Monday, December 30, 2013

Faith

"Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." ~ Jesus - Matthew 17:20

The other night I was talking with my eighteen year old niece, A., who's a freshman in college and visiting for the holidays. When we had our conversation she revealed to me something that she has probably tried to hide from nearly everybody in her life. 

She has an illogical fear, really to the point of panic, that at the times she can't get a hold of one of her family members - by phone call or text message - either her father, brother, or mom, but mostly her mom, then something must be terribly wrong with them. Until she hears back from them, and sometimes, for various reasons, it can be quite some time, she gets so wound up that she can't concentrate; she can't do anything but worry and fear the worst has happened to them. If it's at night she can't sleep; for hours her fears' possess her. It's almost to the point of obsessive compulsive behavior, except without the compulsions. 

I understand my nieces fears' and worries regarding wanting her family to be safe, for them to be there for her in the morning, for them always to be there for her. You see, when I was thirteen years old - now thirty-seven years ago - I was diagnosed with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and I did have both the obsessions and the compulsions - debilitatingly so! 

This was 1977, and at that time very little was known of OCD in general, and virtually nothing of it in children. I was seen by a Duke University-educated psychiatrist who, despite all of his best medical and psychiatric training, didn't know how best to even begin to help me; he had barely heard of the disorder. My father had to educate this "brilliant" child psychiatrist on this strange and peculiar illness. And I say that literally. 

My father, a dentist (although very much involved since the late '60's in the nutrition movement and by default, holistic medicine) had to literally take the psychiatrist and teach him about OCD, about the limited research, about the adult medical trials that were in their infancy, and about the one program in the country at that time that was beginning to find children with the disorder and start medical trials on them. My father did all of this research, gained all of the available knowledge, even though he had a full time job, a wife, and six other children fully in need of his time and attention. And like I said, there wasn't much in the way of knowledge of the illness in children. And of course this was all done before the internet, with its websites and emails, etc., so my father did it the old school way: contacts, phone calls, more contacts, more phone calls, libraries with their medical journals, and such.

I have often talked of my father as a creative, visionary-type person, one who had the ability to not only think outside the box, but to think beyond boxes at all. And to this day I admire his tenacity when it came to problem solving - when it came to a cause of any sort that he believed in. My father didn't know the meaning of, "no," if it had anything to do with something he desired, whether for himself or for those he loved, or even for the causes he believed in. 

But even with my father thoroughly made knowledgeable on a mental disorder that at the time was only just beginning to be understood and diagnosed, it wasn't, in the end, his medical understanding or help that cured me of that debilitating illness of which I struggled with all through my teen years and into my early twenties, it was, I think, the foundation that he and my mother gave me... in religion. 

It's funny because, in the end, I think it was religion that played into my severe OCD and yet it was also the thing that cured me of it!

For me - though I have no idea how it is with others' who have OCD - almost all of my Obsessive Compulsive behaviors were tied to something bad happening (the obsession), a car wreck that would kill, an incurable illness, death by some thing or another, and I HAD (the compulsion) to do something to protect them all, whomever I loved deeply, from the bad thing. If my mind told me I had to wash my hands fifty times in a certain way or my mom would be killed, well, I washed my hands fifty times. If my mind told me that if I didn't walk twenty-five times back and forth through a door threshold my father would die, I walked back and forth through it so my father would live. If it still didn't "feel" "right" I did it all over until it did. Those are only two small examples in a day's worth of living this kind of life, so when I use the word, debilitating, in regards to my mental illness it was that and more… it was exhausting. 

Like I said, at the time I was diagnosed with OCD in 1977 there was virtually little known of the illness in adults, and almost nothing at all in children. I just lived with it. And my family lived with me living with it because when you start walking back and forth through a door threshold time after time and your family is in the car ready to go somewhere, waiting on you, it becomes their problem, too. 

It was only when I came home after I had graduated from college, and a year spent in New York City, at age twenty-three, that enough drug trials had been done with OCD patients (my mother forbade my dad from putting me in the only children's drug trial going on in the country when I was fourteen because she didn't have a good "feeling" about the doctor in charge) that I tried drugs that were supposed to be helpful. But the only thing those drugs did was make me want to stay in bed, in a darkened room all day, and sleep. My parents wanted me to be helped, to be cured, but sleeping away my life was not what they had in mind. I went off the drugs. The sun shone brightly once again through the bedroom curtains I opened each morning, but my obsessions and compulsions remained completely a part of my daily living. 

Finally, when I was probably twenty-four - so I had been living with severe, debilitating OCD for eleven years - a day came, I can remember it as clearly now, twenty-six years on, as I did when it was happening. I was driving a brand new Chevrolet truck down the road, transferring it, for my brother-in-law, from one dealership to another, and per usual a thought came into my head that if I didn't do this particular thing my mom would die. Of course it made no logical sense to me. But regardless, if part of my mind knew if was an illogical thought, the part of my mind that had control over me would always say, "Do you want to take that chance? Do you want to take the chance that you if you don't do the the compulsion one of the people you love most in the world could be taken from you?" In eleven years I had always answered, "no" to that question. I had always "protected" the people I loved and cared for most. 

But on this day, when all of these thoughts about something bad happening to my mom, if I didn't do some illogical thing came into my head, another voice, a new and strong voice, interrupted my thinking. And that voice said to me, "You're a hypocrite!" That voice continued, "Do you want to be a hypocrite?" A hypocrite? How? I asked the voice. And yes, it was a conversation between me and, I guess, this other part of me that had not made itself known before. 

When I asked the voice how I was being a hypocrite, how was my mental illness - an illness that I felt I had no control over - tied in anyway to hypocrisy? The voice talked to me about faith; about God. 

This strong voice asked me that if I believed in God why was I trying to act like I was God? Because, as the voice reminded me, everything I did with my OCD, every obsessive and compulsive behavior made, was made without any thought given to faith. Why, the voice continued, if I said that I believed in God - and I did thoroughly believe in God - did I try to control everything in my environment to the point of irrational behavior, why did I not feel that God was in control? Why did I not let God be in control? 

It's hypocritical of you, L, the voice told me, to say that you believe in God, in His being your creator, and yet you do these obsessive compulsive behaviors all based on fear, and doubt and worry - all based on an overwhelming lack of faith... in God! 

You can't have it both ways, L, the voice said. You have to choose. You have to choose whether you believe that you control the world around you - and really, whether you want to continue to try to control the world around you - simply because you lack faith in the one person who you should know to put ALL your faith in.

So, choose, the voice prodded, do you want to live your life in lack and faithlessness or, do you believe, with the faith of mustard seed, that God is in control of you and all of the people you love and He will take care of you and He will take care of them. Give Him your worries, your doubts, your anxieties, your fears, and let Him take control… give Him, through faith, your life.

As I sat behind the wheel of that truck, driving down the road, feeling desperate to "protect" my mom from harm by listening to the obsessive thoughts in one part of my mind and wanting to do the compulsive behavior that would "save" her, I told God that I was tired. I told God that I was exhausted at trying to control my world, and the people closest to me, by having my OCD rule my every day existence. I told God, that yes, I did believe in Him. Yes, I did have the faith of a mustard seed to know that he would take care of me and those I loved. I told God, that no, I didn't want to be a hypocrite. I told God I wanted to to live my life in faith. 

And it was then that I asked God to take over. I told God that with complete faith in Him I would not do the obsessive compulsive thing that I had felt I needed to do to keep my mom "safe." I told Him that through faith I would allow Him to take care of her, that by faith I was giving up control, and in faith I would believe that all would be well. And for the first time in eleven years I stopped; I didn't let my obsession compel me to do some behavior, that thereto for, although irrational in theory, I was, incapable of believing was irrational in thought. But I let go anyway. Purely in faith… I let go. 

Letting go, having faith in God became my salvation. For every time an OCD thought came into my head - and I was bombarded with them throughout my days - I ignored it, and instead told God I had faith in Him. I had faith that He was in control of my life and that I knew that I could trust Him to take care of me and all those I deeply loved. 

For a long time it was a constant battle between feeling the obsessive thoughts and irrational compulsions that had ruled - and ruined - my life and allowing my faith to assert itself and take control. But my faith, in the end, was victorious. My faith triumphed. And even as I write the words, "victorious" and "triumphed" with the greatest of awe because it was all of that, I know too that it was so much more. "It" was a miracle. Because to this day, twenty-six years later, I took no medicine that cured my mental illness, no psychiatric treatment that helped me, I was free and clear of my OCD, from that day onward, purely by the grace of God. 

And I have written of all of this regarding my mental illness - my OCD - because when I was talking to my niece, about her incapacitating fears and anxieties, I told her that lesson that somehow, and I can only call it a miracle, was given to me: either you believe in God and you have faith in Him and allow Him to be at the center of your life and in control, or you don't. Faith, I told her, sets you free.

I even explained, in some part to her, that while on this Dreaming Miracles journey just about everyday my mind tries to let fear, doubt, worry and anxiety in. I think to myself, how are my dreams going to come true? I'm fifty years old. I live in a small town where meeting a single, cute, well-adjusted guy is like bobbing for apples in a barrel full of oranges, how is "it," all of "it," going to happen? And then I just have to remind myself that kind of thinking is human thinking and God doesn't think like humans think. Thank God, God thinks like God!!!

And if I have even the faith of a mustard seed, which I told my niece I believe I did, anything is possible with God. All I have to do is let go, know, in faith, that He is in control and let Him work it all out. Know that even as I write these words, He's doing exactly that… working it all out! 

Often, when I have these thoughts of doubt or fear - of the enormity of my dreams! - enter my thinking, I just picture what I might call, magic dust, swirling and sparkling around me, as if, even though it may seem as if nothing is happening to make my dreams come true, EVERYTHING is happening, all around me, at all times, miraculously making sure that they do!

I live in Faith...

Friday, December 27, 2013

Living in the Past

"The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love." ~ Pearl Bailey

I did something I never thought I would do. Almost twelve years went by and I never did. So, why, I wondered, did I do it now?

I called, G.G., the guy who had been my greatest love; the guy that broke my heart. In my post called, Love, I wrote, "The moment I got my apology I knew that I would never talk to G.G. again in my life - not because I would harbor anger, but because that was just the way it was going to be." Well, I guess never is a long time, or in this case, nearly twelve years.

I think, in the end, he got "involved" in the New Zealand "fate line" which I talked of in a previous post. And just until I wrote that last sentence I didn't see my getting back in touch with G.G. as part of something that happened only because of that one fateful event that caused me to travel to the other side of the world in the first place, but now I do see clearly that it was one of that journey's many and varied results.

Because this is how it happened: G.G. lives in Hawaii and I knew I would be stopping there on my way to New Zealand, visiting my brother for several days, and then stopping for a long layover on my way back from NZ to my home. I got the thought in my head that I would call G.G.'s parents' for his phone number - I had long since lost track of any way of knowing how to contact him - tell them that I was in Hawaii and that I wanted to get in touch with him.

But my time was short in Hawaii and I lost my "real" phone in a taxi cab (I know I lost it in the cab because I got a text from my sister saying to call the cabdriver because he had my phone!) and just ran out of time to actually get it back. So it wasn't until I was waiting for my flight to Auckland in Honolulu airport that I thought it was probably the right time on the mainland to call G.G.'s parents, and I did. I used my iPod Touch which I had turned into an iPhone (yeah, you can do that!) and rung them up.

His mother answered and right after I introduced myself as being an old friend of his and that I was visiting Hawaii and thought I would get in touch with him, she was like, aren't you the girl that called from ______ about ten or so years ago? Wow, I thought, either I'm super memorable or she has a good memory… and I went with the latter of the two thoughts. She gave me his phone number and had a few choice comments to say about him and all I could do was commiserate with her because, well, I knew him!

I casually asked whether he had married or had children and she said, "We have no idea! He tells us he didn't get married, but we're really not sure." Mind you this is a guy who last saw his parents fifteen years ago! Anyway, after talking with her for a few minutes I realized that I really didn't have enough time to actually call him and decided that if I felt like it on my return I might try.

Well, I did have a really long layover on my return from New Zealand in Honolulu. It was Thanksgiving Day but it wasn't until I missed the first opportunity of flying out (I was on a standby pass) that evening and had another hour-and-a-half before my next chance at getting on the flight out of Honolulu, that I remembered my thought of calling G.G. I told myself, well, you're still in Hawaii so you can tell him that you were calling because you were in the islands (not making it clear that I wasn't going to be there but for an hour more!) and I had thought of him and decided to call. And that's what I did. I nervously dialed his number, not sure what to expect. His voice mail came on and I left a very simple message and gave him my phone number. Then I went to my gate and got on that next flight out of Honolulu.

When I got back to my home I was so tired I slept for 22 straight hours. And when I checked my "phone" after I had slept so long, I saw that somewhere in that time a call had come in from G.G.'s number. He had called me back! Yeah, I was surprised he had called me back because he's the kind of guy that would let "sleeping dogs lie." He didn't leave a message, but that he called was the message!

I didn't call back right away. I was too tired to want to talk, but then the next day I saw that I had missed another call from him by mere minutes so I picked up my phone and called him right back. And when I heard his voice answer it was surreal; I know this guy, I thought, but I don't know anything about who he has been the past twelve years: who is this guy?

But we talked and though at times it had a bit of awkwardness about it, it wasn't awkward at all when he said that he really missed me and I told him I had really missed him, too! I always knew he loved me as much as he could love anyone in the world, despite the fact that he couldn't give me all of his love, and he pretty much blankly stated that fact… he said to me, "You know I've always loved you."

However, his mom had warned me that he had had problems with alcohol, she didn't say he was an alcoholic,  just that he had, at least to her knowledge of past events, had a problem with it. And I could tell that he had been drinking when I called him back. I did ask if he were married, or if he ever had been. He said, "No." I asked if he had any children and to this he said, "Yes." There seemed to be a daughter, but he was vague on everything about her, finally just saying, "Why don't you call Stephanie and ask her." So the "feeling" I got from that part of our exchange is that he had not known he had a child, that he was thrown a curveball when it was revealed to him much later, and that he didn't seem to be allowed to participate in her life.

Since that first call he has called me a few different times, sometimes early into my morning, though only late in his night, because of the time difference between us, but also during his day. I think he is the same, and the same is not really a good thing to be after twelve years have past. 

He's the guy with all the potential, and that's what it remains - potential. But I'm very familiar with that person because I have been that person. Hell, I am that person now. But, psychologically, I am much different than who I was when last in his life, psychologically I have grown by leaps and bounds. And it's the psychological part of him that is no different than it was before… at least that's how it feels to me now. I think we will keep in touch and the more I get the chance to talk to him the more I'll be able to evaluate how he has - if he has - grown.

Why should I care if G.G. has grown or not? If his feelings about me are just as they were? Complete love without being in love. Really, I don't know… I do things because I follow the intuition inside my head… often I don't know why I should, but I think the answer is about helping me learn. Sometimes it feels as if my intuition - that voice inside my head - is just testing me to see if I do "hear" it and if I will follow it. And when I do follow it, it's like getting a passing grade which encourages me to keep following - that somehow, in the end, it - my intuition - will lead me exactly where I need to go.

Life is as much a mystery to me as any other person, but I do try to "figure" it out as best I can… sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, and sometimes I just draw even, but it's that excited anticipation of wondering what's behind "door number three" that keeps me ever seeking...

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Miracle of Life

"It's a mystery. It's magic. It's Divinity! ~ Yale mathematician, Alex Tsiaras

I love this TED talk by Alexander Tsiaras… who through science - of all fields - really allows your eyes to be open to the "God Factor" that truly allows for what we call, the miracle of life...

Friday, December 6, 2013

Crying 'til You Laugh

"There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity." ~ Washington Irving

It doesn't take long to go from complete highs back to very normal feeling lows!

I had had such an amazing time traveling in New Zealand, meeting a varied array of people, and best of all having guys I wanted to "hit" on me,  actually "hitting" on me!

It felt really good, especially, the one really cute guy who, as I stood alone at the bar, drinking my beer, on the other side of the world, looking out at the crowd of people dancing on the floor in front of me, I noted, was not only "hot" but dancing with three (3!) really pretty girls, kept taking glances at me (and of course the whole time I'm wondering: am I imagining that this alarmingly cute guy keeps looking at me with interest or is he really looking at me with interest? And if he is looking at me with interest, why? I mean, he's dancing with three beautiful, young, 20-something girls!). 

Finally, he caught my eye enough where I finally just kinda waved my hand at him in like a, "hi" gesture. At which point, as if he had been waiting for just such a cue, he immediately leaves the three girls he was dancing with and comes over to talk to me! And long story short, he was, not only the cutest guy in this massive bar, he turned out to be the sweetest kind of guy a girl could hope to find! And, for whatever reason, we had some kind of crazy chemistry and after a great, long philosophical conversation (although I'm leaving out some interesting tidbits!) off to "Disney World" we went! 

And the icing on my cake? I thought he was young - maybe 25 or 26 years old… he turned out to be… 21! I don't know what it is with me and these young'uns, but, I'll tell you one thing: I'm not going to think too long, nor too hard on it!

But then, I get back home, and home is Realityland. And in Realityland, I start watching a t.v show, half way over, and yet by the end it's got me crying for the sadness it shows of lifes' stories, and then, it just induces me to cry even harder at the mountain I am faced with; finding love and getting married at such a late age AND getting pregnant from my own egg(s) and delivering a healthy child or children! And my tears turn to laughter at the audacity of my hope, at my faith in my miracles manifesting, which makes me cry even bigger tears at the thought that I so thoroughly believe in God's gift of making me a creator in His image, so that I, too, can create something from nothing but the pureness of my desire. So, I laugh as I cry and I cry as I laugh, until I just stop… and reach for His hand...

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Home!

"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment." ~ Henry David Thoreau

So, I made my trip to New Zealand, traveled the whole coastline, east (Pacific Ocean) and west (Tasman Sea) of the country from the top of the North Island at Cape Reigna, to the bottom of the South Island at Bluff - 4,268 miles. It took a whole month and at the end I was pressed for time.

As I explained in, A Thinking Body - Part Two, I went to New Zealand to try and change fate, to make fate, to do something, anything, to make a thing I couldn't understand, understandable! And I did it! I f'n did it!

During my month I went with the idea that I would write a book on fate... based on this one fateful "event" that occurred in my life. I had two fate lines to choose from… one fate line going to New Zealand, the other fate line going to Scotland… I took the New Zealand fate line first for mainly two reasons: New Zealand was going into spring/summer, while Scotland would be going into fall/winter, and because I thought it would be easier for me to go to Scotland at anytime, whereas I felt that if I didn't take the New Zealand fate line first, I might never take it… so, New Zealand it was! And I am truly amazed at that fate line, the stories, that came from this one decision. I didn't even have to look for the stories they just came to me as if just waiting to unfold, or to be told…

So, I can't really write about all of these strange, crazy, emotional, events… you'll have to wait to read them in the book! : )

But I can say one very, very important thing: that one sentence, from the New Zealand "fate line," that I pulled out of a year-and-a-half of what seemed to be a meaningless experience, well, that one line, was completely true! And the line, the line written that made me take the New Zealand fate line in the first place, was, "Maybe you should come down here and have a look for yourself ... lots of very virile young males on the street…" Yep, I can say assuredly, that is the God's honest truth... and because of it, I am way out of the desert now… and truthfully, I didn't even try to leave the "desert" I was led out, fatefully, led out… my thirst thoroughly quenched… at least for a time! : )

Now, in addition to the book I am writing, about my "fate journey," I am also making application for a New Zealand grant-funded project! Because, as I drove throughout the country, I felt called to some particular thing that I think is of both national and cultural significance for New Zealand as a country (and by default, the world). So, we'll see if the government of New Zealand finds my project worthy of its money… and of course I will fill you in if it does!

I thought to myself, at the end of the New Zealand journey, was I changed in any way? Did making that trip alter me? And I couldn't see that it really did. But sitting on a darkened beach, the last night before I made my way back to my host in Auckland, and then home, someone told me that it may take time - weeks or months - to realize how I might be different… and I think they are probably right. 

And should I get this grant proposal accepted, then my life truly will be altered, and that initial fateful event, the "thing" that triggered the whole idea of finding a way to turn something negative into something positive, will most definitely be life-changing and I will feel its purpose powerfully… but even if that shouldn't happen, this journey, taken by myself, to a country on the other side of the world, where I knew no one, did change my fate and it did change others' also… of that I am sure! 

So, the Universe tried to "toy" with me, as I said in that earlier post, and I decided I was going to "toy" back. I thought, back then, if the Universe was going to play a game with my life, then I was going to play the game back… and as best I could, I played the game… and I played it well!

Now, I will have to see if I need to take the Scotland "fate line" in May in order that this fateful journey feel complete. I guess Fate will determine that…












Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Flying High

I'm leavin' on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh babe, I hate (love!) to go... ~ Songwriters Denver/Marnay

I'm leaving in the morning to start my travels heading to New Zealand! I first make a stop in Maui for a few days to visit family and then I leave from Honolulu on October 28.

The "story with in a story" has already commenced so, I can only hope it gets even more strange and interesting than it already has been! 

Still nervy... solo for a whole month... but now starting to get excited (once I get that 50 lb suitcase upstairs!)  

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Happy Birthday to Me!

"The love we give away is the only love we keep." ~ Elbert Hubbard

In this blog post I had to, very abashedly, mention the fact that I had not had any sort of physical intimacy in the past eight years, not an intimate hug, nor kiss, nor sex in any way - my eight year drought!

In that blog post I had thought it was funny that I was having to exercise my knee so that it would be in tip top shape when I finally came together with C.

But, then, I think after that post, as you know I had broken up with C. However, in another post, after the break-up, I mentioned that I was still going to keep doing everything I had been doing to make my dreams come true - even continuing the knee "exercises!" 

Well, I have to say, two nights (well, actually into the wee hours just one day ahead!) before I turned 50 years old I broke my "eight year drought!" Woohoo! 

I happened to be at this pub (in my mom's home state - we were still on our months travels there) and a guy who looked almost exactly (I kid you not!) like this guy came in with another friend. They both looked about 28-30 to me. They came up to the crowded bar where I was sitting to order beers and I, per usual, introduced myself (that's just how I am - to anybody - not just a hot looking guy!), the guys got their beers and then went and talked to a group of people (I learned later) that were competitors with them in what seemed kind-of like and Iron Man race that was held that weekend in the town we were in. 

Anyway, this bar/restaurant closed kinda early - last call was at 10:30 PM - so this "hotty" guy comes back up to me (after literally not being around me for the past hour-and-a-half) and says that he and his friend are going to walk the couple of blocks to this other bar (the only "real" bar, i.e. no restaurant, just a bar, this town has!) and did I want to come with them? I was like, it's farther than a couple of blocks, but sure, I'll go, but get in my car 'cause I'm driving there, not walking!

So, we end up at the other bar and then the "hotty" starts "hitting" on me pretty heavy and I'm just going with the flow... 

Well, to make a long story a bit shorter... I break my eight year drought with this guy! However, as the drought is being broken, I'm thinking, this guy just doesn't seem like he has as much "experience" as I would expect of a 28-30 year old. I'm like, yeah, it's been eight years, but that doesn't mean I hadn't been with some really "experienced" guys in my "former life!" 

Well, after my super cute guy and I break my drought, I ask him - because, really, I felt something was just a little "off" - "How old are you?" And he replies back, "Nineteen." At that point I'm thinking in my head, well, holy f'n shit, I would not have guessed that, but it makes perfect sense! And then my next thought: Score: L - 19 (or something happily similar!)!!!

So, when he tells me he's nineteen I say to him, "I wish I knew you in ten years. You are going to make some girl very, very happy!" And he answers back, "I'll be here at the same time next year for the race!" So cute... as if in the year between now and then he will gain more "experience" and we can "hook up" again!

I was thinking totally positively when I decided that I was going to keep up with those knee "exercises" - despite C. breaking up with me - and in the end, it paid off... hell, yeah, it paid off!!! : )

Friday, October 18, 2013

A Thinking Body - Part Two

"The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them." ~ Bernard M. Baruch

So, as in my post, A Thinking Body, I mentioned the very "interesting" occurrence that my D. O., Dr. J., had experienced happening within my body. Trying, in many ways, to explain what he truly felt was - unexplainable - and in the end, the line I took most to heart was him telling me that my body, was so slowed down, that it was as if it had just stopped to, "think."

As I said, I had left his office with a lot of optimism and hope... I had felt like my Spirit had been giving me clear signs that "things" were about to change for the better in my life, and then when Dr. J. told me that it seemed as if my body was preparing for the "peace" before some major change, it just made me view both my body and Spirit seeming to be on the same page as to the positive direction my life was heading, even if, my logical mind still had no conception that such a dramatically positive change was coming my way...

As always, I had my doubts - my lack of faith - but I tried hard to keep reminding myself of all the "signs" I had been receiving and that was enabling my “hope level” to remain high.

So, as per Dr. J.’s request I went back two-and-a-half weeks later to see him for my fifth appointment. This appointment being on a Monday. I had to tell him that I had my “deathly” ill feeling of nausea. I also mentioned to him, right at the start of my appointment, that my boyfriend (what do I call this guy who I can’t seem to let go of, despite every reason that I should, and who never seems to be able to let go of me either - the guy you know as, C.!) had just broken up with (I didn't mention to him - AGAIN!) me!

Following will be an explanation of what happened after the last time C. broke up with me... what was it in mid-July? My dear grandmother, may she rest in peace (though over my relationship with C. I feel sure she is rolling over in her grave!) would have titled the last year-and-a-half of my life with C. as, “As the Worm Turns,” in a sarcastic homage to the soap opera of old, “As the World Turns” - the one with all the shenanigans and drama!

Anyway, I mentioned to Dr. J. that the most recent out-of-the -blue-break-up had happened on Saturday afternoon, just two days before my appointment with him. He then explained to me that it very well could be that the stress I was under from that inexplicable breakup was what was making my body have its severely adverse nausea reaction. I then had to tell to him my “deathly” ill nausea had come over me exactly one week before the time of my "boyfriend's breakup!*

This time when Dr. J. put his hands under my body and began feeling what was taking place within, I asked him to compare my “thinking” body of my last visit to this one - the one that was as sick as I ever get - and he told me that my body was exactly the opposite of how it had been on my last visit. This time, he said, it felt like my body was under attack, that it was stressed out to its limit, that nothing no longer was the same as before.

I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed. I had had such high hopes about everything before; about my illness going away, about my relationship with C. once again seeming back on track and as good as ever, about my dreams finally coming true. But that wasn’t how it was. It was the opposite of all of that.

When I got in my car and began the two-and-a-half hour trip back I decided to forgo getting on the main highway that led to the interstate and home, but rather, to take back-country roads. I didn’t have a map; I didn’t need one - I knew west and from there it was easy to just head that direction, and whenever there was a road south, take that direction, too.

A whole other story developed just from that forty-five miles of slow, country driving - the short version being: I took a risk and overcame a fear, stopping at a place that I didn’t think I had any business being at - but it turned out to be exactly what I needed - because when I found my way back to the interstate that would take me home, I felt more confident of who I was, what I wanted, and where I was going.

So, now as I drove those monotonous, interstate miles I began to think on C. and why the “Universe” had “plopped” him so randomly, so unexpectedly, in my life. I questioned what reason the “Universe” had for making me endure everything I had endured with C. over the past year-and-a-half. I questioned why C. had come into my life without me seeming to have gotten one single thing out of him having done so! “Why?” I kept saying to myself. “What was the reason; what was the purpose for C. ending up in my life?” I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t understand the “game.” I felt a over a year of my life had been spent, and wasted, on this one person who, in the end, took so much from me and gave so little back!

It all seemed like a waste and I didn't know how to make it not seem like that! It felt like I was given heartache when all I believe I deserved was my heart's desires manifest!

I kept driving, on the auto-pilot of thought, on a road that went straight, for mile after mile, and yet everything in my world felt twisted into a meaningless wreckage of shambles! 

But my mind kept shouting, over the music that loudly played through my car's stereo, that this whole thing - this year-and-a-half of ups and downs - the highs of excited anticipation, the lows of being cast off with no reasoning - had to have purpose!!!" I could not accept that the "Universe" did not have some positive thing come out of, what appeared to me now, to be nothing more than sheer shenanigans!

I continued my thinking, if the "Universe" is going to have dropped some random guy, fatefully in "my lap," make me fall in love with him, allow him to break my heart time after time, and think "It" was going to get away with that without a quibble from me then, it had another thing coming! 

I literally could not accept that what I got for all my time and effort over this long period of time with C. was for nothing - and further, that the "Universe" thought that it was acceptable!

And as I began to think, how could I get one freak'n positive thing out of all the shit that I went through, out of every negative aspect of this "randomness" that the "Universe" dropped in my life - C. - of everything that I endured, a thought came in my mind. And what was this thought? Where did it come from? Musings, yes, but what "inspired" it, i.e., where did the idea have its inception; how was it "conceived?" I can't say exactly, but what I can say is, that I came to realize that there was a way to say to the "Universe," "You got to play your game, now I'm going to play mine!" Sort of like, check and then checkmate!

In that brief, clear moment of space and time, I decided that I was going to take one sentence that C. wrote, in over a year-and-a-half of writing me, and I was going to make something happen. I wasn't going to sit by and let the "Universe" toy with me. I was going to go and "toy" with the "Universe!"

"How," you might ask, "does one "toy" back with the "Universe?" Well, my thinking went something like this: as I said, I felt like the "Universe" had plopped C. randomly into my world and in my entire time with C. all he seemed to do was shake my world up. My feeling was that that was all I got out of my situation with C.: my world being so shaken up that at times it felt as if the North pole became the South and the South the North! And for what, I kept saying to the "Universe?" Just to "shake my life up?" "Really," I thought, "just to shake my life up?" And negatively, shake it up, my thoughts persistently added. Well, that just was not acceptable to me! Nope, not acceptable, my dear "Universe!"

All these thoughts were racing through my head much faster than the speed with which my car zoomed down the road, and they all led to that one sentence (I actually thought on two very different sentences he wrote over the course of our relationship, but my mind seemed determined to concentrate on just the one!). And the sentence that persisted in my thinking was something C. wrote in his first email to me from New Zealand after his last breakup with me in mid-July! The sentence that wouldn't leave my head was, "Maybe you should come down here and have a look for yourself ... lots of very virile young males on the street, overall, and very healthy-looking population."

BOOM! That was it! Those were the the words written that were going to make something positive come out of something negative! And it didn't hurt, that further along in this particular email, he had written: "There really are some fine looking guys here... I think you might find a handful of acceptable ones within a few days. Happy hunting!"

My heart felt like it had been broken, once again, into a thousand pieces and I was turning 50 years old, I thought to myself, virile men are exactly what I want (read: need!)!

And it was right then that I decided that New Zealand was where I wanted to go! I wasn't going to be going there to look up C. (hey, I ain't the stalker type!) I was going to go there so that I could "plop" myself randomly, and unexpectedly, into the lives of some people who had no idea I was going to come over there and shake their world up! 

However, unlike C., I was going to go over there and try to make some positive things happen. I was going to change the course of my fate (and quite possibly!) the fate of any one I might come into contact with, simply because C. had come into my life! 

In other words, if C. and I had never so "fatefully" met, i.e., the "Universe" had decided not to bring him to me and me to him, then I would never have known him and those lines would never have been written and I would never have been heartbroken, and I would certainly not be contemplating a trip to the other side of the world! 

But I was! From that moment on I decided that that was exactly what I was going to do. I was going to travel to New Zealand, spend a month exploring that country and its people, and have adventure - of only God knows what kind - all thanks to a boy, the "Universe" felt compelled to put in my path. And now, because of that, I was going to put myself in other peoples' path. 

And after my decision, after I had bought my ticket to New Zealand, (I'm GOING TO NEW ZEALAND!!!) I wrote C. an email about it all (but of course I didn't tell him I was going to New Zealand, I told him I was going to Scotland - the other place he had mentioned, and of which I had briefly thought might be my destination!)

This is a condensed version - actually two separate emails - (though all the words are exactly as I had written them, I'm just leaving out the superfluous things I had said before I got down to the "brass tacks" of my idea):

The first: 

Also, C., I want to let you know something I think you may find interesting (and good!)! Who knows, but it may be that your breaking up with me will turn out to be the best thing that ever happened at this moment in time! You see, because of it, well, mostly since after having spent this past year-and-a-half in a relationship with you and never getting the fucking reward (literally!), I have decided, that because of everything I went through, I am going to give myself a fucking reward!

And the reward I am giving myself all has to do with you, i.e., if I had never met you I would not be doing this particular thing now, if ever!

I am going to go to Scotland!!! For a month!!!

Well, first I will fly to London, maybe stay a few days there, and then on to Edinburgh! I'm sure I'll do half my time traveling by rail and then the other half I'll probably rent a car and go wherever the fuck I want! But, damn, C., I wanted/needed to get something positive out all the energy I put into "us" and I thought, that randomly deciding to go to a place that you had so vividly described, which had such ancient history to explore, such seeming sense of spiritualness about it, would be the perfect way (maybe the only way!) that I could take something from our time together and turn into some fucking amazing thing!

Just think, I will go places and meet people who I never would have come across in my life except for having met you and deciding to put my own bit of serendipity into this crazy equation that had been "us!" I'm really excited and it'll be interesting for me to visit that ancient town by the sea you so thoroughly recounted to me, Crail! I just feel pleased that my world had been shaken up by you and now I am going to use that shake up to shake up some totally unsuspecting people whose lives I will cross during my travels! It just feels so right to me! So, as that old saying goes, I'm taking my lemons and making lemonade : )


Best, 

L
______________

And the second: 


C., I met you, spent a year-and-a-half of my life being your best Pen-pal EVER, and got nothing out of it - that is until now, when you broke up with me and set me free!!! Kind of me (finally!) saying my, "C., go to hell" moment!

So, basically, since you fucked me over, I have already, in a circuitous way, been introduced to so many possibilities and people who otherwise would never have come into my life... so far the best introduction being by a grade-school friend, to this freak'n awesome guy - (he's married so it's just purely his freak'n awesomeness and the fact that he knows the world, never mind my travels in the UK and Scotland, inside and out, that makes me goofy over him... and interesting tidbit: he's actually from NZ... thought that ironic!)

So, thanks C.! And whoever said getting fucked over by your boyfriend for another girl, was the worst thing EVER, obviously didn't turn it around to make it the freak'n BEST THING EVER!!! 


And I do find the idea of you having "fucked" me over (or maybe the opposite of that?!) as my sole reason for going - as a means of serendipitously plopping myself in the middle of some unsuspecting people lives, purely because you were unexpectedly "plopped" into my life, and mentioned a place... fascinating - and so me to the core (which I guess, in essence, means I find me, and the workings of my mind, fascinating! Haha! ; ) )

I look forward (if you should be interested) in telling you of all the shit that has happened since I decided Monday, a week ago (the day after you wrote me your, Serious - READ email!) that I was going to put "Operation C. Fucked Me Over So..." into effect... and holy shit, I can't believe all that has come out of you fucking me over! Some of it is hilarious, some of it is so six-degrees-of-separation, and some of it is just sheer exciting... but all of it, as good an imagination as I think I have, I couldn't have possibly begun to have thought up! It's truly amazing! 

It just shows me that if you can't change a situation, you can still change your attitude about the situation... and that can make all the difference in the world!

C., you think you're flourishing? Hell, I think I've bloomed! : )

Best, 

L
________________

Hahaha! And this is what he wrote back in response to all that I had said in the above emails: "I am positively delighted for you that you are going to take a trip to Scotland, and I hope that you find it all that you are looking for and more. If you see something you might otherwise have missed but for me, I'm happy about that, too." 

Wow! C. obviously completely over-looked all of the, "because you fucked me over" part of my message and took my meaning to be that my meeting him was good! Good, grief, but that's C., everything always on his terms.

Well, who knows, maybe my meeting him will turn out to be "good!" After all, I am going to New Zealand!!! I leave Wednesday, with a stop in the Hawaiian Islands, then leaving for Auckland October 28th (arriving the 29th!) and not departing that beautiful country (I've seen the amazing pictures!) until November 28 - Thanksgiving Day! 

Believe me, this is the beginning of a story within a story, and I can't wait to tell of it all! 

Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers! 


*In a future blog post I would like to delve further into the mind, body, spirit connection of which I feel doctors' only have an understanding of one "part." My talk with Dr. J. makes me feel as if I would like to discuss the other "part."

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Once A Year

“I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours forever.” ~ Robert Browning

Today, not very long ago, really, I turned 50 years old.

I'm presently on my yearly travels with my mom back to her "homeland" - the state of her birth. As I said my goodnight to her she said what we always have said to each other on the eve of ones birthday, "Good night my __ year old. I'll see my sweet __ year old in the morning." But tonight when she said, "Good night my 49 year old," I stopped her and said, "Don't say it! I don't want to turn 50!" I told her if I had my husband and children right now I wouldn't care at all that I was turning 50, but I didn't, yet, I reminded her.

But, then, I got dressed warmly and went outside into the cold night air, with it's sweeping breeze blowing across my face, laid down and looked up at a pitch black sky with what seemed like a zillion stars above me. I listened to my iPod, took sips from a beer, just slightly colder than the air around me, and I felt like I was "home" among my "people!" For, the bright stars that are uncountable in the night sky, make my spirit soar! It's as if, I am them and they are me... as crazy as it sounds, I feel like from their vantage point, I light up the sky they see! I can't explain very well my "connection" to the dazzling night sky, but as infinite as it seems looking out at it, it makes me feel - instead of small and insignificant - like I am infinite, too.

So, as I saw the shooting stars flash from one part of the sky to another - so many times that I was awestruck - I felt happy, really happy. I was leaving 49 years behind and heading into the beginning of my 50th year and I felt like, Wow! Reaching this new age and having my dreams come true - which is what Dreaming Miracles is all about - is going to be even that much more of a miracle than ever! And the feeling of joy, when I attain my dreaming miracles, will feel like I am the light that is shooting across the darkened sky.

And at the stroke of midnight, to celebrate my 50th year, I pressed play on my iPod to this song... And I felt blessed, for just as I was about to go inside, I watched one more star, race across the heavens, letting me know, that it really is... a wonderful world!

Oh, and I got an early birthday present late on Sunday evening of which I will tell of in a future post. Very interesting... and a little shocking! : )

Saturday, September 28, 2013

A Thinking Body

"Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I am backlogged on my writing of post for Dreaming Miracles. It's not as if things haven't been happening, but that I just haven't written of their happenings. I'll try to catch you up...

I've written a lot over the course my Dreaming Miracles journey about the illness I've endured during these past three years: chronic, severe nausea. I've mentioned all of the different medical modalities, both Eastern and Western, that I have tried to cure me of it, the most recent being sessions with, Z., a hypnotherapist that my neuropsychiatrist, Dr. T. had referred me to. 

As I had mentioned in my post, The Dark Night of the Soul, it was thought that the hypnotherapist could do what's called a "regression" which I basically understood as taking you back to the point of some trouble, and then attempts to "re-program" your thinking - your mind - so as to see what occurred not in a negative light, and to not hold onto that feeling, whatever it may be, any longer (I'll try to write a post on that therapy soon...).

However, during all of this time I'm not sure I mentioned that within the past month-and-a-half I had been driving five hours round-trip, about once a week to see a D.O (Doctor of Oestopatheic medicine) that specializes in cranial-sacral therapy and manipulation therapy.

Originally, my neuropsychiatrist, Dr. T., had referred me to a local woman in my town who was licensed in cranial-sacral therapy in the hopes of relieving my nausea that might be due to a new diagnosis (which I'll explain further down in this post), but I don't think at the time I actually explained anything about that. But in order to make a long story shorter, I saw this woman for therapy about five or six times with no change in my nausea, at which point she referred me to the D.O. doctor that happened to be the two-and-a-half hour drive away. She had told me that she felt like I could be helped with the therapy, but that she had reached her professional limits as to how to help me, and believed that this doctor, Dr. J., would, with his medical expertise, be worth traveling to see.

I took her advice and called his office right away, only to be told that I needed a doctor's referral, and that Dr. J. only saw one new patient per week, so it would be at least a month before I could get an appointment. I then called my neuropsychiatrist, Dr. T., and asked her to call him and see what she thought, i.e., did she think he would be helpful to my condition - this "new" condition being that I had had an MRI done in the past year of my head (my general practice doctor had tested everything over the years but my head!). And, to my surprise (because I had thought nothing would show up on the MRI unless it might be an inner-ear problem), it was found that I have what's called a, Chiari malformation - a malformation that forms at the base of the skull - which doesn't present until about 28-30 years old (as it turns just when my first bouts of nausea started!).

At my first appointment with Dr. J. he found four "problem" areas that he felt he could "manipulate" to the point of fixing them, but he said, he didn't know whether or not fixing those problems would be the key to relieving me of my nausea. My feeling was that any problem area that needed "fixing" could only help my overall health so I was definitely on board even if my nausea didn't go away. So, I had that first appointment. Then a week or so later at my second appointment I asked him what his evaluation was from the the first appointment and he said he felt I had a 10% improvement on what he was working on. After the third visit he felt that I had a 35-40% improvement. But of course, if my nausea had decreased at all, it certainly hadn't gone away. It still overwhelmed me, both physically and mentally.

But then, a month or more into driving this long drive to see him, I had my fourth appointment. And almost immediately, when he began to feel with his hands (manipulate) the first problem area, he seemed taken aback. He said out loud, "This is very strange!" I asked him what he meant, i.e., was I worse, was my condition different, what was going on?

He took his hands out from underneath me and told me it was very difficult for him to explain, as what he had felt within my body - the movement - for, he had said to me, he had come across something remotely similar, only once before (and that being fifteen years earlier), in his twenty-five years practicing this medicine. He explained to me it was if my body had slowed down so much that it was almost undetectable. He seemed flabbergasted and he actually said he was - "floored!" He said, "Now I understand how my students must feel!"

Since he had told me he had once experienced this "slowness," which he tried his best to describe, but felt he could only come up short, as he himself didn't fully understand it! I asked him about the other patient, if there was any correlation, but he couldn't recall that exact patient situation (he did recall it later in our talk, but it wasn't like me, however, it was "strange" - in an amazingly positive way!).

Anyway, I kept trying to understand him and so he kept trying to allow me to do so. He said to me, "It is as if your body is "thinking." It is slowed down so thoroughly it has stopped to just "think!" He then tried another explanation, saying, it was as if my body was in a decompression chamber trying to balance itself out. He went on to again try to explain the slowness of what was going on inside my body; it is like, "The peace before the storm," he said, "No, storm isn't the right word," he quickly added, "The peace before something major is about to take place, some shift, something, I believe, to be positive in its change." And he said he would be anxious to see me back in two or three weeks time to see what, if anything, had developed.

During this time, because he had used the words, "my body was thinking" and "it's as if your body is trying to balance itself out," and further that it was the, "peace before a major change." I confided in him, in very short words, my dream of having a biological child of my own, my just having returned from a silent retreat and having had all kinds of "signs" coming at me seeming to tell my spirit that some wonderful things were just ahead in my future and then I relayed to him that story (I'm sure I mentioned it in and earlier post) about getting the infection after my hernia operation and when I asked the surgeon why I had gotten it, had I done something wrong to have gotten it? She had said, "Only 1% of all surgeries result in an infection, meaning 99% of people don't get one!" I explained to this D.O., Dr. J., how happy hearing the surgeons words were to me... my feeling of jubilation at being in the 1%, telling him that I knew that if I could be in the 1% of something negative, it just told me that I could be in the 1% of something positive! And do you know what his answer back to me was after he had just experienced this, what was to him, an astonishing medical "unknown" within me? He told me, "You aren't in the 1%. You are in the .0000001%!"

And when I left him, shaking his head at the phenomenon he had just felt my body going through, and walked out of his office to my car, it was like I was in shock. I was shocked into the realization that though the logic of my mind seemed to have no comprehension of what was taking place in my life, in my near future, it was as if my spirit and my body were on the same "page!" It was like my spirit had been sending me these signs telling me to keep my faith strong and continue on this difficult path I had been on and now my body was seeming to reiterate exactly that which my spirit "knew." Again, my logical mind didn't feel any change; I still felt as nauseous as I ever had, but "something" was happening... even if I didn't yet "know" it myself.

It was an exciting time; an exciting feeling and I wanted it to be true and to see a different result from all the results of my past...

I'll tell you about my fifth visit to Dr. J., this D. O., in my next post... it too was "different," but in another "strange" way...

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Bear with Me

"Some people grin and bear it; while others smile and do it." ~ Mike Jones

Please bear with me... I have so much to write about (don't get your hopes up for me just yet though!), but have not had the time (taken the time!) to write about it all. I will, within the next three weeks, have plenty to say...

Monday, September 2, 2013

Life Song of the Child

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." ~ Helen Keller

I couldn't have come across this story at a more perfect time...

There is a tribe in East Africa in which... the birth date of a child is not counted from the day of its physical birth nor even the day of its conception, as in other village cultures. For this tribe the birth date comes the first time the child is a thought in its mother's mind. 

Aware of her intention to conceive a child with a particular father, the mother then goes off to sit alone under a tree. There she sits and listens until she can hear the song of the child that she hopes to conceive; the child that wants to come to her. 

Once she has heard it - the song of this child - she returns to her village and teaches it to the man who will be the child’s father so that they can sing it together as they make love, inviting the child to join them.

After the child is conceived, she sings it to the baby in her womb. Then she teaches it to the old woman and midwives of her village, so that throughout the labor and at the miraculous moment of birth itself, the child is welcomed with its song. 

After the birth, all the villagers learn the song of their new member and sing it to the child when it falls or hurts itself. The song is sung in times of triumph, or in rituals and initiations. And it goes this way throughout their life - when the child is grown, as part of the marriage ceremony, the songs are sung together.

And, then, at the end of life, his or her loved ones will gather around the deathbed and sing this song for the last time.

Excerpted from the book, Welcoming Spirit Home: Ancient African Teachings to Celebrate Children and Community - Sobonfu E. Some