Yep

Oh Roughly 8 years ago, I wrote a paper for my philosophy class freshman year of college about the death penalty and why we shouldnt have the death penalty.

Sometime I would like to revisit that and re-write my arguments, and offer alternative ideas and such....like rehabilitation, the philosophy behind not having prisons and only rehabilitation centers and the like. Add some psycology and sociology to the mix, modern day society... and what we can do now to prevent the need for prisons and rehabilitation center for criminals.

I wish I had time to sit down and think about this more thoroughly.

and I want to solve the oil crises, and get rid political greed and power trips, bridge the gap between the social classes, eliminate racism(happy black history month!) and sexism, prevent teen pregnancy and suicides....and a whole bunch of other stuff... but I don't have time to be a hero...or to try to play God.

yep.

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Can a person be a Christian and be Bi-polar?

I spoke with my aunt on the phone this evening after talking to my mom and saying some things that scared her. She thinks I should be evaluated for a Bipolar disorder because it runs in the family and my mood swings have been both sudden and extreme. 

I told my aunt that yesterday was a really good day. The sun was shining, I was in a good mood, I felt poetic, I felt good, I started doing stuff, and I started cleaning, and I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned.  There was probably nothing that could have brought me down yesterday. And then this morning I woke up, didn't feel either good or bad, but my back hurt (probably from sleeping in a weird position), so I stayed in bed for another two hours and finally got up, dressed and went to church. 

At church I started feeling extremely irritated. There was a person sitting behind me who was doing the anxiety thing where they fidget, and he was shaking his leg really fast. I could feel it making everything around me shake and I got so irritated that I got up and left the room and went and sat in a different room all by myself.  Then the day went on, I still didn't feel either good or bad, just normal. And I was talking with my cousin Brandy and I was thinking about the tax predictor thing and how it predicted I would owe $1200 and I started feeling incredibly anxious.

I started feeling so anxious that I literally could not see hope for the future. My future felt so bleak and miserable and I felt so trapped in this hoplessness that I told my mom I didnt want to live and that if I ended up owing the government $1200 (like the tax estimator thing predicted) that I might as well jump off a bridge because I would never get it paid off.

My mom started to tell me that she didn't want to hear me talk like that and I hung up on her and then cried because I felt so alone and because I just wanted someone to tell me things will get better. And then I went and checked the mail and I got my insurance statement in the mail and I cried because my monthly payments went up about $5 a month. (Now that I look back on it, it feels pretty rediculous, but just a few hours ago all of these things felt like the end of the world, and tried to feel better, I tried to pray).

So when I did calm down, I called my mom back and let her know I was feeling better (she had called back to check on me, but I didn't hear my phone), we talked about it, and I realized that this has happened to me several times over the past few months... maybe even over the past year. I used to be so happy-go-lucky and simply go with the flow of things, now I have bouts of utter hopelessness so bad that I don't want to live during those moments.  What happened?

And now... I don't feel horribly depressed. I feel mellow and tired.

So after we spoke, my mom suggested I talk to my aunt (who is bipolar), so I called her told her all about it and she laughed at me and suggested I get checked because I sound just like she did before she was diagnosed.

I don't know what I'm going to do.  I think jumping to believing I have a bipolar disorder is a little extreme. It could be a hormone imbalance. Elevated estrogen levels can mess a person up.

 But I also don't want be looking for excuses either.  Maybe there is another explanation that doesn't involve drugging myself to get better. Try harder to give my worries to God?  I don't know.

Love is not easy.

Responding in love is not easy...especially when you've been attacked by a person... and regardless of the means they used to contact you. Especially when all you want to do is is respond to the person and tell them you don't appreciate their attitude and then proceed to tell them why all their complaints don't apply to you, while making snide remarks that hide insults in them.

But I didn't do that. I promised my roommate that if she had something that she needed to talk to me about, instead of replying defensively, I would hear what she has to say and try to understand the heart behind it.

But then I was surprised when I actually did.  And of course, when I take the focus off of myself, I see I don't think my roommate sends me and my other roommates texts like she did because she is trying to start a fight or attack me personally, but because she is simply frustrated over something, regardless of how much or how little it applies to me personally, and she doesn't know how to communicate it, so when an issue does come up, it builds and builds and builds until it comes out in this huge emotional upheaval of anger and frustration, and other emotions.

And though she's not trying to start a fight.... she is prepared for one.  So what is the best response?

I remember immediately Proverbs 15:1 A Gentle answer turns away wrath, but a hard word stirs up anger.  (you could even go into verse 2: The tongue of the wise adorns knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly).

And I've been studying the book of 1st John this whole month and I've probably read through it 30 times. But There is so much in it about love... how we know God abides in us, how we know we love God, or how we know we are children of God, is in the way we love.  So instead of replying defensively, as I have, sadly, done before, I thought about what it was that she needed right then when she sent the text, and the fact that she has been working the midnight shift for 3 days now and I simply texted her back and said: "I hear you, and I respect your thoughts."

But then, as it would go, I continued working through the evening at the group home and I started to feel some compassion toward my roommate.  In all truth, most of the stuff she texted really didn't apply to me at all, but I began to feel a prodding to respond not only in word, but in action.

1st John 3:18 says Let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

So I looked at her text again, and I noted some of the things that she mentioned specifically frustrated her, so I went out and bought her stuff that she claimed got used up, and I came home and I spent the evening washing and loading the dishwasher and vacuuming and sweeping.

So like I said, responding in love is not easy.  Love means sacrifice.  Love means I had to consider someone besides myself. Love means I had to ignore my thoughts about what I do or don't do and realize that for this moment, what she needed was for someone to hear her needs and respond to them. Love means sometimes a person is more important than my immediate need (like sleep, haha), or my busy-ness (sigh).

And I'm not capable of loving on my own. I wish I was better at it.

Anxiety relief anyone?

I've been feeling anxious. I'm not 100 percent sure all why I'm feeling anxious, but I am.  I credit some of it to work.  I found out today that Sheffield lost two of their full time staff.  While this can be a good things for me, it can also be very overwhelming for me.  I told Sheffield I am available Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.  They've been using me maybe once a week, sometimes twice. Now that two full time staff are gone, they are likely going to start using me all three days.  While this is good for my paycheck (and actually quite needed right now) it is also a bit overwhelming with everything else I have going on.

I want to go to VCC on Wednesday evenings. I like going, I enjoy meeting new people, and I feel like I'm being challenged there. But this week I may have to skip because Wednesday was the only day I could give to train the people I invited to be a part of the Out on a Limb team for Life Tree Cafe because I can't be there on Tuesday when they are doing the make-up training since it was cancelled last Friday (not to mention all the preparations I need to do for it). And then there's the next Life Tree training on Friday so it cant be done that day either, and I may be working this Thursday evening, I'm waiting on the schedule from Sheffield.  

My schedule just feels too full and for someone who likes to be spontaneous and have the freedom to decide to stop and help someone shovel their car out of the snow like I did tonight without fear of being late (growing up I was punished quite severely if I was told to be home at 8 and I showed up at thirty seconds past 8. so even though I still show up late to things, I hate it!) so for me, this is a nightmare!

But I guess the good thing is that once I get used to the roles I will be playing with Life Tree, and if I make sure Sheffield only schedules me on the days I said I was available, and all that other stuff I don't want to think about right now, then it will be bearable, and even enjoyable, but until then... I will have to do a lot of praying, or just feel anxious. I think mostly, though, is that there is a fight going on between necessity and desire in my schedule.  I want to do one thing, but I have to do another, and the two things overlap so I have to choose and necessity is going to win.

So, maybe it's not so much the full schedule that bothers me, but perhaps, having to choose necessity over desire makes me feel like I don't have control. (please no comments about how much control we really have anyway, now is not the time for that).

But I still feel anxious about something else, and I don't know what it is.

Well, with that being said, for me to wake up on time and not feel exhausted, I should have gone to bed half an hour ago, so I'm out.

?

Death was never a part of the plan
yet one man falls so so another can stand
we think we are immune from death and pain
until our mortality hits us again
our plans fail and babies cry
we all bleed and young men die
And we think theres some cosmic purpose to it all
some divine meaning, as though weve been called
to suffer through these chains and abuse
because its something that God can use
And maybe God does use our pain
To call us back to him again
But is it really something that he plans
Or is this our attempt to understand
All our questions and cries of why
He allows who he does to die
So we take a moment and we pause
Does God allow or does God cause
And does it matter in the end
When we have a God that we call friend
Who is with us and heals our heart
And hold us close when we fall apart

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