Conviction
The end of the semester rush is here, and I feel like I am constantly running a few steps behind the pace! I have over 300 pages of carefully typed papers to grade in the next week, along with some 20 research articles to peruse as I grade my sophomore students' research analysis projects. It is enjoyable work but exhausting and time consuming. Today marked my final clinical day for my first year of teaching full time! I have to say I am happy to see the 3 a.m. wake-up time going by the wayside until October.With the busy season comes a stillness to my writer's heart and mind as all energy focuses on the tasks of teaching ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - May 1, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: trials temper depression teaching repentance doubt conviction anger Source Type: blogs
When peace is a distant memory
Photo by Ann VoskampSometimes I wonder, if this is how love feels, what would His anger feel like? Life seems an insurmountable pile of trials thrown together like dirty laundry, and you will never complete it all. If suffering is to be our food for the rest of life, are we willing? Oh, to skip back to the naïveté of childhood, before I realized the weight of this life.How do you roll the crushing boulder off your broken frame? What could possibly give me leverage in this mire? I keep counting blessings, as if to make a rope ladder up from the pit out of these gifts numbered. But it is slogging work, to push away th...
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 27, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: spiritual battle wounds self-harm depression prayer request healing God's depths questions without answers doubt suicide Source Type: blogs
Taking a break
I'll be back soon! Thanks for stopping by. (Source: Turquoise Gates)
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 26, 2013 Category: Cancer Source Type: blogs
Look what's peeking through
It is piling up again out there, the blanket of white stretching it's arms far into April, and we tough Midwesterners are beginning to truly say "Uncle". If there is one more gray day, we say. If it doesn't start to warm up soon...I silently wonder if winter's expanse hasn't lingered just for me. The gray days match my mood (or do they cause it?) and snow keeps scars under wraps. Summer is not so kind.I am cutting cords, this wintery spring. Trying to be willing to change. It's a big leap for me. After all, I've kept myself relatively safe with this way of coping and I'm scared that the new ways won't give me the armor I n...
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 19, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: depression happiness winter 5 minute Friday spring scars redemption hope imperfect prose Source Type: blogs
Legereté de printemps
Sometimes I wonder where we all came from, rag-tag sisterhood of broken pieces on the internet, uniting around some imaginary campfire to clink glasses and say, "Me, too!" It wasn't any path of wholeness and satisfaction that led us into each other's arms, but a path in the wilderness. It wasn't a mistake, both of us ending up here. One note at a time, I'm singing your song right back to you.All along it was a feverA cold sweat hot-headed believerRound and around and around and around we goOh now tell me, you knowNot really sure how to feel about it.Something in the way you moveMakes me feel like I can't live without you.I...
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 17, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: loneliness sisterhood blogs friendship God's extravagance hope fallen sisters comfort Source Type: blogs
Holding embers
She says that people like me are living in hell on earth. The searing pain of our situation has us grasping at any means possible to escape the torment. Including deciding to climb up the hot aluminum ladder leading up, even though that is sure to cause more pain with each step. Problem is, she says, I've climbed the ladder before, seemingly "out" of my personal hell, but I've done it on willpower alone. I slog through my disappointment and discontent; I pull up and up into happy and unhappy cohabiting. Beyond that, I keep looking, straining upward, so sure there is something more. Most people are happy just to live in the...
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 15, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: depression happiness 1000 gifts Marsha Linnehan BPD PTSD DBT shame Source Type: blogs
Traveling from pain to glory
Here is the joy. Here in this moment, this place, this space. And fear is a thief, a joy-monger, launching into the moment to devour the gifts at your feet. You may think fear is not the enemy when it's just soaring in the periphery of your vision. It only takes one glide for it to dive into the present and scare off the kids and birds and leave you alone with it's devious face, it's cackle of triumph. I hold a turquoise cross tight in my grip, bending it's soft form between thumb and forefinger. I do this because the ache in my hand keeps me present in the moment, instead of soaring off with fear for wings. For emoti...
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 12, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: spiritual battle living in the moment depression 1000 gifts soul growth walking in the light mindfulness ordinary joys Source Type: blogs
Winter white
It's April and the snow just keeps coming. I can't escape the analogies out my window every day. Snow covering mud, the old deer carcass on the front lawn, the mighty roaring rivers through the culverts from all the melting. Snow settles over all and the earth quiets and stills beneath her blanket. All ugliness is forgotten and lies buried invisible again.Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. “Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord: ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 11, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: forgiveness depression weathering storms Jesus redemption snow PTSD God's grace Source Type: blogs
Busy is good
I've always liked being busy. Maybe it's because my mother doesn't stop moving between getting up from her morning coffee and Bible study and the time she falls asleep at night. Maybe it's because being busy makes you feel productive, successful, useful. I was a workaholic when I got out of nursing school. Sixteen to twenty hour shifts were my favorite - both because I loved working all my waking hours, and because of the awesome bonus pay for "doubling" into the next shift. When you perform well - at work, at church, at school, at sports - people take notice and appreciate you in a way they don't when you aren't perf...
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 10, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: working mama depression busy PTSD relief Source Type: blogs
Life is easier when you can fly
My friend Ann wrote today what she wished the Church knew about mental health. It was salve for wounds worn dry and dirty from the rub of shame, guilt, disgust. I am perhaps even more saddened by the death of Rick Warren's son Matthew than the general Christian public, having so closely walked that dark path he found himself upon just a week ago. Everyone seems to be talking about it - and I'm thankful for that. Part of me also wonders - what about the thousands upon thousands who have silently slipped away without notice? Did anyone hear their earlier cries for help? Did anyone acknowledge and validate their pain and offe...
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 8, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: spiritual battle wounds self-harm depression spiritual abuse church child abuse anxiety PTSD living Jesus flashbacks suicide Source Type: blogs
Changing seasons
It's been a rough Saturday. But there is yellow on the porch, welcoming us in, and spring in the air all around. What goes down must come up, right?Got a pocket full of sunshineI've got a love and I know that it's all mineWish that you could,but you ain't gonna own medo anything you can to control meTake me awayTo better daysTake me awayA hiding place~Pocketful of Sunshine, Natasha Bedingfield~ (Source: Turquoise Gates)
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 6, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: depression sunshine spring seasons hope Source Type: blogs
The narrow escape
I have been in the hospital for four days. Dealing with chronic illness lays your soul bare and opens an ear to the whispers of evil. There are times when you go dancing with the inner demons, the triumphs of sin in the expanse of your life. You lift the ruby red blanket of Christ's sacrifice and allow those demons to jump back out from underneath, cackling and carrying you on their backs down the path of dangerous thoughts. I am not good enough. I am not worthy of the life I've been given. Look at all these awful things I've done! Do they not condemn me forever? Am I not marked as a wicked one?The Jews of ancient times as...
Source: Turquoise Gates - April 5, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: self-harm depression self-loathing redemption anxiety PTSD sanctification suicide self-control chronic illness Source Type: blogs
Hungry for the sunrise
It is the eve of the Triduum, Maundy Thursday, and I am hungry, starving, ravenous for the Man of Sorrows in Gethsemane. I go first to my church, and it is holy and sacred there. I walk up with head bowed to receive communion, the Bread and the Chalice, and the women serving say it quiet in the dark sanctuary, "The body of Christ, broken for you, Genevieve. The blood of Christ shed for you, Genevieve." I eat and I drink, but I am still hungry, soul-hungry.I emerge from the dark sanctuary to a glorious sunset that speaks of the holiness of this night. Two thousand years ago, Jewish followers of Christ preparing for Pentacos...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 31, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: spiritual battle remembering Jesus hunger fasting church God's transformational power prayer worship sanctification God's sacrifice Source Type: blogs
Walking back into the light
I've been walking in the dark. Honing my night vision, spiritually. Psalm 51 has been a great comfort: Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare Your praise. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart You will not despise. I am reminded of a time such as this when repentance healed my broken heart, so broken it felt dead and silent inside me. I "turn my mind", words so similar to the definition of "repentance", the Hebrew word שׁוּבָה transliterated "shubah", meaning a return or a turning away from.I remember, too, that I counted gifts then, wrote them down with paper and in...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 28, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: spiritual battle God's patience self-harm depression repentance 1000 gifts darkness hope suicide Source Type: blogs
Choices in the dark
I strap on the yellow snowshoes given me by my love early in our marriage, because yellow always makes me smile. But today, my face is stuck in fear, grief, despair.Night is falling, and I trek down the woods path through 4 foot drifts, floating atop, falling occasionally. I'm on a quest to find the big cottonwood, the one it would take 4 grown men to wrap their arms around. Trees like this don't just happen in Wisconsin. This tree is sacred.I have the vague idea that if I could just sit there a while, my back against the solidness of that trunk, there would be peace for a few moments. I think, too, about staying there in ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 24, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: aftermath searching for meaning coping child abuse when God feels far away darkness anxiety PTSD DBT suicide God's vigilance spiritual battle depression Source Type: blogs
