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...

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...

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...

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...

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…