Gratitude List (December 19, 2020) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! This isn’t going to be a very long post I think, as I’m in Lobith and don’t have my computer with me. For this reason, typing is a little hard. I am going to try to write a gratitude list anyway. I think Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT) is back, so I’m participating in that.

1. I am grateful for my external keyboard. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to type this post at all. It may not be as convenient as my laptop, but it’ll do.

2. I am grateful I can still go to my husband’s and my house in LObith despite the lockdown. The “strict” lockdown was announced Monday evening but it hardly has any consequences for me. After all, i didn’t go to stores or the like at all.

3. I am grateful my sister and her family visited me on Monday. They were afraid the lockdown would apply to care facilities too, so they visited me before it was announced.

4. I am grateful to have seen my 15-month-old niece. I hadn’t seen her (or my sister for that matter) in over a year.

5. I am grateful we could get pizza takeout when my sister visited.

6. I am grateful for hamburgers. We cooked those at day activities on Wednesday.

7. I am grateful I was able to E-mail my nurse practitioner. I had an appt with him on Thursday, which didn’t go too well. I am grateful I was able to explain why I had negative feelings about it.

8. I am grateful for myhusband’s encouragement. He was very firm with me after my appt with my nurse practitioner, but I am so glad he helped me get my positive mojo back.

9. I am grateful for chocolate. My husband and I paid a quick visit to my in-laws on the way to Lobith and they had some. Of course, I am also grateful to have seen the in-laws themselves.

10. I am grateful for my ability to talk faith with my husband. Today, he was able to answer some of my questions that have led me to doubt my faith.

What are you grateful for?

Fear Turned to Hope for the Second Coming of Christ

Posted on by Astrid

I have been making a daily habit of Bible reading for the past ten days and hope to continue this habit for a long time still. Sometimes, I squeeze in five minutes of reading just before bed, while on other days, I spend far more time reading the Word.

A few days ago, the daily story (something like a short sermon) on YouVersion was on Christ’s second coming.

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” (Matthew 24:42-44 NIV)

The speaker said that this Bible passage had always instilled fear in her as a child, because she didn’t want to be caught with her hand in the cookie jar when Jesus would return. I understand now even as an adult. Indeed, some strict pastors in the past used to go to cinemas and tell believers that they ought not watch worldly movies, for what if Christ returned now?

Then again, God knows us better than we know ourselves. We do not need to hide anything from Him. In fact, this is not possible. He also knows our hearts. This does mean we need to make sure we train our minds to think more helpful thoughts.

The speaker then went on to say that this passage currently inspires hope in her. I relate this to what my husband told me a few days ago: that the people of the Old Testament found their hope in the coming of Jesus. Jesus was their light even before he’d come to the Earth.

Indeed, we as believers can trust that everything will be okay in the end. Christ may not have come back yet, but he will.

Last year, when I hadn’t become a true believer yet, I predicted that everything would be okay in 2021. I based this on the fact that mentally ill people would qualify for long-term care by then, so I would be allowed to go into a care facility then. I already moved here in September of 2019, but I didn’t know at the time that I’d still have to fight a huge battle against my inner demons.

Of course, if Christ comes back in 2021, I fear he might find me in one of my bad moments, but I do hope he’ll make everything okay for me. And I hope so whenever he returns.

I’m linking up with Let’s Have Coffee.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 13, 2020)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this chilly, foggy but thankfully not rainy Sunday. I just had my Sunday evening soft drink, but if you’d like a coffee, who am I to object? It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote a post for #WeekendCoffeeShare, but today, I’m joining in again.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that the past week was so much better than I’d expected. The reason is last week Sunday I landed in a crisis and I fully expected to be unstable all week. Thankfully I was okay early in the week and the last bit of the week was even good.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I was pretty active this past week. I got in nearly 70K steps this week, even though I only reached my step goal of 10K four times.

If we were having coffee, I’d share how grateful I am that COVID-19 hasn’t struck at our care home as of yet. Like I said yesterday, a fellow client was tested for it, but thankfully he was negative.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you about my recent spiritual growth. I can’t remember whether I said this in my previous coffee share posts, but I’m finally becoming a Christ follower. I have been reading the Bible everyday this week, although I’m having to take a break from writing this post to actually do it in YouVersion. I do still sometimes squeeze in Bible reading inbetween other activities. I really need to change this. Let’s hope this post is a way to keep me accountable.

I’ve also been praying and meditating on God’s word more. Especially wen we had the COVID scare at my home, I prayed for health for this client.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that my week-end was okay despite my not having gone to my and my husband’s home in Lobith. The reason for not going was the fact that, by the time we got the news of the negative COVID test for my fellow client, my husband couldn’t make it here anymore. I did enjoy some relaxed time in my room.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share about all the great essential oil blends I’ve discovered lately. I’ve discovered that I don’t like geranium EO, but there are still quite a few blends I hadn’t tried yet that don’t contain that.

What have you been up to lately?

Moving Beyond Shame

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been struggling a lot lately. I feel shame over a lot of things. Then again, my husband said that shame is only useful for the one second you realize you should’ve done different. Then you need to move on.

I just read a part of Bobby Schuller’s book You Are Beloved in which he tells me that God’s love is the antidote to shame. Jesus, he says, did not act out of shame. Maybe he didn’t even feel it. He didn’t care about his reputation, inviting the lowest-status people of his time to eat with him. Schuller notes that eating with someone in Jesus’ time on Earth means seeing them as equals.

Jesus regarded people who didn’t believe they belonged, as equals. Of course, he is God, so we can never measure up to that, but we can rest assured that he loves us no matter what.

God, help me move beyond the feeling of shame towards an experience of peace. I know You love me for who I am. Please help me see this with all my heart. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This post was written for Five Minute Friday, for which the prompt this week is “Beyond”. I didn’t set a timer, but I think I did a pretty good job of doing this piece in five minutes.

Fighting the Depression Demon

Posted on by Astrid

I was in yet another crisis yesterday. When the extra staff was about to leave, I crashed and started crying. The staff felt somehow obliged to stay and, when she finally left, another staff tried to comfort me. I cried for like three hours.

Then today it seemed to start all over again. I decided to call my husband, who told me to push the depressive thoughts away. I was going to say I feel like a selfish monster for having even unconsciously made the staff stay yesterday, but my husband said that I need to push away those thoughts too.

My husband kept repeating that I’m not a monster and I need to stop those thoughts now. He said that these thoughts are destructive. I find it hard to understand, but maybe on some level I do. I mean, I feel that I’m wicked and that’s why I’m depressed and that’s why I ask for more and more help and that’s why people leave me and that’s why I’m depressed. I can see now that this is a vicious cycle. I’m not sure it isn’t true, but I remember from the little cognitive behavior therapy I took years ago that really it doesn’t matter. It’s non-functional. Or destructive even. And that’s what matters.

My husband tried to remind me that God loves me. I kept getting stuck on technicalities such as the fact that I wasn’t baptized. At first he told me: “So then get baptized if it helps you.” I can’t see how I could be baptized in this time of social distancing.

Then my husband started to tell me that I am at a crossroads and can take one step towards despair or one step towards hope each second. Maybe even if I don’t get baptized at this point, because well I can’t, I can take a number of baby steps towards hope. Towards God.

Lord, please help me take every second as it comes. Please help me choose each second to take that one step, even if it’s a snail’s step (or crawl, whatever snails do), closer to You.

Lord, thank you for bringing my husband into my life. Thank you for speaking through him and reminding me to live positively. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Now I’m totally clueless about the supposed format of prayers, so I have no idea whether this was a proper one. I trust God hears me whether my prayer was written properly though.

Today Is Sunday, November 29

Posted on by Astrid

I was originally planning on writing a #WeekendCoffeeShare post, but then discovered that the linky isn’t up this week. That’s okay, since I didn’t really know what to write for it anyway. However, now I’m left with a blank screen and yet with the intention of writing an entry today.

Today was a mostly good day. I lay in bed until nearly 10AM this morning. I had been awake last night for a pretty long while pondering faith.

When I got up, I got dressed and then ate breakfast. We usually have boiled eggs on week-ends, but had eaten them all yesterday. I just had one slice of bread with peanut butter.

Then my husband called. I was in a bit of a low mood, so he recommended I get some sunshine on my face. The sun was shining beautifully here this morning. I had a walk outside.

Then I had lunch – two bowls of tomato soup. I spent the first part of the afternoon napping. After having coffee at around 2:30PM, the evening shift arrived. She took me for a walk right after handover.

I was a bit stressed about possibly needing to eat in the dining room again, but the evening staff informed the extra staff, who came at 4:30, that I would have dinner in my room. It was pretty good, although the meal company’s definition of “vegetable rice” is rice with a few tiny chunks of carrot thrown in.

I went for a walk again in the evening. At one point, I somehow tripped over my own feet and fell. I’m okay though – just a tiny scrape on my knee.

I did break my step record again this week. In fact, I reached my daily goal of 10K steps everyday this week except for Friday. Unfortunately, my sister, who is my only friend on Fitbit, got in even more steps.

When the staff were having their own meal, I listened to yet another church podcast. First United Methodist Church of Baton Rouge didn’t have their service online yet, so I chose First United Methodist Church of Austin, TX. The sermon’s theme was believing in hope. It was a very touching sermon that included several references to Holocaust victims believing in hope back then in spite of it being nowhere in sight. Of course, this year of pandemic is nothing compared to World War II, but this means we are even more required to keep hope.

After I had my evening coffee and soft drink with chips, I did get a little nervous when I found out a staff I don’t really know that well has the extra shift tomorrow evening. I’m trying to remember to stay in the present though and not to worry about things that may come.

Gratitude List (November 28, 2020) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hello everyone. Like I mentioned yesterday, I have not been more grateful than I am now in a long while. Part of the reason is my recent depression, but part is also my increased attitude of gratitude. For this reason, I am trying to make posting about gratitude a weekly habit again. As always, I am linking up with Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT).

1. Quiet dinners in my room. Last week and early in the week, I was very stressed out about needing to eat in the communal room with the other clients. This has been a stressor for me for a long while already. I was given the opportunity to eat in my room if I didn’t cope in the communal room, but was struggling to say I didn’t cope on time. For this reason, me and the staff decided I for now will always have dinner in my room. Yesterday, a staff noted that I eat much slower now.

2. Extra staff. I may’ve mentioned this before, but there is now an extra staff member to support me in the evenings. I am not yet sure how they will cover this financially, but we’ll see. Today, I thought there wouldn’t be an extra staffer, but thankfully there was.

3. Podcasts. I’ve mainly been listening to church services. I am so grateful for my podcast app that enables me to listen to church services from all over the world. Oh and of course also other podcasts, like the Parcast Network originals.

4. The YouVersion Bible app. I have only a three-day streak so far, because I missed one day of Bible reading on Wednesday. I am determined to make this streak much longer though. Right now, I’m on day six of a seven-day devotional on forgiveness.

5. Soaping supplies. My day activities staff ordered 3kg each of white and clear soap base as well as a few micas (powdered colorants). She already ordered them early last week, but they finally arrived last Thursday. In addition, my husband brought my Christmas tree soap mold. I am really looking forward to soaping again.

6. Cake decorating. In addition to the extra staff in the evenings, there’s an extra staff in the morning on week-ends. The one who had this shift today, asked me earlier in the week whether I’d like to decorate cupcakes with her today. We ended up using regular slices of cake, not cupcakes, because these are easier to decorate. I loved it.

7. Beautiful skies and sunsets. I regret not having taken a photo of the pink sky we had on Monday. I didn’t really see it, but did see some and loved the staff’s description. Also, on Sunday, I saw the sunset. This was really cool.

8. Eating lunch in the car. My husband came by this afternoon to take me out to lunch. Since all restaurants and such are closed due to COVID, we drove to a Subway drive-through. We each had a chicken teriyaki wrap. It was delicious!

9. Homemade wraps. Okay, they weren’t as good as the Subway chicken teriyaki one, but they were good too. We made wraps with chicken and lettuce on Monday and, because we had some wraps still left over, made some more with minced meat and beans on Thursday.

10. Good talks with my husband. He keeps me interested with his knowledge of theology in particular.

What have you been grateful for lately?

Grateful for Love

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s Five Minute Friday (FMF) prompt is “Grateful”. It truly speaks to me, even though I, being from the Netherlands, don’t celebrate Thanksgiving this week. In fact, all I do for it is look all over the Internet to see whether the Apple Watch I want is on sale for Black Friday (it isn’t).

That being said, I haven’t felt more grateful than I feel now in a long while. Here’s why…

I feel so immensely grateful for my husband. He loves me and cares enough about me to show me his love multiple times daily even though we don’t live together. He must miss me, but rather than turn around and find someone else to live with, he tells me he loves me too many times to count. In fact, when COVID hit here first, we weren’t allowed to see each other for three months and yet he still loved me.

Last week, I wrote about grieving the loss of my “normal”, functioning self. Today, I am so immensely grateful to be loved for who I am. Not just by my husband, but by God as well.

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24 NIV)

I have been meditating a lot on this Bible passage and somehow come across it almost on a daily basis when reading about Christianity. It was the start of the Bible reading for the First United Methodist Church of Baton Rouge, LA sermon I referred to on Tuesday. More than commanding me to be Godlike, it speaks to me in that my old self doesn’t matter. I am loved by God just the way I am.

Okay, this took me longer to write than five minutes, but then again it usually does. Sorry about that. In fact, I took probably about five minutes to find, read and copy/paste the Bible passage. Well, at least I tried to keep it short.

Faith Is a Verb

Posted on by Astrid

Last Saturday, my husband told me about a book he had been reading. He said: “It’s a Christian book.” As a progressive believer who struggles with her faith a lot, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read a Christian book. Two weeks earlier, he had recommended Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis to me and I hadn’t picked it up yet. After all, some of the passages he read to me had me angry.

My husband though explained to me that the book he was recommending now was perfectly suited to my recent struggles. You see, I have been struggling with feelings of worthlessness due to my not living the life my parents had envisioned for me.

The book is called You Are Beloved by Bobby Schuller. My husband was so convinced it’d help me, that he offered to buy me the eBook on whichever platform suited me best. I said I’d look whether it’s available on Bookshare, an accessible book service for the print disabled, first. And it was. I downloaded it as soon as I had access to stable WiFi.

I looked up Bobby Schuller first before starting to read the book. My husband isn’t very conservative either, but still more conservative than me. I wasn’t sure I’d like what Schuller had to say.

I so far only read the introduction, but was immediately enthusiastic. Not just for Schuller’s book, but for my faith in general.

I don’t have a church I belong to normally even without COVID. In fact, I usually listen to American church services despite living in the Netherlands. I hadn’t listened to them in a while though and the ones I usually listen to are so progressive they’re hardly Christian at all. On Sunday, I decided to listen to the prior week’s sermon (since the current week’s wasn’t available yet due to time zone differences) from First United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge, LA.

In it, the pastor discusses Ephesians 4:22-5:2, in which Paul tells believers how to be Godlike. The pastor also quotes an original Methodist work that explains the character of true believers. It said, among other things, that we are happy – always happy. The pastor uses this to tell the believers that the goal of the Christian life is not just to go to Heaven after we die, but to be Christlike in the current life too. This very much resonated with what my husband said to me when recommending Schuller’s book: that faith is a verb.

My husband meant to say that, if we truly believe that God loves us, we will also extend this to others and live an ethical life. He also said that the goal of every religion, not just Christianity, is to find true peace of mind. In other words, the goal is not just to sit on a cloud and play the harp after we die (in case that’s how you picture Heaven), but to experience the kingdom of God here on Earth.

Schuller’s main point, by the way, is that we are not what we do. We are not what we have. We are not how others see us. We are beloved by God just because we are.

”Grace

Gratitude List (November 21, 2020) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

It’s been forever since I last did a gratitude list. I just checked and it’s been five weeks. These weeks have been incredibly hard. I am really struggling to stay positive. I am going to try to come up with some gratefuls anyway. As usual, I’m joining in with #TToT. I’m typing this post on my iPhone, which I hardly ever do nowadays, so sorry for any typing glitches.

1. My husband! Even with our not living together and only talking on the phone most days, he tells me many times a day that he loves me. I am struggling to feel such a powerful emotion due to my current state of depression, but I’m trying to love him back.

2. My faith. My husband, who I always thought was a strong atheist since leaving theology school, has taken a renewed interest in Christianity and this has encouraged me. Today, he recommended a book called You Are Beloved. I am a very progressive believer, but I’ll definitely give this book a try.

3. My staff. They have been so kind to me despite my challenging behavior.

4. My community psychiatric nurse. She has been very helpful.

5. Pizza. Okay, on to the superficial stuff. My husband and I ordered a delicious pizza today. No, not from Domino’s and I must say this one is better!

6. Cheesecake. Two of my fellow clients had their birthdays this past week and another client got to help the staff make cheesecake.

7. Homemade noodles. That same client made those for us on Monday. He used minced meat instead of chicken, but still it was so delicious.

8. Lots of walking. So far this week, I nearly surpassed my step record from last week. I didn’t get in as many minutes in active heartrate zones, but that’s okay.

9. The ability to write and blog. I am not writing as much as I’d like, but at least I’m still writing.

10. A good night’s sleep last night. And yay for no nightmares that I can remember!

What have you been grateful for?