At the limits of possibility
The grass is unnaturally green in that late autumn way. As if every drop of chlorophyll stored in the roots is being squeezed, rationed perhaps, out to the tips of the blades. I look from down to up, a stream of exhaled smoke like a tower above me. The tree arms bend and sway in their infinite combinations. The black of wet trunks contrasts with the bright leaves still clinging. Yellow and black, like a wasp, I think.Why does nature resonate with the deepest parts of our souls? Why are there millions of members of the Sierra Club passionate to save our natural treasures? Why do I look up and feel peace as I watch the curva...
Source: Turquoise Gates - November 1, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: healing identity lessons from nature ordinary joys recognition recognizing love self-harm self-loathing soul growth Source Type: blogs
The road ahead
Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted. (Sylvia Plath)I've fallen for the promise of a mirage a hundred times. Ran toward it, only to have it escape me like a handful of smoke or dreams. And so I've learned to live here in the now instead of staring at the road ahead. I suppose graduate school trained me to always look ahead - and of course, work demands it, too. Life demands it. But not every moment of every day.I used to daydream while I worked. My mind rarely came back although my hands were hard at work. I watch my s...
Source: Turquoise Gates - October 28, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: confusion depression fear living in the moment mindfulness reasons to keep on going Source Type: blogs
When a Christian Blogger Doubts: Stained Glass Memories of Hope
The leaves fall silent deaths in rivulets down the forested valleys. Walking is the fall activity of choice...feet swishing, kicking at the swirling blanket, or silent as a fox creeping on the carpet of damp watercolors strewn laissez-faire across the forest floor.I stare at painted skies and huge questions float as heavy and thick as clouds through my subconscious. Where did this all come from? What is the purpose of this beauty? Why do I get to see it, here, today?The older you get entitlement falls off you like the ill-fitting garment it always was. Replacing it is a new awe for the holiness of life. The sacredness of e...
Source: Turquoise Gates - October 21, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: disbelief comparative religions nihilism God of all comfort lies loss of faith faith crisis doubt doctrine Source Type: blogs
Good news comes
The sunlight cascades through the woods and the whole world is magical, time suspended. The carpets of yellow, gold, burgundy like fairy paths under foot. I am learning to see beauty in a whole new way: appreciating it just for it's existence, for the joy it brings me. Not trying to figure out from whence it came or whether I am witness to something personal or universal. It doesn't really matter.Good news came like a bolt of lightening yesterday, elecrifying the air and sending me skipping back out to my car and back to work. I had my cancer check-up yesterday, as I do every 3 months. At this appointment, I was expecting ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - October 19, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: beauty cancer celebration good news mycancerstory Source Type: blogs
Lighting my own flame
I pre-ordered my friend's book, even though I didn't want to read it. I pre-ordered it right in the middle of losing my own faith, her book about losing her faith...and finding it again. Faith has long since ceased to be a cultural acoutrement of habit, tradition, stand up-sit down formalities. It survived thousands of years that way, by being necessary to people. Necessary because they couldn't read for themselves perhaps, necessary because whole nations grasped desperately at religion as a form of collective salvation from unknowns both here and in eternity. In the performance-driven, every man a minister evangelical mov...
Source: Turquoise Gates - October 16, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: disbelief belonging being real blog hop ambivalence religion equality love Source Type: blogs
Simply human
The neighbors probably think I'm crazy. I tried to keep my voice down. It came out in tight, painful whispers that had all the pressure of a scream behind them. I shook my fists, I shadow-boxed in the dark like a real fighter. I kicked the dirt so hard my shoe flew off. I flung myself down on my back in the ditch and looked up at the stars and they seemed so cold and far-off and inconsequential. I've never thought that about the stars before.I've shouted at God to answer me. I've begged him to make me see if he truly is there. I've shaken my fists and poured out my angry heart, and the sky stays silent. The wind blows stea...
Source: Turquoise Gates - October 14, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: reinventing myself theism change of heart changing my mind broken relationships faith crisis disbelief character shaping losing faith agnosticism doubt disconnect eternity Source Type: blogs
Sometimes life does go right
The memory of the "before" is as visceral as an instinct. Your baby face floats up from the soup of all the yesterdays I've saved for a rainy day. Chubby cheeks, unquenchable smile, stubborn as a mule. Your spiky blond hair that became paintbrush ends when I put it up in pigtails. From the moment you were born, I had you pegged:Indomitable.We named you Amelia, which means "hard working", Irene, "peace". Our last name is an old low German phrase that means "unusual amount of hair". Which is hilarious. Thousands of years later, Thuls are still sprouting copious amounts of crazy hair. And you, my third daughter - you were the...
Source: Turquoise Gates - October 7, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: vaccine related encephalitis Amelia healing memory Source Type: blogs
Ampersands and semicolons
The wind is cold and my swollen eyes take in the Monet-by-midnight landscape of 4 a.m. A city glows pink over the ridge. Mist has just begun to drift upward off the wet grass. I draw in a breath of the air, all crisp like an apple sour-ripe from the short summer.Sitting here means staying. Shutting down and clinging with eyes squeezed shut. It's everything that could be disintegrating back into the stuff of dreams like sunrays being swallowed by mist. After all, you still don't know who you're running from, or what you're running toward.Prudence demands you wait, then, stuck in a mountain of remnants of life like an incomp...
Source: Turquoise Gates - October 6, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: loneliness stream of consciousness words seasons doubt emptiness writing autumn Source Type: blogs
When a Christian blogger starts to doubt
The night slowly fades into day as the gray on the horizon turns pink. I lie in my bed, alone, watching the dawn appear. Life is like this, I think. We are in the fog, in the dark, and we can't even remember what the sun looked like; we have given up believing it will ever return. Like everything else that comes and goes, leaves and returns, the cycles of the mind, of emotions, are so vivid that you forget they are part of a cycle.Time: 11 p.m. f/1.8 ISO 1600 ss1/6"The nightscape of life is like an impressionist landscape. You're groping in the dark, but every now and then the most incomparable beauty lingers in the night ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - September 29, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: darkness disbelief doubt fear night photography Who is God? wrestling with God Source Type: blogs
Twisted
In the past week...I fainted and ended up in the hospital. Again....my 10 year old daughter was diagnosed with POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), which is the same issue that makes me faint. She was put on a beta blocker. At 10. And I passed it on to her....my marriage has hit the biggest bump yet.....I am lecturing a minimum of 8 hours a day.All this in the worst season of doubt yet. My faith is at an all-time low and I don't even know who I'd be praying to right now. Since I cannot, would you? (Source: Turquoise Gates)
Source: Turquoise Gates - September 24, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: faith crisis marriage trouble trials Source Type: blogs
You, with the knife in your hand:
Please stop. Just for a moment. Read. You are not alone. Someday the sneers will turn to cheers as you bring others deep into your life, as you reveal your struggles. I know you can't be brave right now. I know how badly life can hurt. But maybe, just maybe, after reading my story, you can cry instead of die. {this is written for Suicide Prevention Week and may contain triggers}Amy stands deep out in the icy surf of Lake Superior, her heart overflowing with joy as her muscles remember body surfing in the Atlantic Ocean so many times before. She spots the big waves and beckons her siblings to prepare. We are stared at ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - September 14, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: social anxiety self-harm depression cutting child abuse Suicide Prevention Week sexual abuse hope bullying PTSD Source Type: blogs
When it's all over
There is something about sunshine and open spaces that lights the fuse in little children. They're off and running before you can even shout a warning. It's infectious, it's beautiful, it's a picture of that full joy many of us spend our entire adulthoods trying to rediscover.Yet, even in the darkness of persistent depression, you get days like this every once in a while. Today is one for me. I am too exhausted and drained from a heart incident yesterday that landed me in the ER - I can't jump for joy. But my soul is!In the ER, they ran a chest x-ray to check on my pacemaker. You know those 30+ nodules they found last time...
Source: Turquoise Gates - September 13, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: good news POTS remission Fainting cancer scare 5 minute Friday hope imperfect prose Source Type: blogs
We shine best when we're dusty
They are as vibrant and varied as a new box of crayons, where the water washes and darkens them. Plain dusty old rocks brought to life by the waves. You can hear them skittering and rolling onto each other, a series of clicks and clacks, as they are tumbled by the ebb and flow of the water. I stop to finger one, wondering if it's an agate. It's hard to pick the really valuable ones out when they are all so pretty.The key to testing whether it's a treasure or an ordinary rock? Let it dry.In a sea of pastel dullness, you'll catch the tempered glint of the rough edges of an agate amongst all the basalt and granite. These rock...
Source: Turquoise Gates - September 10, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: lessons from nature trials character shaping suffering treasured Source Type: blogs
View from the 11th Year
This year we've put it to the test-'til death do us part-Whispered an ugly word we vowed we never would.I can't help changinglife forces you toand you are just hanging on for the ride.You say you love memore today than yesterdaythe ordinary with me eclipses our wedding day.I have founderedin the sea of discontentI have been looking for my wings for years now.You plod onand keep us all afloatLife raft on the ocean of depression.Even when you can'thaul me out of the sloughYou hold my hand as I struggle in the mud.Your eyes are sadderthan they were back thenYour back is bowed from the load you carry.But when we meetoutside th...
Source: Turquoise Gates - September 6, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: anniversary marriage trouble letters to Aaron a husbands love temptation marriage letters poetry Source Type: blogs
Still waters run deep
Life goes on. With or without your consent, reality is reality and there is not much you can do sometimes other than accept it. While the big questions brew and boil inside your head, there is life happening all around you. The children on the lakeshore. The parents' 40th anniversary. The new niece born. The school year starting.Busy brings quiet to the mind. It's my go-to coping strategy, and probably the root of my workaholic personality. If your life isn't great at the moment - make someone else's better. If you're down, help someone else up. If you're confused, take refuge in the things you know for sure - medical fact...
Source: Turquoise Gates - September 5, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: disbelief mycancerstory faith crisis religion doubt choosing life Source Type: blogs
