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.

How I Spent My November

Posted on by Astrid

It’s already almost 9PM and I haven’t written anything today, but really want to. One of the end-of-November prompts I received in my mailbox from the International Association of Journal Writers (IAJW) Museletter was to make a list of all the things you spent time on in November and to reflect on what you’d like to change. Here goes.

1. Worrying. And acting out. Particularly early in the month, I was very much overwhelmed. I landed in crisis within the first week of November. I could’ve attributed this to it being the anniversary of my major crisis in 2007, but I know it wasn’t. Finally though, this crisis helped me realize I need more support and actually request it.

2. Walking. I broke my step record three weeks in a row this month. Today I feel almost disappointed for only having gone for short walks in the evening, because it was raining.

3. Faith. I had a true leap of faith this month, which I’m so grateful for. I’m pretty sure that, without God, I wouldn’t be where I’m now. I mean, I truly feel blessed to have come to realize I am beloved. It’s still pretty hard for some of my parts to believe, but we’re getting there.

4. Relaxing. I truly feel blessed to be able to have quiet dinners in my room for now and also to be able to relax more in my bed. Early in the month, I was so worked up that I couldn’t relax. My nights were regularly disturbed by nightmares and, though they still are, my days are calmer.

5. Writing. I’d really like to do more of that in December, but I still managed okay.

6. Talking to my staff, husband and others. I really feel this helped me open up more about my innermost struggles. I sometimes throughout this month have felt a compulsion to perseverate on the same topic over and over again. This is an autistic thing of mine that plays up particularly when I’m experiencing strong emotions, be they positive or negative. I’m glad my staff and husband are okay with it though.

7. Eating. I totally planned to go on a diet in late October, but by early November, this had more or less gone out the window. I do try not to snack too much, but I’m really not in the mood for dieting right now. Hopefully I won’t fully slip back in December.

How did you spend your November?

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.

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?

Such an Inner Strength

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday, I listened to the latest sermon at Holy Covenant UCC. As regular readers know, I’m a very progressive believer, hardly even calling myself a Christian. I tend to doubt God’s presence a lot. I mean, why is there so much suffering in the world when God is loving and ever present?

The pastor delivering the sermon said that Jesus could’ve had these same doubts while on the cross. Yet what seemed like God the Father abandoning His son was, according to the pastor, the greatest moment of all creation, as God opened the gates of Heaven.

One of the things I find hard to deal with in Christianity is the idea that only certain people will make it to Heaven. I mean, according to the Bible, only 144,000 people who ever existed will be allowed entry into the Kingdom of God. My husband uses this as one of his reasons for being an atheist. My former pastor at the psych hospital though said that this number may be symbolic: twelve times twelve times a thousand is a lot! I like that. Some other progressive Christians at one point told me that there’s a theological theory that says that all of Hell was shattered on the cross when Jesus died for our sins.

At first, when listening to the Holy Covenant UCC sermon, I felt weird. The pastor said that God had hidden his treasure in the plain and ordinary, that is, us. That had me go uhm. I somehow wish I was more than just an ordinary being and a sinner at that. Isn’t that a bit narcissistic of me?

Then the pastor went on to tell the church that we are more than our outward appearance. In other words, we are more than ordinary beings. Because of God, we each harbor a huge inner strength. A treasure. We are more than how we come across to others. We are also more than our experiences. We are more than the racism, sexism, ableism, etc. we endured. Through God, we can overcome the odds!

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight for what is right. The pastor, who I assume is of color, talked about the great abolitionists and civil rights activists, who maintained their faith in the presence of immense hardship. They kept going despite opposition and oppression. That is what we should do. Don’t give up, but fight knowing that God is by our side. Ultimately, even if evil prospers right now, it will not always.

Born

Posted on by Astrid

Last Friday, the prompt for Five Minute Friday was “born”. I assume many writers, being Christian, will have written about the moment of their salvation. Even though or maybe because I consider myself a progressive believer, I didn’t have such a moment. I was saved 2000 years ago. Rather, something else came to mind. Here goes.

I am still not done reading the book Preemie Voices by Saroj Saigal. It is a collection of letters from people born very prematurely between 1977 and 1982, which was published in 2014. One of the letters I did read, however, spoke to me.

In it, the woman said she was born three times. Once, when she was actually born. Then, when she was supposed to be born, so her due date. For me, this would be September 29, 1986. I was actually born on June 27.

Then there was her moment of rebirth in a spiritual kind of way, but dit didn’t have to do with any organized religion. Rather, she considered the day she was diagnosed as autistic to be her day of rebirth.

I am also autistic. For me, the day of my diagnosis was March 16, 2007. It wasn’t some type of epiphany moment though. My support coordinator at the time called the physician who’d assessed me because she hadn’t heard anything about the results of my diagnosis after my assessment was complete. Neither had I. She was told I had been diagnosed with autism and the report had been sent to my GP. How blunt!

I didn’t even dare write about it on my blog till some days later. It was so weird. Because I was diagnosed three or four more times, I never quite considered this day to be of any significance. Sometimes I wish I had such a moment of rebirth.

Expressing Faith By Expressing Anger

Posted on by Astrid

Last week, for some reason, I felt called to listen to a church service. When I do, I usually listen to United Church of Christ services, though occasionally I check out Protestant Church in the Netherlands services locally too. The service I ended up listening to was delivered at Mayflower Congregational UCC in the Oklahoma City area. It was titled “disorientation”.

The topic was how many Christians think they’re not healthy or whole enough to attend church. Many Christians are taught to believe that we shouldn’t show our distress or be angry with God. Though I grew up in an atheist home, I too was taught not to complain or be angry. “Gets angry easily” was often written about me in psychological reports. This may have been so, but anger in itself isn’t bad.

Rev. Lori Walke, in her sermon from May 10, talks about the psalms, nearly half of which are psalms of lament. In one of the psalms she discusses, psalm 13, David cries out to God in anguish:
“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.” (Psalm 13:1-4 NIV)

Rev. Walke goes on to recite the rest of the psalm:
“But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.” (Psalm 13:5-6 NIV)

This expression of anguish shows, according to Walke, that David deep down still has faith. After all, if he didn’t believe his anger would do anything, what good would there be in expressing it? As such, those who hold their anger inside and keep silent, usually are more hopeless than those who cry out.

This is why Walke invites us all to take our troubles to church. We don’t need to put up a happy face all the time. Indeed, in our expression of anger, we also show an expresssion of faith.

This totally struck a chord with me. I was taught as a child not to express my anger. Like I said, it was said about me that I was angry too easily. When I landed in the mental hospital at age 21, I even for a while had the unofficial nurses’ “diagnosis” of “angry and dissatisfied”. While there definitely was some truth to this, stuffing my anger only fueled my hopelessness. It was in my expressing my despair that I also showed that deep down I still believed in a good outcome.

Joining in with Let’s Have Coffee.