It’s Mothers’ Day…

and my heart hurts.

What can I say?

I have so many emotions that run through me. I am angry at what my son, flesh of my flesh, has done…all the people hurt…lives turned upside down.  I want to write here, but I lose my words. I start to put down some semblance of thoughts, but then I just stare at it and wonder why I should even bother to try to write or post what I have written.

My heart is breaking and some days I find myself fighting tears most of the day. I keep doing life, but it is not the same. My only real comfort is my Creator. I know who I am in Him. I know His unconditional love. Someday, all evil will be gone. And I wonder…who will really be left standing in the end?  Who will have chosen good, forsaking evil and turning to the Creator?

I am fighting to move back to some semblance of “normal”…at least my “normal”. I get triggered more easily now. I gotta go finish my Shabbat bread, but I am going to go ahead and post this. If it makes no sense to anyone, oh well. If it does make sense, I hope I hear from someone. Please give me a reason to not keep all my thoughts in my private journal. Please give me a reason to write here. Anyone?

Mental Illness: Helping the Church Help the Hurting

Reblogged from Sandscribblings:

In the last decades of my father-in-law's life, he slipped into a fog of mental illness from which he never returned. We did our best to help him--to find a diagnosis and effective medications. The years he lived with us were a constant battle of second-guessing, as we debated whether or not we were doing the right thing, doing enough, seeking out the "right" mental health professionals for his condition.

Read more… 549 more words

All I can really say to this is "I wish"! I wish the church would take a more serious look at the struggles people have. I wish they would stop living in unreality and get about the real business of our Creator. It is not supposed to be a "lay hands on and leave them" kind of thing. Our mission...our calling...is meant to be one of getting dirty with people and walking alongside of them and supporting them. It isn't to pretend that prayer and faith automatically fix everything. People have no problem with crutches for broken legs and insulin for diabetes. How about real active support for those who struggle mentally and emotionally. Ah...but that requires hands on participation! People are allowed to be sick when it means that the extent of our "help" is to take them to appointments, clean their house, bring them meals for a specific duration. But when there is no end in sight and no crutches or wheel chair...hmmm.

So, what’s new?

I am determined to lose the weight I have gained. How’s that for a goal? I think I am finally in the right mindset to do it. As I watch what is going on in my country and in the world in light of the scriptures, I am thinking I really need to get more fit.

Here is another goal. Continuing to write my jailed son. Yep…jailed. He has not been to trial, but is most likely facing life. Just writing the words stirs up all kinds of emotions. I am so tired emotionally right now. Our only form of communication is hard copy letters. It is difficult to really assess where he is inside. Is he telling me what he himself really wants to believe? Is he telling me he wants me to believe? What is real? Only time will tell. Each letter to him takes days to write…days of praying and thinking. Then it suddenly comes together and I write…and rewrite…and edit some more.

I cannot let my life go on hold because of what he has done. Neither can I just ignore it. His family is affected by all this…horribly. We are not physically close, nor are we especially close in any other way. I have given my son and his wife lots of space. The last thing I want is to be the “mother-in-law” that everyone dreads. Now, I need to draw closer, at least to my grandchildren. My daughter-in-law (whom I do love) is just living day-to-day and hour to hour. The challenges she has are huge and I am not there to be able help.

I am still adjusting to honoring Shabbat. Bit by bit, I get it more and more. It is becoming a time I look forward to setting aside during my week.

I ran across a post about dealing with Mental Illness in the “church”. I am going to reblog it because I feel it is a very important subject…one that really needs to be looked at.

That is it…for now. My brain is mush, but I wanted to get something in writing out here. I know how concerned I get when I don’t hear from someone in a while and I don’t want others to get concerned about me.

What Is Healing?

When I first started out on this last leg of my healing journey…the awareness of DID and the realization of some of what had happened to me (which was an “aha-now I understand” time)…I had an idea in mind of what healing looked like. For me, it meant that my hard work (with G-d’s help) was somehow going to reverse all that had been done to me and there would be a complete merging which I called “integration”. I looked at it like a broken bone or a sickness. I wanted to be restored to the condition prior to the break of illness…or to be made even better. After all, they say a broken bone that heals is stronger in the area of the break and will never break exactly there again. I wanted to be like pre-DID and trauma.

Looking back, I would have to say that I was pretty naive, but not in a bad way. I believed what I needed to believe in order to start the journey and do what needed to be done. There were things I did not yet understand about DID and how abuse affects the brain. There were also implications in my view of healing that I did not fully think through…implications that would later change my view of healing…and again…not in a bad way.

Initially, my goal was simply to work on whatever needed to be worked. If I needed to face a memory…so be it. If I needed to reach out to an insider…so be it. Whether it was writing, listening, sharing, art…I did it. I believed that if I just kept doing what I was doing that integration/merging would occur naturally. It would not have to be forced. And it pretty much did happen that way. As I focused on healing, integration and merging seemed to happen almost seamlessly and without any real effort. Some of it happened in huge chunks during several days I spent with a counselor at her home. I stayed with her twice and through days of prayer and working with insiders massive amounts of integration/merging happened.

Over time, I came to realize that not all of healing is as simple as that. Now, I believe that a huge part of healing is to simply live my life…enjoying it as best I can…and seeing the beauty around me in addition to seeing what is evil in the world. I walk in the Spirit of the Creator, trusting Him to show me whatever I need to see and to help me with whatever I need help with. He has always been my greatest Healer…my best therapist. And He has helped me see that my idea of what healing looks like was very faulty.

I know the Creator can do anything and I believe He could even make it like nothing had happened…but that is not real. Like so many others, I had to come to terms with a childhood I simply never had. It was not just a matter of putting the brain back to how it was originally created. All my childhood experiences shaped and affected my brain. Removing the effects of the negative experiences does not replace them with the positive effects of the good things that never happened!

I also realized that all those things that did happen a part of what make who I am today. And even with all my foibles and what I perceive as “weakness” and “brokenness”, I am a pretty awesome person. I am a walking miracle and I am doing pretty darn good considering all I have been through. So, part of healing is also accepting imperfect functionality.

So…maybe…healing is not about restoration (like a broken leg). Maybe it is more about learning to live as I am and celebrating the me I have become and the me I am becoming. Maybe it is more about giving myself the freedom to enjoy life now…without guilt and with less and less impact coming from the past. It is about accepting imperfect functionality. (What is “perfect”, anyway?) It is about learning not to compare myself to others…not my abilities, my weaknesses or my strengths. Every one of us has abilities of some kind; we just don’t all have the same ones. We all have weaknesses and we all have strengths, regardless of how healed or broken we are. It is about not comparing my healing journey to another’s. We all walk on different paths.

I know I still have more to learn, but I carry one thing with me on my learning/healing journey…one very important thing. I know the Creator of all things and I know who I am in my Creator. I know I can trust Him to continue to lead me. Whatever is ahead, He will help me to face it.

Coping techniques…

Compartmentalization helps. Or “putting it on the shelf”. Or “locking it in a trunk”. Or “putting in a drawer or filing cabinet”. These are things that help me deal with what has happened in our family. I suppose being a bit dissociative hasn’t hurt, either.

Yes…it does…

America Has an Incest Problem

Learning to breathe through the tears…

The tears come and the tears come. Ha…you thought I would say “come” and “go”, didn’t you? Well, that would be partially true, I guess. But the times when the tears are not literally there, they are still there in my heart. So, yeah, the tears come (outside) and the tears come (inside). They never really seem to go completely away. They are ever ready on the inside to spring to the outer world.

I feel as if I am fighting the darkness and I am walking through mud. I push to get up. I push to get through my day. I think of my son, of my daughter-in-love, of my granddaughter, of my other grandchildren, of my other children, of all who are suffering. Every family member is in shock. No one expected this.

There are a lot of things that you can believe might happen in your family…but not this. Somehow, you just don’t think it will ever happen to YOUR family.

I know that we will “adapt”, but the idea of joyful thriving seems very far away right now…very far away.

Some things…

you just wrap your mind and heart around. We are still reeling as a family. This will take years to deal with and it will never really be over. With one in prison and others deeply wounded and it is all in the family. How does one recover from something like this? Are there support places for the families? I will have to search and find out.

Still reeling…

All of us are still reeling…those in the family here and those in the family in other places. Moving from numbness, to anger, to tears. There are times I want to just double over and times I wish I could scream and yell at him. You never think it will happen in your family…that your son will do this. It just shakes me to the core.

IM’ing someone who isn’t there…

It is really hard to not be able to contact him…to ask what on earth he was thinking…to find out if he is OK in jail. I cannot excuse what he did, but I still love him and will not abandon him. I actually IM’d him, even though I have no way of knowing if he will ever even see it.

My heart is breaking.

These things don’t happen…not in MY family…

That is what we always think. We read about these things and recognize they really do happen, but we never put ourselves in the picture as one of the family members. Nope…not us! Until now.

It has been 3 days since I found out about it…Monday around 5:25 PM. It rocked my world then and I am still moving in and out of shock, disbelief, anger, heartache, tears, numbness.

I taught him better than this. I taught them all better than this.

You

just

don’t

do

this

kind

of

thing.

 

What was he thinking????? Oh, yeah…he wasn’t thinking. Or at least he wasn’t thinking of anyone but himself.

I have some presence of mind at the moment, but the words are still hard to write. I cannot write about it much on my other blog because some of the readers know who I am. And to protect the innocent, I have to be careful. I know it will come out sooner or later…but I prefer later…for her sake.

Someone was arrested on Monday…after confessing. Young one confirmed it. The sins of the fathers truly do pass down through the generations.

I was visiting a FB page to snag some photos of him. Seeing as how her marriage status was changed to single, I was afraid she would start taking them down. It is hard to see these photos of what appears to be a wonderful family man…knowing the truth. Photos can be deceiving. They oftentimes don’t tell the real story…or at least…not the whole story. There was a good side. Sadly, it has been buried now under the painful reality of what he has done.

I am grateful that I know the Creator. I am comforted by Him and by the rest of my immediate family. We are all taking it pretty hard. What can I say? It is ugly.

Adventures with FedEx

Reblogged from Delightfully Scattered Thoughts:

Today, I feel quite sorry for the folks at FedEx.  They deliver packages all over America, some of which require direct signatures.  Because my phone has decided to work sometimes and completely ignore any sense of productivity at other times, I ordered a new one, which is set to be delivered today.  This is the almost-end of a long and winding road for my poor phone.

Read more… 393 more words

My family and I are really struggling right now and laughter is a great medicine. I read this to my guys and we all laughed. I figure others might need some of that "medicine", so here it is. I hope you all enjoy it as much as we did. :-)

Today…

It’s Sunday morning and I am waiting on a ride to go to our assembly. My Shabbat was a wonderful time of learning and online fellowship. I wish I could attend a Messianic synagogue in person, but the closet one is just too far away, although I have visited with friends a couple of times for special events and have spoken on the phone with the Rabbi there.

The more I have studied under Messianic Jewish teachers, the more I learned that I had to unlearn. Although some things are very much affirmed and set in stone, as it were, there are also many things that have been misunderstood and mistaught. There are times I have found myself angry over it. We have been robbed of so much that was to be ours as the grafted in ones…so many blessings. I am told I am not alone in those feelings. It is quite common amongst those of us who have had our eyes opened.

The anger is pretty much gone now, but I still get sad (and at times, frustrated) on Sunday mornings when I hear things taught that I know are not quite right…and sometimes not even close to right. At least the pastor is pretty open, for which we are very grateful. We share what we can…when we can.

Like any typical assembly, there are some there who are just passing time. But there are also others who really do love the L-rd. They simply have not been taught correctly and you can’t really blame the leaders because they, too, have not been taught correctly! The whole largely unbiblical system is the product of generations of misunderstandings that started off as agendas.

I really appreciate the fellowship. Although there are none there that I would call a close friend, there are those I love to see and spend time with on Sunday mornings. I attend the women’s class and have been able to open my heart to them to some degree and share a bit of what I have been learning.

We believe that in person fellowship is important, which is a big reason why we still go. Should the pastor leave, however, it might be a different story. It is much harder for my husband to connect there. In the women’s class we can share openly and deeply and we can challenge one another. There is no such class for the men. Our pastor is a blessing and his absence would be hugely felt.

So here I sit, waiting for a ride, as the Shalom of the Shabbat still covers me. Even though we moved out of the moed/appointed time…out of the sacred and set apart and into the common, I am still at “rest” inside. Honoring Shabbat gives me more than any Sunday morning has ever given me. I am blessed. I am grateful.

 

22 Faces — Jenny Hill and Judy Byington

22 Faces is a fairly new site dealing with Satanic Ritual Abuse. It shares the story of Jenny Hill, the only known survivor of an intended sacrifice victim. The goal of the book written about Jenny’s life and the website is to offer information about ritual abuse and to offer support and hope to survivors in the form of several resources.

I am always wary when someone approaches me to share their site or services, as Judy Byington did. I have experienced enough of people not being what they present themselves to be. Or simply of them not being altogether altruistic. I really try hard not to let my nightmare experiences with some therapists online keep me from putting good resources out there. So, here is 22 Faces.

I do not know Judy Byington or Jenny Hill. I have no personal knowledge, good or bad, about them. However, when I read what happened to them on Dr. Phil, I was not surprised. What he did to them is, sadly, very common among “talk show” people. They are not interested in the truth, but in ratings. I watched the clips they showed on Dr. Phil’s site and felt very unsettled. I was uncertain what to believe.  After reading Jenny’s “Open Letter to Dr. Phil” and now Judy’s “Dr. Phil — The Rest of the Story”, I am disgusted. I have read of such things happening to others I know so I have no reason but to believe their take on things, especially since I saw hints of it even in the clips Dr. Phil has on his site. It took courage to approach him and go on his show. Shame on him for the way he treated them!

Below are links to 22 Faces and to their responses to what happened to them on Dr. Phil. Read them and judge for yourself. There is also a letter on their site from another therapist who has worked with clients who have DID/MPD which I have linked to on my “What is SRA?” page.

22 Faces

Jenny Hill’s Open Letter to Dr. Phil

Dr. Phil — The Rest of the Story