the type of person a higher power uses

this morning the message at church was about the type of person god uses, and sammy used the example of mary, who was asked to be the mother of jesus. he didn't pick a person who was ego driven or rich. he picked an ordinary teenager and asked her to get over her fear of criticism by the community and her family. she would also have to conquer a natural fear of the supernatural, which translates into not asking yourself the question "what will happen to me?" a person asked to do something extraordinary will also have a fear of inadequency, feeling like "how can i handle this?" and perhaps the greatest fear is the fear of change, because taking on something huge and different begs the question of "how will this change my life?"

certainly i am not mary and not mothering a saint or god-to-be. i haven't been asked by god to do anything different other than, apparently, to be myself. that in and of itself is a huge separating factor. but i guess the question has to be asked is if i have the desire to do god's will.
sammy rightly stated that those of us anointed to do "dirty work" have to have a lot of humility and some enthusiasm for the task. i can't say i fit that description. but i am also convinced i am being asked to do something special, probably in the area of healing and teaching. however, i feel so off the path of life most of the time that my confidence seems to be as tangible as a wisp of smoke.

the sermon went on to say that god uses people who are willing to pay the cost. well, what if you aren't exactly willing? it involves a lot of hope and trust, and i doubt myself so much. however, when all of these yucky things involving people keep happening to me, i end up not so much bitter and mad as i am sad and wanting to withdraw and get a better, wider perspective. Unfortunately, i am way too human, and i can't just let it flow like water. wish i could, but after awhile, i get scraped so raw that if anyone sucks my air in a room, it will make me mad. i am also not willing to act out the things that i could do to help myself, which is more quiet time and less time doing meaningless things like sitting in front of the tv. i am way too restless, and i think that is just a technique that we learn to keep these problems at bay. as long as i keep occupying myself with drivel, i can keep going. but i am not totally stupid. i know i have to slow down and let it come in and deal with it. i usually do this at night when i am going to sleep, or trying to. in the end, though, if i am to be one who is willing to pay the cost, the question is what am i willing to give up? right now, it would be being part of people and being liked and validated.

what do i desire most? right now it would be to be comfortable in my own skin, to be able to view skeptics and negative people with a sense of detachment. detached=not affected. i would like not to take things so incredibly personally. everything just tears me up? i'd like to say i desire not to be affected by anyone, but i know that would be wrong. no challenges, no growth.

the last part of this sermon involved the fact that god uses people who dare to trust his promise. i am not sure i have been promised anything. i think i innately know i have a purpose and i am somewhat blindly plunging on, but i guess i need to trade in my humanism for an more other-worldly view. sometimes i can do that. but most of the time i am a bad mortal and, boy, a really weak one at that. i am not sure i have any of the qualifications that a higher power would ask for in someone doing his biding for a greater cause.

i guess if i could remove my egotistical need to be validated out of the equation, i might be a lot happier and a lot better to do good works. i would like to do that. i NEED to do that. so why can't i?

life is leveling out...i hope

the sun has just finished up for the day, and so have i.

i am covered in a layer of topsoil and sweat, having finally gotten the new above ground vegetable bed done tonight. bruce next door helped me by drilling the holes in the wooden box and pounding the rebar in a bit. i went after the rest of it with the huge hammer he lent me, not willing to wait for austin to do it tomorrow. nor was i willing to wait to haul the 10 bags of topsoil (at 40 lbs. a piece) to the bed and empty and spread them. i also changed the spool on the weedwacker and went after the weeds in the yard. so the sun came down, the ice cream truck came by and i rewarded myself with a rare nutty buddy which i ate while talking over the fence to my next door neighbor. i didn't get the plants into the planters, but i can do that tomorrow. the only thing i didn't do was build the trellis that i am going to put up for the cukes. i can't punish myself too much over that one, as i didn't get the idea until yesterday when i saw it in a magazine at home desperado.

austin had baseball this weekend, and i got some sunburn and some conversation and socialization in with parents i hadn't seen in awhile. i also went to meg's for a cookout tonight and socialized for an couple of hours, and then came home to the chores. i have about 2 hours of chitchat in me, and then i have to bolt. brenda davis came over this afternoon, and i got my kitchen cleaned really well. brenda, who is a neatnik, would take the broom and sweep your house up and clean for you, so when she comes, i am generally motivated to do stuff around the hacienda. she needs to visit more often, as i would scrub more...

have read some in a new book, THE LAST TEMPLAR, and finished THE TEMPLAR LEGACY. have actually gotten some of the NYTIMES sunday read on sunday which usually doesn't happen. i have my bedroom to clean up and laundry to fold before i can relax, although relaxing isn't something i seem to be able to do with much aplomb.

school will be out in a couple of weeks, and i am still looking for work. bebo cornered me at the ballgame to discuss "things" and we basically agreed to disagree over the child support and what it supports. he thinks he is being generous by giving me what the state is telling me that austin is supposed to get. in his mind, he only is obligated to pay $420/month and the extra $200 is going to austin's college fund and other expenses. in actuality, he is obligated to pay the amount he is paying now, and it only covers his medical expenses. all other things beyond that (baseball expenses, college fund, extras like cleats, etc.) i am now going to be on my own to deal with. i am not happy that at almost 50 years-old i am having to look for a second job. not when my friends are retiring, staying home, or have kids out of college and can do stuff. but the bottom line is, a higher power doesn't give you more than you can handle, and I WILL HANDLE. i always have, i always will. austin will be taken care of, and so will i.

so life has leveled out, although on the surface it seems bumpy. the leveling comes from knowing what is in front of me. i comes from knowing what i have to do, and what i won't be getting. as long as i have the parameters, i can deal with it.

simple pleasures, part II

i have spent an extraordinary amount of time recently either bitching, feeling sorry for myself or hibernating from the world. fortunately, i have realized i am NOT good company, but nonetheless, i am still somewhat disgusted with myself for allowing the glass to get half empty instead of being half full...so tonight, i am going to fill it with a few of my recent small pleasures.

*as i sit here, i am listening to the songs i have downloaded to the i-pod. most of them are oldies or christian things, but i am getting some exercise dancing in my chair while looking at pictures on the internet of cars i can't own..

*white bread sandwiches occasionally are an interesting change of pace. Mayonnaise, salami and i have a quick, disgusting snack that delivers nothing but garlic breath and fat. oh well, shoot me.

*sitting on the back porch and quacking for the ducks has become something fun and silly to do. i am not so sure my neighbors aren't all getting together to have me committed, but that can't be helped. big austin and mike are the regulars these days, although they seem to appear by themselves, confused about where the rest of the gang has gone. they quack, i throw some sort of dough related product to them, courtesy of the librarians at school (this weeks menu: pizza bones and breadsticks from olive garden.)

*on demand free movies on comcast. since i have had to give up direct tv and switch to comcast, i have spent too much time trying to figure out what features are offered and how i can access them via a remote control. i did discover that we have something called ON DEMAND and that gives me some ability to view free movies when i want. i have actually done that, a rarity for me as i don't have much patience these days for sitting still long enough to watch a movie. last weekend, however, i did view THE PRINCE OF TIDES and UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN.

*i played my bass guitar tonight while listening to my christian download music. i am sure my neighbors really enjoyed the fact that i haven't picked up the instrument in about 6 months. that and the wailing i was doing with the headset on probably only added to my legendary nutcase status in this burg...

*"polk salad annie" by tony joe white...what a stupid song...why am i listening to it? why did i download it? yeah, that one and "guitarzan" by ray stevens, another '60's gem. "...polk salad annie, the gator's got your granny...everybody said it was a shame, cause her mama was working on a chain gang..." Pulitzer prize winning lyrics, that one.

*sugar free popsicles. they came, they went. all gone.

*bathtubs. i haven't visited the bottom of mine with my butt in quite awhile. last night i threw myself to the mercy of a soak and it was good.

*having an intellectual conversation with someone is so shocking these days that i almost weep with relief that there are actually humans out there who might actually visit my planet occasionally. this week i did have some conversations with a few people that made me feel slightly enlightened. having these conversations with people walking on 2 legs is much preferable to quacking to ducks and talking to cats...

*cats in general. kitty barometers. you don't have to talk to them and they for the most part aren't overly demanding.

*$2.75 gas. i must have no life if i am spending this much time watching gas prices go up and down...

i want a new car...:)

i had to rent a car when we went to allentown, pa. a few weeks ago, and i ended up with a new hyundai sonata. as i was driving out of the airport, i felt like i had died and gone to heaven. it's not that i have no love for my little car with its 122,000 miles on it. it has been a good car, and it continues to get me where i want to go. however...just for a weekend i experienced what it was like to have a cd player and a headliner in the car...right now i spend too much time picking pieces of foam rubber out of my hair, as that is all that lies between my locks and the roof. the paint on the old girl is peeling away and there is always the smell of antifreeze, although god knows why as i have replaced all of that stuff and there is no leak...in any case, the hyundai was a dream...i stopped at wawa on the way home, got a cup of coffee and called my parents...i guess i am a creature of simple means, but a clean wawa, a cup of decent coffee and a nice, new, clean rental car...well, i felt like i was shittin' in high cotton.

of course, now i am in the hunt for one, and god knows, again, why i continue to torture myself. i can't afford it, period. no doubt, i need a new car, but it likely won't be new or this one...sigh.

oh well, i can dream...

oh, no, i can't...not unless i can pull $300 a month out of my ass...so until then, i will continue to play fred flinstone with my bedrock mobile.

austin's big home run

a couple of weeks ago austin's team played in a super NIT regional baseball tourney to qualify for the nationals in orlando. the tourney was held in allentown, pa. in the championship game, austin hit a home run that went out of the park and landed apparently in someone's yard on the street behind the park. if you can see it, the red X over the right field wall is where i last saw the ball go into the trees and it never came down! a parent went through the door in the outfield wall to find it, and it was beyond the fence. they are estimating the hit was 380-400 feet...pretty good for a 14-year old boy! :) it was a thing of beauty, and if he never hits another one, that would be ok. it was worth the money and the time to have gotten to see something like that for once in my life!

his team won the champtionsip, beating teams from oklahoma city, the #1 seed from new jersey, and others to get to the finals. they beat the philadelphia senators 10-0. since his team had already qualifiedl for the nationals in charlotte, the bid went to the oklahoma team.

self doubt: the needle and the damage done

I am wondering if there is ever going to be a time when i am not plagued with some sort of self-doubt about every choice i seem to make. sounds negative? it is. but i guess i just need to navigate through that desert again...

people just bother me, period. menopause? a need for a drug adjustment? a vacation? i am not sure, and i guess it isn't really going to matter. i can stand in this desert and fry like a piece of bacon, or i can try and slog my way out. right now, the sand is around my ankles and all i seem to do is stumble and fall on another cactus. one more needle, and the damage done.

self-doubt is like a needle that keeps sticking you. it could be a spine from a cactus, one of those little ones that are almost invisible and the more you try and find it and get rid of it, the more embedded and difficult it becomes to relieve yourself of. that would be my constant, ongoing negativity about the demise of my friendship with gwen. It just can’t be resolved nicely or easily. this needle would also be my concern about my decision over moving austin to atlee next year. Certainly when i think i have reached an ok place with this decision, another cactus needle embeds itself on this issue and i am off scrambling to find and extract it.

then there are the big whopping needles like the ones they gave you a shot with when you were a child. the only nice thing about those were that you knew they were coming, sort of, and could prepare yourself a bit. no blindsiding. and once the pain was over, someone gave you a lollipop and a hug and told you what a brave girl you were. where are the lollipops and hugs now? the ongoing financial struggle i am engaged in is that needle, and there really isn’t any way to avoid the sting. grading terrible english papers, dealing with uninterested and unmotivated students are this needle. dealing sometimes with the parental units is this needle. in all cases, you just have to close your eyes, endure, and get up off the gurney, go on.

there are other needles as well, like the thin, daily ones that diabetics take their insulin through. everyday they are checking their blood, giving themselves shots, sticking and stabbing to maintain their health and, thus, their lives. failure to do this results in failure to live. some of the people and issues in my life are starting to feel a lot like having diabetes. i have to constantly check and then keep adjusting my “sugar levels.” the routine doesn’t go away, and neither do the needles. some days it is not a problem, other days it is just pure weariness. today, i am tired of sticking myself. i would like to just resolve myself to the fact that i am a self-doubt diabetic, and just move on. oh, that it were that easy. oh, that i were that strong. plenty of things are the insulin in this particular needle…most of it centered around my view of the world and my deep disappointment in people and their actions in general. for this “diabetic” it is difficult to be “sweet.” it takes more and more to raise me up to the point where I am “level” with the rest of the world.

when i was younger, i wasn’t afraid of much and i spoke up about it a lot. i also was frequently wrong, and determined not to back down, regardless. i was riddled with anxiety a lot because what i really wanted was to be liked and loved. i admit to not being always likeable or loveable, and probably, that hasn’t changed all that much. however, i am less and less interested in people, and most of my life is now run on the concept of avoiding any type of confrontation with anyone over anything. that means i spend too much time being browbeaten a bit because no one is exactly reticent about sharing my flaws with me. no doubts, i am angry, but i just can’t seem to find a way to express it in a meaningful way. suppressing it has made me bitter and withdrawn, expressing it makes me cry and feel guilty for having done so. when i stand up to anyone, i risk getting jabbed with a much bigger needle than anything i could wield. i would love to hurl some of these silly people onto their own cactus and let them suffer a bit. well, i think that is what i want…but generally that thought even makes me tired, and then guilty and then…just sad. i can’t seem to stay mad at anyone for any length of time. truthfully, i wish i could. i wish i just didn't care. how does everyone else in the world manage to not care, but i do? it sucks. this was never a problem when I was young…and the trade off was having anxiety attacks and stress and stomach issues because I was ALWAYS mad. Where is the middle ground?

as austin would say, i need to "cry me a river, build a bridge and then get over it..." however, knowing all of this does not make it any easier to get to a good place.

pennies for mike m

the boys are playing in petersburg at the sports complex again this weekend. this tournament is a qualifier for the state USSSA tournament. our boys went 2-0 today, winning easily. last weekend they qualified for the nationals by placing 2nd in the NIT tournament in charlotte. that definitely puts me in orlando the first week of august...another exciting vacation in somalia...god, it is miserably hot in orlando in august...

one of the boys on austin's team, mike (known as M&M) has been struggling for awhile both at the bat and on the field. it seems that everyone has lost confidence in him, including the players and the parents. mike needs a break and a boost.

i made my traditional sojourn to wawa this morning, finding 2 pennies on the floor in unusual places. i pocketed them and went and watched the morning game. the sun was out, it was cool and pleasant. we were winning, but once again m&m was struggling and bombed at the bat. we went on to win the game, and i was remembering last weekend and mike's struggles all weekend. one of the parents had been critical of a dropped pop fly in the outfield and mike's mother had defended him. i had felt caught in the middle, literally, between the two of them, as i would have never said anything as the one parent did, but i also had thought mike should have made the play.

on my way to do concessions i found another penny on the ground in the dirt and decided then to give this particular one to mike. i walked over and sat down next to him on the steps in front of concessions and handed him the penny i had just found in the dirt. i thought that would be a more special angel penny, as it was hard to see and not in my usual fast food location! i wasn't sure how mike would take this, as he has a tendency to be a little goofy sometimes, and after all, he is a 14 year-old boy! anyway, i started out telling him it was a "lucky penny" and then went on to tell him HOW it got to be lucky and that it was an angel penny. i told him he needed to hold on to it, as it thought that he needed an angel, and now he had one watching him. his mother drifted over and i repeated to her what i had told mike. he seemed to really buy into the whole thing, and then i looked down at the dirt in front of mike and me...and there was another penny! i picked it up and handed it to him and told him "now, you have 2 angels! you are gonna do great in the next game!"

i missed the first hour of the game, but mike's mother came in to take over concessions and said the penny was working...mike had gotten a hit! when i got to the game, i started talking to everyone, saying i KNEW mike was gonna get another hit truthfully, the parents around me were scoffing, saying "yeah, uh huh!" but then he was at bat, and there came the hit...he did it! it was a double and he knocked in 2 runs! then he got on base again...when he got hit! but then came the real trial...they put him in to pitch.

m&m pitched 2 innings, and he got them out the first inning..1,2,3! then he came back and fanned the next 3 batters! it was HUGE! i was so happy for him! the whole time i was doing a distance reiki healing on him, telling him to believe he was "calm, focused and relaxed." he was!

after the game, i went over to him and gave him a big hug! he was all smiles and his eyes were really bright and lit up! he said he was gonna hang on to those pennies! one of the other kids came over and started pointing at mike saying "PENNIES! PENNIES!" and nodding yes vigorously! mike said "i am going to hold on to these! they really did work!" i reminded him that he had angels...all he had to do was ask for them. i expect that tomorrow he might not have as good a game maybe, but today was a good start on the way back.

all you got to do with those angels is ask! :)