Just have faith. How irritating is that!

I have lived (am living still) through a week, a month ... well you get the picture
I've been stripped
   stripped of my abilities,
   stripped of my knowing, my grasping what's next.
I've had time to think about Faith. How little of it I have had at times, but mostly how misguided my faith can be. The kind of faith that has left me with heart wrenching fear and out of control panic.
I'm not alone in this. I know you've been there.

Faith, real, live honest, life-changing Faith.

It never stands alone

All by itself? faith is nothing, and potentially dangerous.

Sure, it's such a pretty word. It's even a beautiful name for a cute baby girl.
But what - or who - are we putting our faith in?

I have faith. Period.
Keep the faith. Period.
Just have faith. Period.
Seriously people. You can't stop there!

Because, like I said, faith all by itself is probably just a beautiful name for a sweet little girl.

Misplaced, it is powerless to get the job done, and potentially misguiding and most often, disappointing.

It's just not sustainable on it's own.
The danger comes when we risk entrusting our lives and hearts to things and entities that have no business being in charge. Just have faith is just not enough!

True Faith is a gift. We've all been given it.
Some of us... the Faith-gift is so small it can be hidden away in our pocket, the size of a piece of lint. Others... they haven't even realized it's there's for the taking.
Then there are those who have this seemingly huge, behemoth ocean full of Faith that comes rushing out of them in waves. Soaking everyone in it's path with such thirst-quenching, cool you off in the middle of a hot-flash kind of way. 

But that's the thing about Faith. It's powerful, life-changing, hope-giving
   When it's Faith in the One, the Creator
                   Faith in the One worthy of it
                   Faith, whether lint-sized or ocean-huge, in the One
                     Who gets done what needs to be done
                              when it needs to happen!
Faith is definitely not passive. I mean, it can't just sit there as a word. It can't just be a statement without action. Yet, ironically, the action is often in doing the nothing.
         Stay with me here.
Sometimes the action is in purposely surrendering a circumstance or a situation into the hands of the One in whom you've placed your Faith-gift in.

It doesn't mean I'll know what's going to happen next.
It doesn't necessarily mean I'll even know what to do next, how to help, what it will take to fix it, or survive it. 

But I've discovered this past month, and many others before this
    I don't want to live this life without purposely putting my Faith in God.
I've tried it. It stinks. It fails.

So here it is
     no matter how shaky I feel,
     no matter how lint-small my Faith seems,

I trust you Father, to heal a mind, to protect my child, to make all of it make sense. I trust You. You do know what is best for me. You do love me and mine more than I do. I have Faith in You to guide us, to stop us, to carry us. Even when my Faith is miniscule, I give it to You. 

So no thanks ... I won't Just have faith 
       in myself or in you
       in a doctor or my family or technology or money...
Jesus ... my Faith is in You!

A Beautiful, Tortured Mind

Looping thoughts that won't turn off
Someone sings a song that you can't stand
then it's stuck
stuck in your mind and you find yourself singing it all day long

I wish it was as irritating as that
   as simple as a silly diddy looping in your head.

Dark, looming thoughts,
you want to scream at them
except those thoughts are in your head, and it doesn't usually help to scream at yourself

Then for some reason you hit your arm, or bump in to something
Pain
It's real, it grounds you with the present
It distracts

Distraction is good when those thoughts just won't leave
A cut
longer each time
each time there's a sense of now
   an escape from the incessant thinking

It soothes for a moment
It releases something that tells you, so briefly, I'm gonna make it

The problem is, just like the looping mind, the thoughts that won't turn off
The Cut is not enough
Never quite enough
So you cut more, scrape a little deeper, a little longer, a little more often

The diseases of the mind are so complex,
  and so varied,
  and so real,
  and so painful,
  and so affect every person on this planet. If you're living and breathing you have been impacted by this - that I promise.
   First impressions, there's much more to a situation or person then we see at first glance.
That's the thing with mental illness, It's often invisible. To the casual observer, the person may appear to have it "all together." Yet when the symptoms flare up they are usually misunderstood,
   horrendously bullied
   often feared
   definitely misjudged over and over again!

To all of you who live with a tortured mind
I honor you for your bravery
  For surviving the days you have survived
  For excepting help when you can
You are loved by the Father … and you are loved by me

The letter ...

I think I was around 9 or 10 years old

I was home from school at lunchtime (it was the 70's)

My mom was in the kitchen, I was sitting in the family room watching the Flintstones or Brady Bunch while eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich

Then I heard it.

It was a sound I had never heard before
   I had never been touched by anything so raw
                                                       so mournful
                                              so filled with pain

My mom
    my beautiful mother.
       She was one of two kids, twins, a boy and a girl

(I always imagined that I would have twins some day… I really had wanted that huge Brady Bunch, Waltons kind of family)

My mom's twin brother, Uncle Albert, was a tall, handsome, blonde, football player-built kind of man.

I don't have many memories of him.
But I do remember he was quiet and gentle ...and tall

My uncle was not a man who chose to stay put … he traveled, lived in many places.
He was a wanderer.
Maybe that's a symptom.
    He just wasn't physically in our lives very often.

Back to lunchtime - in the 70's - eating my pb&j

A letter.
She was told devastatingly, life-changing news through pen and paper.
No human comfort
No arms to hug her
No eyes of compassion
Just ink on parchment.

Her twin brother had committed suicide in a small hotel room in a small town…alone

Writing that down is hard.
How do you even talk about that?
Why talk about it?

Well … here I am.
Fifty years old - decades later - and it's on my mind.
Suicide … in all it's ugliness, cruelty and violence, it doesn't impact less if it's not spoken about. It impacted me. It changed my young mind and heart forever. It made me aware of a pain. I didn't understand the pain, but I knew it was there. At that moment, when my mom cried out in despair, I recognized that the world was bigger than my Brady Bunch existence.

Many people equate suicide with selfishness … and yes it is self serving in a way. But my tall, handsome, gentle, football player-built uncle was suffering with a disease of the mind.
It's called Schizophrenia.
It took me many years to put all that together.
The journey I'm on
watching my sweet family deal with a mental illness that has affected our family. Yes … not just the one diagnosed but all who love him … we're all impacted

Read  "A Beautiful Mind"

In college I did write a paper about the perceived eternal consequences of taking one's own life… my take on it was not cut and dry. My mom, in the middle of her suffocating grief, taught me the Grace of a God Who sees us, saw my uncle, sees me and mine today. I didn't understand, really, that he was not well. But it makes sense, as much sense as schizophrenia can make, now.
And intense, serious, heart touching moments speaking with my sweet boy about the struggles of his beautiful mind help bring some clarity and maybe just a touch of sense to the invisible diseases that so many suffer with.
Whether someone is consumed with dying, entertains the thought, or feels compelled to finish life on this earth. Or if they act on that driving force and commit the deed. It is suffering beyond my ability to grasp. It makes me weep, it confuses me, and it makes me profoundly grateful for Grace.

Ahhh  this is exhausting stuff.
I think I'm done for now … writing about this

A Beautiful Mind: the invisible

I'm saddened by disease, by illness...  and those who suffer.
I'm not talking about the common cold or a nasty, achy, snotty flu. I'm talking about someone I love having multiple seizures every day, someone else I love living with debilitating back pain, another one dear to me who has fought cancer - two times!!  Then there is the disease that affects the mind.

Oh... that one makes me pause...

The diseases of the mind are so complex,
  and so real,
  and so painful,
  and so affect everyone.
If you're living and breathing you have been impacted by this.

I guarantee, there's usually much more to any given situation 

and always much more to each person we meet 

than what we see at first glance. 

And that's the thing with mental illness, It can really be very invisible.
To the casual observer, the person may appear to have it "all together."
Yet when those symptoms flare up, when the storm starts or the disconnect begins,
   they are usually horribly misunderstood,
   horrendously bullied,
   and often feared.
The are misjudged over and over again!

So what's the answer? Do we owe it to each other to expose our pains, weaknesses, diseases or ailments? Are we supposed to walk up to someone and say
  Hi, I have cancer, sorry about the bald head
  Don't worry about me, it's just the Tourette's talking
  Sorry I didn't come to the party, I was too depressed to be around people

Yes ... and No
       
I have found that while we don't owe anyone an explanation for
   who we are,
   what we suffer with or
   how we look ...
when we do let them see into our pain, when we acknowledge the illness for what it is, we have the chance to be cared for

Then there's the No ... guarding our hearts. There is a Bully on the playground of life. He's a deceiver and He just wants to destroy. That's his game.
So whether we share on Facebook or send out a Tweet...
whether we blurt out our pain in a crowded classroom or around the office cooler,
these are potential paths leading to more pain

too often not leading to the care we crave and very much deserve.

My friend, search out those in your life who are safe.
Those who can give you that care you crave and that you very much deserve
    like a warm blanket when we have a fever,
    an arm gently placed around our shoulder when we're discouraged or
    a listening ear and a kind word that says I hear you and I believe you

Praying that the guarding hand of Wisdom will not give the Bully even one round on the playground.
Praying that we have eyes to see, to look beyond the immediate, the obvious
   that we have eyes to see the invisible, the broken and the beautiful.