment for me, but more about the half marathon to come in another post.

- I am going to start camping again. Both with others but more importantly alone. I've always loved camping with friends, but I've never gone alone. Under the tutelage of my friend Chris (one of those unforeseen friends who has emerged as genuinely there for me no matter what) and his gorgeous wife Stacy, I'm going to learn how to camp alone (safely) and find peace within myself and in nature.

- I'm buying single tickets to events I really want to go to. I bought one ticket to see Quiet Company in Dallas the same weekend I'll be in Dallas to see Tripping Daisy. I have a spare Tripping Daisy ticket, but if I don't find anyone to go with me, I'll go alone to that too. 

(I almost bought a ticket to see David Sedaris in Little Rock next month, but upon checkout the $25 ticket turned into a $40 ticket after all the service fees. I haven't decided yet if David Sedaris - as much as I like his books - is worth $40 of my precious now-single income...)

- I bought a day planner, and I'm committing to things for myself and not just for other people. Someone else said recently that if something goes in his day planner, he's committed to it and does it. I didn't agree at first, but now that I have a day planner myself, I get it. I've set aside days to go hiking  or out of town and days to treat myself. And I'm sticking to them, because I'm worth my own time and commitment as much as anyone is worth it. I don't make a habit of cancelling on other people, so why would I cancel on myself?

I'm excited about my year of self-love and healing. I'm excited to nurture good friendships and make new ones. I'm looking forward to spending some time on my own, learning to love myself and care for myself. I'm throwing out my shame boomerang - the inclination to constantly replay and remind myself of my mistakes and my shortfalls and my errors over and over and over, no matter how many times I try to move past them. I'm going to try new things and find peace and contentment in my own company.

This is going to be a good year for me, in spite of all the sadness. I'm going to come out of this thing stronger and whole. I am a strong woman, and I'm going to act like it.

Brokenness: I Write My Way Out

Brokenness, brokenness is what I long for

Brokenness is what I need

Brokenness, brokenness is what you want for me.*

That praise and worship song was usually played with the lights of the sanctuary low, the guitar soft, eyes closed and hands raised. It was often accompanied by tears, salty drops catching in the corner of my mouth, tears of either pain, longing or shame. Either I was broken as I sang or I wasn't broken and I wanted to be. To be broken meant the Lord could work in me, change me, "take my heart and mold it, take my mind and transform it, take my will and conform it" to his. This was my desire.

This is the desire of so many evangelical Christians, and this was my desire my whole life, most specifically through my 20s. Certainly from college to 30, I set my mind hard on Christ, set my heart steadily on loving and serving him and set my will solidly to do whatever he asked of me. I did not always succeed though, so in those times of selfishness and sinfulness, I longed and pleaded for brokenness. 

And I usually found it. As it turns out, I spent at least a decade, a good third of my life, being broken. This was something I believed was good and right and pure. This is something the church, nay, the Bible, taught me.

A Sunday morning in brokenness meant I was truly finding God. I left those services for a Sunday afternoon of renewal, as if leaving those lowered lights into the sunshine was clarity and a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit, powering through me to give me strength needed for the rest of the week. If I could live in a state of brokenness before the Lord, I would be living in the light, becoming more like Jesus, the most broken of us all. 

I spent most of my life in brokenness and wearing it as a heavenly and meek badge of honor. I lived most of my life seeking weakness, for it is in our weakness that he is strong. When I did not feel weak or broken, I was ashamed and cried out to God for it. I could only feel strength if it was Christ's strength in me, not my own. Nothing good could come of me, a depraved human being undeserving of Christ's love and sacrifice. I had nothing of myself to be proud of or to find strength in. Only the strength given to me by God could count as strength I could depend on. These principles were clear in Scripture, and I took them deeply to heart.

And I was happy. I truly felt happy. I was not a sad, pathetic, depressed woman moping around, feeling broken and weak. No, I was clothed in the robes of righteousness, I was empowered by the Holy Spirit, I was made whole by Jesus' sacrifice on the cross! When I did find myself in bouts of depression, I cried out for deliverance, begged for the Holy Spirit to make me whole again. I never believed Marilla's line that to be in the "depths of despair is to turn your back on God" (Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery). Rather it was an opportunity to rely on his strength and accept my weakness and turn something bad into something that would make me grow.  Growth is painful, I believed. The growing pains of becoming more like Christ and shedding my earthly flesh is uncomfortable but will be eternally worth it when I approach those pearly gates at the end of my time on this earth.

All of this was the mysterious paradox of Christianity. In our weakness we are made strong. When we empty ourselves, he fills us up.  There is no condemnation, even though we are evil in our innermost being and deserve eternal damnation. In our brokenness, we will be made whole. If we submit ourselves to Christ, we will be free. 

I've been separated from Christianity for about three years now. As the scales fall from my eyes and I dig deeper into who I am, I am finding that a lifetime of brokenness has, well, broken me.

A lifetime of trying to be weak has made me now despise any sign of weakness.

The way I made my religion the sole focus and purpose of my life, with all other things bowing down to it, was not, as I had always believed, a healthy way to live. It was damaging.

Striving so hard for brokenness did not lead to health; it led to illness.

Believing so strongly that I was worthless and my only worth was found in a spiritual being was not salvation; it was destruction.

I am only just beginning to discover my own worth and my own strength. I am only just starting my journey towards healing and wholeness out of brokenness.

And when my prayers to God were met with indifference

I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance.**

I only know how to take this journey through writing.  My words may hurt, sting, offend, break hearts. They may stir the longing in many to correct my understanding, to tell me I went about my faith all wrong, but I didn't. If in your church you sing that brokenness is what you long for, then you know all of this is true. If you have read Scripture, you know that we are considered unworthy, sinful, evil in our hearts, and the only way to find salvation is to submit everything we are and have to God. We are to completely discard our flesh and live in the spirit. We are not of us this world, just living in it. Following the Lord with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength is what is required of us. 

It's taken me years to realize just how much it required of me. It required too much. For too long I surrendered "all of my ambitions, hopes and plans...all I am and ever hope to be"*** to a belief system.  So I write my way out.

Running on empty, there was nothing left in me but doubt

I picked up a pen

And I wrote my way out.****

It won't be all I write about this year, but there is a lot of psychological, emotional and mental unpacking I plan on doing this year. For the first time in my life, I am looking at myself and my own needs and desires to figure out the right way to handle them. I am discovering that having my own ambitions, hopes and plans, finding strength in myself, sometimes putting my needs first, and trusting that I am good in my innermost being is actually a healthy way of seeing myself. And the only way I know how to uncover these truths is through the written word.  So as 2017 unfolds, I plan to write my way out of a broken and damaged spirit. I apologize in advance to anyone who may be hurt or offended. And I reach out now to anyone struggling with the same issues. I believe we can be made whole.

* "Take My Life" - Micah Stampley
** "Hurricane" - Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
*** "All For Jesus" - Robin Mark

**** "Wrote My Way Out" - Nas, Dave East, Lin-Manuel Miranda & Aloe Blacc, The Hamilton Mixtape

5 Things You Didn't Know About the Girl at the Gym Today

1. She's wearing make-up for a good reason. Two good reasons, actually. First of all, she decided to workout right after work, because she knew if she came home first, she'd never get back out the door. There was no time to wipe off the eyeliner and mascara she wore after her 8.5 hour day with no breaks and lunch at her desk. Secondly, she likes how she looks with make-up, so even if she'd chosen to put make-up on solely for the gym, who cares? If it makes her feel better about herself to see a reflection in the large floor-to-ceiling gym mirrors that doesn't make her cringe, shouldn't that be reason enough? Whether she's coming in straight after work or wearing make-up just for the fun of it, she's got a good reason.

2. She chose the gym over more destructive choices. She looks at her size 10 body and sees someone twice her size. She must tell herself on a daily basis not to hate that body in the mirror. She must tell herself daily to stop comparing it to the other bodies she sees, to stop wanting all the other bodies she sees and love the one she's in. Every once in a while, the temptations creep in. She has to make promises to herself not to starve, not to throw up. She has to promise her husband she will eat and will tell him when the temptations get too strong. She has to promise herself she'll be safe. Just last night, she picked up a bottle of Dexatrim and thought how easy it would be to buy it and hide it from her husband; he'd never know. She kept her promise to herself and put it back on the shelf. She chose to workout instead and do things the right way today.

3. She sometimes hides her tears behind the sweat.  Sometimes making it to the gym is more than just a battle against exhaustion or laziness. Sometimes it's a battle against the dark specter of depression that is always waiting behind a corner for her. Often she doesn't even know it's fallen upon her until she is lost in its shadow, like a slow dusk at summertime. When that happens, she spends a little time each day fighting back tears of helplessness. During an activity like exercise that leaves her mind so open to personal thoughts and feelings, the tears spill on their own. If she can pretend to others that the salty streaks on her cheeks are sweat, she will, because she's convinced she must hide what's really going on insider her. She is terrified of being judged for her weakness.

4. In fact, she only just barely showed up today. On those days, when depression has wrapped its veiled arms around her, she already has too many choices she's forced to make: whether to go to work or call in sick, whether to make dinner or just order takeout again, whether to pay attention to her kids or hide away from them, whether to talk to her husband or ignore him. The fact that she made a voluntary decision to do something positive for herself on top of all the other things she must decide to do is a huge personal win. It would always be easier to stay home and hide from it all.

5. Regardless of how fast she can run or how much weight she can lift, she is strong.  Maybe she doesn't run very fast, but she chose to run today. Maybe she can't lift as much as she used to, but she chose to show up today. Some days she only accomplishes the bare minimum: go to work, feed the kids, go to sleep. But even on those days, she is strong. She has not given up; she has promised herself she will not give up. She can't always be the person she wants to be or that you expect her to be. Still, she keeps trying - not for your sake, but for hers. For her own sake she smiles. For her own sake she laughs. She takes deep breaths and makes many choices. She often hides the truth, but now and then, she tells it. This is how she churns her weakness into strength.

Being A Human Being: The Right to Health Care

Bernie Sanders: "I happen to believe, and I know not everybody agrees with me, I believe that health care is a right of all people..."
Bret Baier: "Where did that right come from, in your mind?"
Sanders: "Being a human being. Being a human being." - Democratic Town Hall, Fox News, Mar. 7, 2016


I've said it before: health care is one of my biggest hot button political issues and has been for several years now. The above quote came from tonight's Democratic Town Hall in Detroit, MI, and it could not speak more clearly to my beliefs about a person's right to receive health care.

I spent most of my adult life in the United Kingdom under the National Health Service (NHS), a single payer health care system which pays for its services through taxes. I have personally experienced the good and the bad.

Here's an example of the bad, starting with a comparison of the good in the US.

When I was twenty-two, still living in the US just months before getting married and moving to the UK, a lump was found in my breast at a routine annual visit. The OBGYN at the college health center where I had the exam was concerned and scheduled an appointment for me the following week with a specialist. The following week, I saw the specialist who did his own exam and some scans. The scans showed two lumps which seriously concerned him. He said the size of one of these lumps was so large that he "wouldn't leave that inside anyone." He scheduled me the next day for a lumpectomy. Thankfully, after biopsying the lumps post-surgery, they were all benign, but he recommended that I get regular mammograms despite my young age because of the risk my body apparently posed.  This was in the United States.

In stark comparison, when I moved to Scotland later that year, I explained to my new GP my breast situation, and he flat out refused to schedule me for any mammograms ever because I was too young. He even refused to have a nurse perform a physical exam, because it wasn't time for my yearly.

This example shows either an insensitive health care professional (which are everywhere) in comparison to a thorough and careful one (which are everywhere), or it shows good health care versus bad.

Now let me say this. I lived in the UK and enjoyed the advantages of the NHS for nine years. There is only a small handful of negative experiences I can recount, none of which were life-threatening in any way. In fact, they all land in the range of annoying or aggravating. The rest of my experiences go something like this:

• I had three pregnancies and three live births that went remarkably well.  I had routine ultrasounds at 12 weeks and 20 weeks.  With my first, the routine 20 week scan showed possible placenta previa. This triggered more scans, eventually confirming placenta previa and requiring a c-section. The c-section was performed perfectly and safely, resulting in a healthy baby and mother.  My second birth, a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean), required monitors, provalactic antibiotics, and some anesthesia, and resulted in a healthy birth. The final one was a fully planned home-birth (provided by the NHS with licensed midwives) which unfortunately resulted in an ambulance to the hospital due to meconium in my waters but also ended with a live, healthy birth (and I was even allowed to birth him drug-free and naturally, as I'd planned).
• My son was born with a dilated kidney, which had been closely monitored all through pregnancy via ultrasounds. Dilated kidneys, especially post birth, often indicate kidney malfunction. This involved many visits to the hospital for scans and visits with the pediatrician for six months until his kidneys were deemed normal and fully functioning. 
• My daughter had orthopedic issues. This involved regular visits to the child podiatrist for check-ups and non-surgical modifications. She eventually outgrew this issue.  This same daughter got her finger severed in a slammed in a door, requiring immediate emergency attention, surgery, and a short hospital stay.

These are just examples of the medical issues I'm willing to share publicly. This does not touch on all of them. Here's the thing: despite the rhetoric that state-funded health care is sub par and discriminates against the elderly and takes years to be treated, this is not the experience of most people. Yes, you will find horror stories. I know people personally who have them.  Yes, there will be bad doctors and missed diagnoses and sometimes waiting lines. I know people who have had this happen to them too.  Yet, don't be fooled into thinking this only happens with socialized medicine. This also happens in the US; this is not a socialist problem, but a human error (or human asshole) problem.  For every NHS horror story, you can find a private health care one to match. 

What you will not find in the UK, however, that you will definitely find in the US is this - a bill.

When I had that breast surgery at twenty-two, I was terrified. I worried for a week waiting for the biopsy report. Scott and I discussed over the phone what we'd do if I had cancer. (He was going to fly right over is what he was going to do.) I had never felt so much fear. When the report came back clean, I was relieved to tears.

Then the first bill rolled in. Something like $200. I breathed in deeply and pulled money out of savings to pay the bill. A few days later, another bill came in. It was around $400. The panic started to set in. My savings were for my wedding and for moving abroad, not for paying these bills! Then another came in, and another. One for the anesthesia. One for the surgeon. One for the hospital stay. One for the specialist's scans. One for the lab. I was under my parents insurance, so I knew nothing about deductibles and out of pocket expenses. I thought $20 co-pays were all I ever had to pay.  I ended up calling my parents in tears, because I could not pay all these bills - I didn't have enough in savings to do so.

Compare that to finding out I needed a c-section. I cried, because I didn't want to be sectioned and I was worried about my baby. But when we came out of it just fine, I didn't have to think about the bills rolling in. I could just be thankful my baby was alive.

And when my son had kidney issues, I didn't have to think about how to pay for all these scans and hospital visits. And when my daughter had orthopedic issues, I didn't have to weigh up whether they were valid enough to warrant seeing a specialist or not. 

When I first moved to Scotland, I broke a glass in my hand doing dishes. The cut was deep, blood was everywhere, and some broken shards of glass even got lodged inside the cut. Scott tried to get me to go to the A&E (ER), but I refused. He reminded me it was free, but I still refused.  Medical treatment had always been something I had to weigh up according to its level of severity and necessity. A cut I could mend myself with bandages and soapy water did not warrant visiting a doctor. Though it would have been free, I was not used to seeing a doctor for such things.

(For years, I could feel something small and hard inside my hand near that cut. A tiny shard of glass, perhaps?)

Here is my point.

Health care shouldn't deplete one's savings. A person shouldn't have to decide against care for their child because the level of severity doesn't quite justify the cost. Being forced to forego medical treatment because it would cost too much should never have to happen. A person shouldn't have thousands of dollars in deductibles to meet before the insurance he or she is paying into kicks in to help out. (True story: Sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office a few weeks ago, I overheard a woman ask the receptionist to try billing her insurance company since she had now met her $4000 deductible - in February. In two months, her family had already forked over 4k in medical bills. What will the rest of her year look like, and how much will she end up paying out of pocket by December?)

Let me be even more clear.

A person working for minimum wage or living under the poverty line or out of work (for whatever reason) should not have to make decisions about his or her own health or family's health based on what they can afford. An underprivileged family with a child suffering from behavioral or mental disorders (ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, anxiety, or any other) or who has a developmental delay (occupational, physical, or speech) or who has minor or major illnesses (asthma, ear infections, or any physical ailment that affects his normal day-to-day activities) should have the same access to treatment as a family with the money to pay for it. But the reality is, in the United States of America, the richest country in the world, those families are having to make devastating choices constantly about their health care. 

• Do we use emergency services, knowing we cannot pay the bills?  
• Do we seek cheaper options that are not proven to work?  
• Do we forego the treatment all together, though it may lead to all kinds of issues down the road? 

And when they do deem the treatments medically necessary - or when an accident occurs, like a severed appendage or broken bone - these treatments often land them further in poverty and debt. Medicaid only covers so much, and if you don't qualify for Medicaid but still don't have the money to fork over to pay all your medical bills (and heaven forbid something major comes up, like cancer), you are faced with crippling medical debt that will haunt you and your credit for years, even decades, to come. 

How is this okay to a large majority of people in the richest country in the world? How are we okay, not only with our own insurance plans, that make us pay thousands outright before letting us access the coverage we are paying large monthly premiums for, but with knowing children and people living in poverty or near poverty are suffering needlessly because they do not have the money to pay for medical care?

Yes we have Medicaid and Medicare, which helps tremendously, and I am very much in favor of these programs. But as they stand now, they simply cannot go far enough to help solve the problem. When people who have low enough income levels to qualify for Medicaid are still being landed with copays and hospital bills they cannot afford, there is a problem we should all be deeply concerned about.

I agree with Bernie Sanders. Health care is a right. A human right. And where does that right come from? Where all other human rights, like safety and security, equality, religion, freedom from slavery or discrimination, education, adequate living conditions, and so forth, come from. They come from being a human being. 

5 Reasons I'm Still Supermom

GLOSSARY

SAHM: Stay-At-Home-Mum

WAHM: Work-At-Home-Mum

WOHM: Work-Outside-Home-Mum

I remember the days in the not so distant past when I was the kind of mummy who wore my babies in slings, breastfed beyond two years, practiced baby-led-weaning, and swore by co-sleeping and never CIO (crying it out). I was the kind of mummy who sat around with her friends drinking tea and talking about the best way to gently discipline without spanking, why attachment parenting is the best way to go, how to prepare the best home remedies for minor ailments, and where we could find fluoride-free toothpaste. I was the kind of mummy who did crafts with her kids, read them books before bedtime, made gorgeous bento box lunches to send with them to school, and took them on playdates to the park with other SAHMs and their kids for some good old fashioned Vitamin D.

I liked being that mummy. I admire that mummy. She was pretty all right.

Now I'm the kind of mummy who forgets to send back signed forms to the school, who runs out of clean uniforms before Friday because she hasn't done the laundry, and who packs pre-packaged food in disposable, non-environmentally friendly bags for lunch.  The mummy who lets them watch too much TV so she can catch a break and shouts way too much when they get unruly.

It's so easy to compare the SAHM me to the WOHM me and see the latter as inferior.  I idealize the former and remember her as certainly far more serene than she actually was, while criticizing the latter. Here's the deal: I need to give the current me some credit. I need to stop comparing and cut myself some slack.

So instead of dwelling on all the things I'm not doing so much anymore, it's time I look at the bright side of the new WOHM me.  Here are five things I am doing right as a mother:

1. I'm modeling feminist empowerment.
This in fact is what I've been doing all along. As a SAHM, I showed my kids that a woman can do whatever she believes is right for her life. I modeled positive feminist values by choosing to stay home with my kids, while my husband supported us, because it was what I (we) believed in.  As a WAHM later down the line, I showed my kids that a woman can start her own business and be creative in finding ways to make money and support her family. I showed them that a woman can both take care of household jobs and run a business and be fulfilled in all these activities. Now, as a WOHM, I am demonstrating that a woman can have a career and be a mother, that women can be as successful as men, and that if a woman wants to work outside the home, she should do so. A woman can do whatever is right for her at whatever stage of her life she is in.  Whether she is a SAHM, WAHM or WOHM, she can be successful and fulfilled in all she does.

(As a side note, Scott has also been modeling feminist values to our children by supporting and agreeing with my work choices all along the way. He shows our son how to respect a woman's capabilities and personal autonomy, while also showing our daughters how a man can and should respect a woman's capabilities and personal autonomy. My husband is a seriously awesome feminist.)

2. I'm not afraid to say I'm sorry.
When the kids act mean or rude, I expect them to apologize. When I act mean or rude, I apologize too. Often times my fuse can be short, and I react no better than a child. When I blow things out of proportion or throw a hissy fit, I am not afraid to say I'm sorry to my kids. I'm not perfect, and if my kids haven't already discovered this, they will soon enough. Teaching them to apologize by example is a life skill I am able to teach on a regular basis! It is not a sign of weakness for a parent to apologize to a child when the parent is in the wrong; it's a demonstration of maturity and humility.

(Side note. Scott is awesome about apologizing to the kids too. We also say we are sorry to each other in front of the kids anytime we have a fight. Apologies aren't just for children.)

3. I talk to them openly about social issues and current events.
We listen to NPR in the car nearly everywhere we go (and when it's not NPR, it's really good music, which is also something we're doing right), and our kids ask us often about the news they hear. We talk openly about the current events and social issues that are discussed. Whether it's a white police officer who shot a black man for no reason, a gay couple being refused a marriage license, the presidential debates, Syrian migrants, or religious freedom, we talk openly about it. We ask the kids to think these things through themselves and encourage them to come up with their own solutions and opinions. We do our best to make our kids aware of the larger world around them and to see themselves as activists who can make the world a better place. Between our three kids, we have a future President of the United States, a schoolteacher, and a Power Ranger. How more activist could they get?

4. I laugh with them.
All these "I I I"s should really be "We We We"s. Scott is 100% all of these things too. As a family, we make a point of being silly as often as possible. We're a bunch of sarcastic so-and-sos who tease the crap out of each other and play silly pranks on each other and make jokes about everything. Sometimes things have to be taken seriously, but we make a point of being lighthearted whenever we can. Life is short and laughter is free.

5. I read.
They say one of the best things you can do for a child's academic success is have books in the home. We are rebuilding our home library after selling everything, and we make it a priority to give the kids plenty of access to books for themselves. Besides just having books in the home, we aim to actively cultivate a love of reading in our kids. We may not have the same perfect routine we used to have of reading books every night before bed, but reading is still a huge part of our family life. My youngest loves being read to, my middle is discovering how exciting it is to sound out the words and read for herself, and my oldest is never further than arm's reach away from a novel twice the size of her. And besides just encouraging them to enjoy reading, I often have my nose in a book too. Without even trying, I am demonstrating a love for reading. I carry one (sometimes two) books with me everywhere I go, and I simply love to read. Actively instilling this in them as well as modeling it in myself is a parenting win. I may not cook organic meals, but I will read the crap out of some books then pass them on to a kid.


READERS:
What is something YOU are doing right in your life? When the easiest thing to do is see all the things you're doing wrong, take a minute to jot down some of the things you are doing right, and share them here!

Too Stressed To Think of a Title

I am stressed.

Stressed, like, beyond anything I've ever known.

I underestimated my worth as a stay-at-home-mum, but now that I'm a working mum, I realize just how much I did when I was at home.

I stayed home with the kids when they were sick.

I took them to doctor's appointments and dentist visits.

I took the cats to the vet.

I paid the bills (on time).

I took letters to the post office.

I went to the bank.

I made calls to sort out doctor's appointments, bill queries, banking issues.

I took the cars in for oil changes and maintenance.

I cleaned out the cars.

I cleaned the house.

I kept on top of the laundry.

I kept on top of the dishes. 

I made menus and grocery lists and did the grocery shopping.

I prepared breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I even got in my "me time" by going to the gym and keeping fit and healthy.

Now?

All those things still need to get done, but Scott and I both need to leave the house by 7:30 to get the kids to school and daycare and get ourselves to work by 8. We both push ourselves mentally to the limit daily from 8-4:30, only occasionally taking an hour for a lunch break, before heading back home to collect the kids. By the time we get home, it's too late to run errands or make phone calls. By the time we've done homework with the kids, eaten a late dinner, and put all the little people to bed, it's time to tackle all the chores.  

Throw into the mix moving into a new house, where the errands, bills, and housework are thrown into overdrive. We are surrounded by boxes we have no time to empty and loose ends we have no time to tie. We had the old house to clean too, and all the old utilities to reconcile. 

This weekend we drove nine hours to Texas to visit family which was AMAZING (minus the driving part) and fun. But upon arriving back home at 1:45am and seeing the mess my house is in and knowing I'd have to be getting up for work in just five hours was devastating. I thought I'd also get the grocery shopping for the week finally done, after living the last two weeks on takeout, but that never happened either.  

Next week, my in-laws from Scotland are coming. The guest room is still full of boxes and no bed.

I never realized before how tough working mamas have it.  I worked full time from home for several years, which was extremely taxing, but I had no idea how hard it would be to work outside the home and not be able to get daytime tasks accomplished. Some people joke that going to work is a break from the kids, but my job is just one loooong day of a shitload too much to do. I go home from working nonstop all day to thinking of all the things that didn't get done at work and at home that need to get done. I wake up in the middle of the night trying to work out problems that won't let me get back to sleep. I remember half way through my work day that I never paid the car payment but I can't do anything about it because I'm at work. All my perfectly organized systems and daily itineraries are shot. My days run into each other bringing to close week after week without my realizing where the time has gone.

I am stressed.

I tell myself that in time it'll all come together. I'll make a new, albeit busier, routine and fall comfortably into it. But at the moment, I can't see that anywhere. All I see is a rocky landscape stretching to the horizon, and me climbing and tripping over the boulders and loose stones trying to go forward under the glare of a blistering, blinding midday sun. And all that's in the horizon for me is more rocks.

Usually, when I catch myself in danger of depression, I see myself slipping down a steep slope. I see it as a fast, slick descent. Right now, I see it as something I'm pushing myself into, unable to go any other direction other than full force straight into it, because that's the direction and inertia of my life.

How do you working mothers do this? How do you balance work and home? How do you spend all day expending your mental powers on the job and then come home to children who need attention and affection and patient help with homework, without totally coming unglued? 

I want to be that mother who comes home from work and pulls all the children onto her lap like a box full of kittens and snuggles them all with sitcom-worthy good nature before setting the whole family down for a healthy meal of meat and two vegetables. Who then brushes all the teeth and reads all the bedtime stories and tucks in all the blankets and coos as she turns out all the lights. Who throws in a load of laundry, washes all the dinner dishes, and then cuddles up with her husband on the couch with a glass of wine and a happy smile on her face. Who then wriggles into her perfectly made bed (done every morning, of course) with a book to read before slipping easily off to her eight hours of healthful sleep, fresh and ready for the 6 o'clock alarm the next morning.

Instead, I'm the mother who curses at the traffic on her way home from work, who picks up the kids from daycare and screams at the them because they have immediately begun to fight as soon as they get into the car over car seats and seat belts. Who gets home to a messy house and feels a massive headache come on as she tries to figure out what to throw together for dinner in a pinch because she hasn't had time to go to the grocery store in two weeks. Who feels guilty over the lack of vegetables on the plates and the overabundance of starches.  Who then loses her temper when the kids refuse to get dressed for bed because they have suddenly remembered that they have homework they need help with. Who snaps at her husband who also has been working all day over the tiniest things because her patience is gone and the house is a mess and even though they are both trying to carry their weight, the weight is too heavy. And when the kids are finally in their beds, after yet another night with no bedtime story, she looks at all the work that needs to be done and just cries as she moves from room to room doing small tasks that lead to other small tasks that make her feel she has done nothing at all when she looks back over the whole thing. Who collapses into bed without washing her face because she's too exhausted to fucking care that her face is going to break out and eyeliner is going to smudge all over her pillowcase.

That's the beautiful image I see of this girl right here. Hi, I'm Lori, the evil, stressed out arch nemesis of Supermom. Nice to meet you.

The Difference Between You and Me: Or Is There One?

I mentioned last time that I've had several responses to the Screen Doors post that I wanted to address. One of the ones I really wanted to respond to was my friend Kate's response to Screen Doors.

She responded to my blog on her blog.  It is really good and asks a lot of questions that I am eager to respond to. (Response response response, can you say it five times fast?) I'll post snippets here as I reply, but please go read her entire post afterwards. Whether you are a Christian or not, I think it is very inspiring, honest, and furthers this amazing dialogue that is so rarely seen between believers and non-believers.

I'll begin with this:

“Most of the time I feel as spiritual as a plunger.” I worry perhaps a friend saw my sin, my depression, or my bad parenting and they knew I wasn’t being Christ-like. Did this help them turn away from those teachings we grew up with? ... I feel disappointed in myself and my lack of spiritual fortitude.

She was talking about her childhood friends whom she has seen since leave Christianity.

I can't speak for every single person who has ever left their faith, obviously. I am sure there are plenty of people who have left because of the hypocrisy or failings or bad behavior of believers. However, I can say that in my experience (and at least one or two of the friends she might be referring to), this was not remotely the case.

One thing that I do not miss about Christianity is the guilt. Oh, sorry, I mean "conviction".  If you've read my book, you'll know what I mean when I say I was a spiritual masochist. I turned everything inward, wondering if there was any part of me that was to blame for any undesirable situation. I believed this was cleansing me, making me more like Christ. I could not fathom anyone being a genuine Christian and NOT constantly rooting out the evil within them. I recognized my brokenness too deeply. I was ashamed of my poor witness. I prayed constantly to be made more like Christ, but I failed over and over again. This all basically comes down to me saying I relate all too well with Kate's concern.  I too wondered if my own imperfection was driving people away from God. I'm a crappy parent sometimes, I get depressed, and I never felt I was quite living up to the person God wanted me to be. I could be a hypocrite. As hard as I tried to be righteous, I messed up time and again. And I wondered, "Is my light so dim that no one can see Christ through me?"

The answer, almost certainly, was no.

I left the faith, and many, many others leave the faith, simply because we run out of faith. We started the race like marathon runners, but after the first 26.2 miles and the next 26.2 miles and the next, we started to slow down. We ran out of breath.  We hunched over, panting, trying to keep running. Finally, we collapsed. The faith that we either longed to have (but could never admit was lacking) or the faith that we held unquestioningly somehow just began to run out. Whether the burden of reason grew too great or the allusiveness of God too wearisome, losing faith in a religion is often a highly introspective experience. It's not caused by other people's behavior. It may be, but I'd venture to say a genuine loss of faith is usually very inward-looking.

People who care enough about their faith to worry that their imperfect lives may be causing others to stumble are almost NEVER the people who should have to worry about that. You are usually the best people around. You are empathetic, you are introspective, and you are genuine. You're the good guys.

Let me add before I go on that the greatest joy I feel daily is the lack of guilt and shame and brokenness. I thought I felt whole as a Christian, but now I realize I only felt fixed. It is only now that I feel truly whole, now that I realize I was never broken in the first place.

Another huge issue for me is my own unbelief. All Christians struggle with unbelief or doubt at times. I have gone through seasons of my life -sometimes even years- when I feel disconnected from the Lord and full of doubt. When I have a friend who outs herself as an atheist, a big part of me wonders if she is going through a similar season. And, to be very honest, sometimes you feel like your friendly atheist has made some excellent points and all your doubts coming flooding back to the surface.

Let me repeat the caveat - I can't speak for everyone here. Just myself and several people I know.

Yes, we all have our doubts, Christian or not. Sometimes they are huge and leave us in a pit of despair for far too long. And for some, that faith does return. I followed a blog for a while called Gakeat's Musings, in which the author ruminated on his crisis of faith. He eventually reconciled his belief in Christ (and has sadly stopped blogging - I'd love to hear his thoughts now that he is back on this renewed path!). Some people do go through a season of doubt and come back to their faith.

And some of us are beyond seasons. If you are an evangelical, you likely had some sort of turning-point moment that you could never go back from. I know I did. Whether that was the moment of "salvation" or just the moment where my spiritual journey took off like a rocket, I don't know, but it fundamentally impacted the next decade of my life.

I had that same kind of experience when I de-converted. To go back now seems, well, unthinkable.

For some people, it is only a season of doubt. For others, this is our new (improved) reality.

As for the "friendly atheist [making] some excellent points", that's another, more difficult topic. Do I want to venture into it? Maybe later ... But for now, my goal is not to turn people away from their faith. It's only to share the view from the other side and to keep a dialogue going.

When I found out a friend was no longer a Christian I was full of questions and worries. ... How can this be? ... We cried together, and worshiped together. Or at least I thought we did. Was she lying to me? When did this start? Was she doubting her faith when she was praying for me when I was struggling last year? Was she just acting or bowing to societal pressure this whole time?

I'm not the friend she's referring to, by the way. So I don't know what her friend was going through. But if she HAD been talking about me, here's what I'd have to say.

Those moments you refer to were real, for both of us. For me, those moments were never put on or intentionally deceptive. Growing up (adolescence, young adult years), my faith was solid. I cried and worshiped with hands lifted high.  It was never fake. Christ was my center, my All In All.  When my faith began to waiver, though, I did hide it from most people. I was afraid of being judged. I didn't want anyone to know that this girl who led worship at church, who helped in the Sunday School, who facilitated the Prayer Wall, who had been on mission trips, was now starting to doubt. I didn't know if my doubts were just one of those aforementioned seasons or not, so to share them seemed premature. But I was ashamed. So at that point, I did keep it inside. But I wasn't acting. I was just hiding in fear.

If I'd been praying for a struggling friend during that time, those prayers would probably have been the most heart-felt prayers of my life, because I was living the struggle too. No one can empathize better than the person walking in the exact same shoes.

So much of my identity is wrapped up in my relationship with the Lord. When I found out that Jane had rejected Him, it is shocking because I feel like she is rejecting part of me, and in some cases, her upbringing ... I want to say, “Jane, do you remember that [time] when I went forward and received prayer at church? It was terrible and wonderful at the same time.  I felt so embarrassed when I cried and my nose ran and I was shaking as you and the others were praying for me. I hated for anyone to see me that way. I hated to make myself so vulnerable, but I knew you understood. Do you still understand or do you look back on that time and pity me and revile my weakness?”

Oh, my heart breaks at this point. You can't imagine what feelings reading those words brings up in me. Yes, we still understand. I'm not Jane, remember, but this could easily be asked of me. I have had so many of these moments; the vulnerability, the ugly tears, the weakness, the love and thankfulness I felt for my friends who held me and understood me and prayed for me. I can never forget my own moments like that; how could I ever revile someone else for theirs?

I speak for myself here when I say that even though I often feel embarrassed by the things I said and did as a Christian, and even though I sometimes feel regret and anger and frustration, I also have come to a place where I can give myself a lot of grace. Yes, grace is a word that's been co-opted by Christianity, but it's a good word. It's something we all need, regardless of who gives it to us. I am learning to give it to myself. But I never needed to learn to give it to others; for me that just came naturally. I'm way more forgiving of others than I am of myself. I don't look back at your weak moments and feel embarrassment or pity. Just love and grace.

One other thing to mention here is the use of the word "rejection". It's a commonly used word in this context; the atheist "rejects" God or even "denies his existence".  Yet that is an entirely inaccurate word for most people.  I don't think I know a single atheist or agnostic who feels they have rejected or denied God. We simply don't believe a god exists (or are not sure either way). I don't deny or reject Zeus, nor do I deny or reject Allah. I don't believe either exist. When it comes to our friends, we no longer share that thing we once had in common, true. But we don't reject it or you. However, I can completely see where you're coming from. I don't think that's a crazy way to feel at all. When your faith is your essence, then someone leaving that shared faith can absolutely feel like a rejection. But just please remember that it's not. Again, the loss of faith is highly internal. There certainly must be people who throw out the baby with the bathwater, or in this case the Christians with the Christianity, but I hope those people eventually see that this isn't necessary.  Just as we non-believers long to be loved and accepted by others, we should extend that same love and acceptance to our believing friends. Without judgment, without arrogance.

One close friend told me that he realized his unbelief was a bigger deal for me than it was for him. ... I’m worried about his soul ... but he isn’t.

Yeah. I think this is probably true. For a lot of people, de-converting is fairly uneventful. Especially when it was a largely intellectual affair. For me, it was highly emotional, but this not normally the case. Most of my religious-turned-nonreligious friends had a harder time emotionally with losing friends and family than losing their faith.


Finally, I must address her last thought. This is truly the crux, if you ask me, of the entire subject.

I wonder about my friends who don’t have the Lord in their lives. How do they make it through the day? How do they have the strength to be the mom their children need? How do they stay married? I doubt they would say they have everything figured out or that they are better than me. They are taking it one day at time as well, but I cannot comprehend how they are still functioning. This raises all kinds of confusion within me. I am less a capable woman than them? I am just trained to be dependent on the Holy Spirit because of my upbringing and beliefs? Are they failing miserably and not telling anyone? Am I a horrible person with unfathomable depths of depravity that I need help overcoming while they are just normal functioning people?

My answer cannot be summed up succinctly or in some quaint, quirky, poetic little sentence. Here's the thing: We ALL struggle. Constantly. We are all human.

How do I personally make it through the day? When I was a Christian, I truly believed God was bringing me through. I believed he had his hand on my life and was guiding me, protecting me. When that faith began to disintegrate, I had no idea how I could cope without him.

I'll never forget the day I realized that not only could I go forward on my own, but that I'd ALWAYS been on my own. When you come to realize there is no almighty god guiding you and protecting you, you eventually make the connection that such a god didn't just disappear leaving you in the lurch but never existed in the first place. Therefore all those years before HAD been on my own. And I survived. The feeling of empowerment and strength that moment afforded me is inexplicable.

Wait, I know EXACTLY what you're thinking. How presumptuous of me! How arrogant! I seriously deserve pity now that I've come right out and said "I can do this on my own without god!" Oh boy, am I the classic Kevin Sorbo character atheist now! But hear me out, if you can.

The way I see it, you and I are no different. You and I both struggle. We have bad days, we have bad months, maybe even years. We get depressed, we get angry, we fail miserably. Yet we both find the strength to get out bed (most days) and push on. We both look at our children and think, "You are worth me trying to do better." We look at our marriages and think, "This is worth fighting for."

Your strength rises out of your faith. I admire that. I think that if faith in Jesus Christ gets you out of bed and makes you a better person, then that is awesome. Regardless of whether or not I think your strength actually comes from inside YOU or comes from God, the fact is you are strong, and you are making the world a better place for yourself, your children, and everyone else around you.

I don't have that strength anymore. Not from faith, that is. Nor do I want it. Faith no longer has that rosy fragrance drawing me to it. Now, I have a different strength.  What gets me out of bed in the morning is the realization that life is short, so very short, and I barely have any real time to put my imprint on it. I want to live every moment as a totally alive person, making the short lives of others as meaningful as possible. I want to do better for my kids so they can do better for their kids. I want to fight for my marriage, because life is too short to be alone and sad, and I've been so lucky to find someone I'm desperate to share my short life with. Since realizing that there is no afterlife in which to make up for whatever I missed here on earth, my concept of time has radically changed. Like a heart attack survivor, I've got a new lease on life. To use someone else's words - because they are so much better than mine:

I suddenly felt very deeply that I was alive: Alive with my own particular thoughts, with my own particular story, in this itty-bitty splash of time. And in that splash of time, I get to think about things and do stuff and wonder about the world and love people, and drink my coffee if I want to. And then that's it. -Julia Sweeney, "Letting Go of God"

So, no, back to your original questions, you are not a horrible person who needs God to overcome your failings while the rest of us go on functioning normally. You have tapped into a source of strength. So have I. Many people have not tapped into a source of strength yet, and for those people, I do wonder how they get through life. I hope everyone finds a source of strength, as long as it is not in something destructive. For those who find their strength in faith, I ask only that they do not use it as a weapon also. Same goes for anyone who finds strength anywhere - within themselves or externally. We are all prone to weakness, therefore we all have a responsibility of empathy. We should use our strength to lift the weak up, not beat them down. 

New Ink: Into the Looking Glass

A few weeks ago, my main squeeze and I went on a date, where we ate bison burgers and sweet potato fries dipped in marshmallow sauce, and got ourselves inked.

This was Scott's first tattoo, and it was a big deal. He got this:


(We've been kind of amazed at how few people have been able to figure out what it is.)

Me, this was my fourth tat, so not quite such a big deal.

As a reminder, I have a tattoo trio already of faith, hope, and love, all in Arabic calligraphy. And yes, I know enough Arabic to know that they all say exactly what I think they say. I may not remember much from my year of studying Arabic, but I still know enough. Enough to read something to you but not have a clue what it says.

I considered going a totally new direction for this fourth tattoo, leaving behind the Arabic calligraphy theme. I also considered seamlessly continuing with the Arabic calligraphy theme by getting the word peace in Arabic. But I kept turning around this other idea in my mind... a slightly cheesy, somewhat embarrassing idea, but one that really meant something to me.

Illusion.

It's a beautiful design. (I'm sorry I can't give credit to the person who designed it though, because she seems to have removed it from the web. I'm glad I downloaded it before she took it down. I wonder, does tattooing yourself compromise intellectual property rights?) This is also Arabic calligraphy. The idea of getting illusion tattooed on my skin did seem cheesy and possibly misleading, but at the last minute, it's the one I chose to go with.


I love it. However, the inevitable question has since popped up repeatedly: "What does it mean?"

An old friend once cautioned me never to get a tattoo that didn't mean anything, because you'd spend the rest of your life shrugging when asked that inevitable question. Those three squares on his arm mean nothing.

The word in Arabic, وهم (pronounced "wa-HEM-a") specifically means "illusion" but can be loosely translated in other ways. I've been finding it easier to loosely translate it as "imagination" for the average person on the street, rather than explain what "illusion" means to me.

But I'll explain it here.

When I look at myself in the mirror, I see a fat girl. There, I said it.

The word "fat" is supposedly banned in our house. It's our family's f-word (and is way worse than the other one). I am so very against body shaming, so supportive of positive body image and loving your body... for everyone else but myself. I still look at myself and see a mess. Even though I'm now at a healthy weight and have a pretty healthy lifestyle (let's not discuss the Easter chocolate though, please), I still have very poor body image. It probably wouldn't matter if I lost yet another 30 lbs, I'd probably still see someone twice my actual size in my reflection.

I have to tell myself consciously, explicitly, daily, that this is an illusion.

What I see in the mirror is illusory. It's something my brain invents to tempt me to do all sorts of stupid things. I have to constantly tell my brain, You're wrong. I'm beautiful. I'm healthy. I love my body.

This tattoo now stares back at me in the mirror too. It tells me the same thing. I am healthy. I exercise regularly. I *generally* eat well. I am beautiful. Anything I believe about myself otherwise is an illusion.

It is الوهم.

But if I pass you on the street, and you ask me what it means, I'll probably just say "imagination". Because that's easier to admit.

Challenge Accepted! March Books

Another month down!

Last month, even being a short twenty-eight day one, I got in seven books. This month wasn't quite as ambitious, but I have good reason for it. I spent the first half of the month finishing my own book.  Which, incidentally, I figure checks off one of the categories of the reading challenge: A book that takes place in your hometown.

My hometown is Nowheresville. If there was ever a book set in my hometown, I don't think I'd even want to read it. Except... my book in set in my hometown and I think you should read it so... I take that back.

Regardless, I was never going to find such a book, so I'm ticking off my own book for that category.  After all, I've read it a gazillion times now, it ought to count.

So.... the first of four:.

The Last Petal Falling by Lori Arnold McFarlane (A book that takes place in your hometown)

This book is, for lack of a better word, a memoir.  It takes you through my most formative religious experiences, starting from elementary school gospel sharing at the community pool to my spiritual revival at The Grove in college to the Day That Jesus Didn't Return. I've written the book in a sensitive and non-confrontational way, even as I describe the anger and disillusionment I experienced during my early post-Christian days, for my aim is not and never will be to needlessly attack believers of any faith, however much we may disagree. It's just to tell my own story and show others with similar ones that they are not alone.

If it's possible to be diplomatic and unbiased towards my own book (it's not), and if you'll spare thinking me a narcissist (I'm really not), this book is a book to read if:
A) you've BTDT (been there done that)
B) you've never been religious and don't understand how religious people can believe things so unbelievable or
C) you are a Christian and want to understand how a devout Christian could ever possibly turn away from the faith.

I was always in the latter category, believing that those who turned away "were never saved to begin with". I'd like to think this book, at the very least, will push that envelope, if only just a little. Clearly there will be a plethora of responses to dismiss my "salvation" or to reason away my experience by pointing at all my foibles and follies, and I fully expect that, it's the nature of the business of bearing your soul to the masses.  I just hope it will at least open eyes just a little wider to the reality that so many comfortable religious people face when life gets real.

*Once I've completed the publishing stages - I'm going to self publish - I'll include a link from which you can all go purchase it! Likely it will be e-book only to start (gah, I hate e-books), but I'm looking into Print On Demand options as well.


The rest of the books I read in March all followed a theme.  In February, a theme of hell and loss of faith emerged, but this time I found myself drawn to books about mental health.



I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg (A book from your childhood)
I read this book in high school as one of my additional reading requirements for AP English.  We had to choose from a list a certain number of extra books to read and take simple quizzes on, and I being the go-getter I was always chose the shortest, easiest books on the list. This one was relatively short but it was not easy, and it impacted me deeply as a teenager. Ever since then, I've thought of this book often and considered finding a copy of it to re-read but never did. Until now. And I'm so glad I did.

First of all, I don't know how much of the book I possibly could have really understood in high school. Maybe I was more intuitive and empathetic than I remember, but the book is so full of complex and difficult concepts, I just wonder if I really understood it the way I do now.

One thing I know for sure: I can relate to it better this time around.

The story revolves around Deborah, a seventeen year old schizophrenic in a mental hospital.  She lives in between two worlds - Yr, the land in her mind, and Earth - and the constant coming and going is agonizing. She wants to be fully Yri but the other world keeps pulling her back without her consent. Her greatest battle in the hospital is sharing Yri secrets with her therapist, whom she grows to love and trust,and is possibly the first person she's ever loved or trusted, and the horrible backlash from the Yri gods that this betrayal earns her. It's a beautifully complex and delicate book.  I absolutely loved it again upon this second read and highly recommend it.

The book deals a lot with mental illness versus mental health.  It's a great novel even if you just read it for the plot, but the themes are really thought-provoking too. I'll just share one of them that spoke most powerfully to me.

The girls on the ward naturally despise certain nurses and are naturally drawn to others. While the aides themselves don't know what motivates these seemingly random responses, Deborah does. The nurses and aides that are the easiest targets are the ones the girls recognize as afraid. Not only afraid of the girls in the ward but afraid of themselves. They are the ones who fear they too could end up as crazy as these lunatics, and they clutch their keys tightly in their fists as proof that they are not stuck on the inside like the nuts but are still living on the outside, still "normal".  The other aides, however, the ones the girls felt protective of, were the ones who knew they were only a few steps away from crazy and were comfortable with this fact. These attendants didn't hover in suspicious groups or exercise their authority with violence or clutch their jingling rings of proof in their pockets. They smiled, shook their heads, told the girls off, maintained control (as best they could) and earned rather than demanded respect. They knew they weren't all that different, but they did have a job to do, and they were going to do it right.

I get this. I totally do. I'm not sure if I realized this as a sixteen year old, but as a thirty-three year old, I recognize that I'm really just one or two breakdowns away from crazy myself.  It could happen at any time. In fact, isn't depression a mental illness? Isn't body dysmorphia?  If I have mild cases of both, I must realize that all it would take to put me over the edge is a nosedive into either or both of those trenches.  At the moment, the only thing keeping me from either is the decision (which is remade regularly) to choose health over illness.

This is the other really powerful insight the book offers. Deborah's therapist tells her that once Deborah has experienced both mental illness AND health, she will have a choice. She can choose Yr but will likely want to choose Earth. For now, she has never experienced health, so has no frame of reference for wanting to choose it. Yr is familiar and safe; the world is mean and terrifying; that's all she knows. But once she has experienced both, the therapist is confident that Deborah will choose health.  It will be the hardest choice she'll ever make, and one she'll make over and over and over again, but she will finally for the first time have an actual choice.

I think that's profound.

There is nothing simple about choosing health. It's not as easy as choosing baked chicken over pizza. It not only feels unreachable, it feels undoable. For one experiencing mental illness (and who has at least known what it was like to be well at some other point in life), be it depressive or psychotic or what have you, the choice may be visible far off in the distance but unreachable.  To make all the efforts and take all the steps that it would require to start the slow, difficult journey towards that unreachable goal seems impossible. Once you are in the throes of mental illness, it is a painful, seemingly impossible uphill climb to get out of it.  It's much less exhausting to remain sick.  At least that's my own experience.

However, once you've made that climb, however you managed it, it's important to daily make the choice to stay on top.  I've felt myself slipping so many times, yet reading this book, and now thinking of it as a choice (again, not an easy, flippant choice) has had a huge impact on me. It's far more worth it to fight slipping into depression, even though it takes so much out of me, than to effortlessly glide right back down into it (it's so easy to glide) and find myself at the bottom again looking up in desperation with no idea how to get out.

I'm going to post more on this later. I might get a lot of negative feedback on my interpretation of this, and disagreements are welcome! I recognize that my experiences are mild compared to so many others and value other opinions and comments.

And that leads us to...

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (A popular author's first book)
While Sylvia Plath published books of poetry prior to The Bell Jar, this was her first "novel", so I'm going to use that definition to check off this category.

This wasn't at all what I expected it to be. I'm still not sure how to interpret it.  It's basically a vaguely fictionalized autobiography, so I don't doubt anything in it. I'm just surprised by how, well, normal she was. In fact, maybe I'm even impressed. After reading I Never Promised You... above, a book where mental illness was explicit and strange, reading about a depressed, suicidal girl who "had it all" and, on the surface of it and in the eyes of others, had "no reason" to break down, was unexpected. But it plays into the same idea that any of us are just a few feet away from crazy.  She broke down, and not over any particular traumatic event, but simply from mental and emotional overload - or underload - or who even knows what.  She just happened to walk those extra steps that you or I haven't walked yet... but could. At any time.

I didn't love this one nearly as much as I Never Promised You... but I did really like it for its own worth. The most disturbing - and eye-opening - aspect of this book to me was her relationship with suicide.  We sometimes tend to think of suicide victims as morose and wearing lots of black or perhaps as social outcasts who cry alone all day in bed.  I'm not saying this doesn't accurately portray some suicidal people, but it doesn't cover the hidden majority.  In reality, studies have shown that those who actually go through with committing suicide tend to be very detached from the idea of death. They buy their bus tickets in the morning even though they plan to die that night.  They fill the fridge with groceries, all the while planning their deaths in very pragmatic terms. It's a matter of practicality. It's frightening.  It's life in the bell jar.


Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (A memoir)
All these books about mental illness brought to mind the movie Girl, Interrupted with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. I was pretty sure it was a novel first, so I searched for it, and found it, on Amazon.  I did not realize it was a memoir! I had assumed it was fiction. Being Susanna Kaysen's actual story (complete with hospital notes) made it far more interesting.

It doesn't read like a story. There is no narrative threading the story together.  I didn't even really feel there was an arc or climax, and at the end, she just sort of "got better".  No real discussion of how or why.  She just kind of did.  Instead, each chapter is either a vignette, a bit of commentary on a subject or a combination.  The little stories are colorful (and are what make up the plot for the movie), and the commentary is relatively interesting. Considering "borderline personality disorder" is such a vague diagnosis, she admits she finds it hard to discuss, for either she feels she is defending her diagnosis and trying to "prove" she was crazy or she ends up playing it down as nothing, which she knows wasn't true at all. All she knows is she wasn't well, and she did have some episodes of "crazy", but "borderline personality disorder" doesn't explain much of anything at all, which she laments.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as I Never Promised You... or even The Bell Jar, but I could relate.  I sometimes feel when discussing my own issues with depression or body dysmorphia or my relationship with eating, I am stuck between apologizing for not really having that big of a problem (when I know that's not true) or feeling like I'm defending my problems and making them appear bigger than they are in order to prove that they are valid and worthy of comment.  I heard an interview on NPR's Fresh Air with a journalist who suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after witnessing an assault on a woman. (She wrote a book about it.) The media tore her apart, claiming she had no right to suffer PTSD after merely witnessing an assault, when others had been through so much worse. She explains that it's not a contest, and people with PTSD do not discount other sufferers' trauma just because one experience was more violent or horrific than another. Suffering is suffering, to whatever degree and whatever the reason.  I think that's what Kaysen is getting at in this book. Her crazy looked different from another person's crazy which looked different from yet another person's, but at the end of the day, it's all real and it's all valid and it's all worthy of recognition.



And that, my friends, takes me down to 35 books to go!

P.S. I'm also trying to finish The Restaurant At the End of the Universe, the second book in the Hitchhiker's Guide series by Douglas Adams.  But since the rest of the series doesn't tick off any boxes, I probably won't review them. But I'm still reading them!

To see what else I have read this year:
February
January