Tag: fear

Shame

There is already a conversation on the concept of “Catholic Shame”, which is the idea that one feels intense shame at certain thoughts, feelings, and actions that may be somewhat commonplace or only a small deal in terms of sin, and it is especially strong for the realm of sexuality and sexual acts. I have both heard of this and experienced this much in my life.

What I hadn’t heard, however, was the idea of the Madonna-Whore complex as tied to Catholic Shame. Separate from the whole Sigmund Freud idea, it is the concept that Catholic (and Christian) women, once married, have trouble transitioning from the idea that sexual acts are always sinful to that they now are an acceptable and encouraged act of love with God at their center. Put differently, when, as a married woman, she participates in sexual acts with her husband, though those acts are blessed within the marriage, she feels like a whore… because she’s spent the first however many years of her life believing she must be a whore if she even wanted those acts, let alone participated in them.

So, that’s a new one for me… and I believe it most definitely will apply to me once I marry… :/

Post-a-day 2023

Sharing is caring

I shared last night my recent stresses about getting out with my man. It has grown increasingly difficult to get myself to go anywhere that isn’t absolutely necessary. I already had the touch of depression, then my hormones and such got a little more off than usual. Add to those the stress about money, and we have an effective recipe for my sort of agoraphobia to pop back up.

Granted, it has come in tiny waves the past few years, popping up in little bitty sports here and there. But it always settles back down and disappears into the sand after a couple weeks at most, and it never gets very bad in the first place.

But this has been different. It has been increasing steadily the past several weeks or so. I almost didn’t notice at first that it was stronger than usual, because I normally adjust my ways and it goes away. So, I don’t have to out much thought into it. By the time I paid it closer attention, it had progressed significantly.

And it isn’t that I’m afraid to go out and be around people. It’s that the idea of leaving the house and going somewhere that isn’t necessary seems a nearly-insurmountable task. And, when I consider surmounting it, I come close to breaking down and crying, feeling utterly inadequate, and just wanting to cuddle up into a blanket and someone’s arms (preferably my man’s) on the sofa and slowly fall asleep.

So, I told all this to my man last night. I was embarrassed to tell him, and even more so because I had waited so long to say anything to him. Clearly, I have been having an increasing issue, but I haven’t wanted to share about it, because I had felt like he would be mad at me, or maybe just even more frustrated at my stupid OCD-related crap… because my whole thing is that I’m not worth it, and this would be one more reason to hand him that would show how very much I am not worth it… Likely that is the real reason I didn’t say a word about it, though I never put much thought or conscious intention into not telling him.

Nonetheless, I told him. And I was sad and ashamed. And he said that he was okay. And I cried very hard.

And then I felt better. By the time I woke up today, definitely not rested enough, due to the crappy sleep thing right now and waking up constantly for the second half of each night, I felt loads better. I dealt with a lot of crap at school today, and then had no struggle heading to volunteering. I hung out there afterward a bit, then headed to Costco for gas and groceries for my man, forgot about Costco, because I was on the phone with my man, and went home to see my man before he went to the gym. When I was down the street, he asked what I was doing, because I was supposed to be at Costco. Oops. I would give him a kiss, then, and then go. And the next part was awesome, in its way.

He said he was worried I wouldn’t be able to go back out, if I came home first. I thought about it, and I realized that I was totally okay and that I would have no issue getting back out. I was grateful for that feeling. But I also was grateful that we had been able to discuss it clearly and honestly. I think that alone could have helped me tonight, had I needed the help to get back out. Though I didn’t need it tonight, this opportunity to discuss my struggles openly together could prove to be immensely helpful in the future.

And I am incredibly grateful.

Thank you, God, for guiding me to share last night. And thank you for this man. He is such a beautiful piece of your Creation, and an absolute blessing to me (not to mention the perfect kind of thorn in my side [or is it a rib, in fact, and we just never realized it?]). Thank you. Help us sleep well at night, please. Heal us all, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Calling and Stressing

Sometimes, it feels like God is calling me in a certain direction, yet the world seems to be setting itself against my going in that direction. And sometimes, it feels like I am being offered a choice between two seemingly similar yet extremely different directions, and I truly cannot tell which is the one God is asking, recommending, calling me to pursue.

And sometimes, it’s both at the same time.

God, help me, please, to see clearly your will for me and my family and our life. Help me to see this next step clearly and to pursue and fulfill it with comfort, ease, and confidence in your guidance and will and love. Thank you for this life. Please, help me to live it at my best possible. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Drama queen

“I gave you a chance, and you chose violence!” he declares, a sense of both betrayal and comedy in his voice as he practically runs away down the hall.

You see, he was giving me a hard time about giving him a goodbye kiss, not bending over far enough for me to be able to reach him properly. So, I said, ‘Okay, fine. Goodbye,’ and I continued on to my next intended activity… which was filing my nails. One was bothering me still, and I needed to fix it, you see. But he can’t stand nail filing. I always have to make sure I do it when he isn’t around, or that I go be sneaky across a room, turned the other way – something like that, anyway. Since he clearly wasn’t going to give me a kiss without my having to jump or something absurd, I let it go and moved on. The moment I pulled out the nail file, though, he yelped and started running. I merely started laughing. Either come back and kiss me, and I’ll put it away, or I’ll just continue on with my plans, I told him. His response, of course, was where this story started. 😛

And no, he did not give me a fair chance of kissing him, but he had, technically, given me a chance. Boy, did he get a bit of a shock in return for his lack of fairness and kindness. 😛

Post-a-day 2023

Faith

Sometimes, I have trouble having faith that all will work out perfectly, that God will take care of us, that things are going as they are right now for a very good and valuable reason in my life and in the lives of those I love.

And yet, as someone mentioned tonight, whenever we have no faith at all, everything just feels even worse… we have no hope, no true love embedded naturally in life, no trust that we will be taken care of in the end, even if we feel we have failed to do our part.

And so, even though it sucks when I struggle to trust in God, it sucks even more when I give up on Him entirely… so, I’ll take my struggling faith over no faith any day.

Dear God, I am sorry that I have doubt toward you and your plans. I am sorry that I give in to the temptations of the devil and his workers. And I accept that I will continue to do both for the rest of my life. Please, help me to grow in my strength to resist the bad and to uphold the good. Help me to grow always in my trust in you and your works. Help me always to pursue and to fulfill your will. Your son, Jesus Christ, suffered in our stead and died in sacrifice for our sins such as I have mentioned. In his name, I pray in gratitude and faith. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Breathing room

My man got real with me today about my current stress levels. I have been making an effort to see my grandma, who recently moved to town and is struggling with her physical body a lot at present, most days since she moved to town. He pointed out that I have been living as though my grandma were going to die within the next month… and that it is incapacitating me.

You see, I haven’t been able to get almost anything done at home. There is loads of tidying that I actually want to do, but I haven’t been able to do any of it. And I haven’t even been getting enough sleep at night as it is. I have so much work to do right now, that that, combined with visiting my grandma so often, has left me with no available time and still getting to bed later than I need to be getting to bed each night. What’s more, living on a lack of sleep means that everything with work takes longer and is a lot harder for me. So, basically, I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning for a few weeks now, and it really sucks. I normally get loads done at home whenever he’s out of town, and it currently feels worse than ever at home, though he’s been out of town for two weeks.

And I think he’s right. I can still love my grandma and not drain myself entirely. Even going every other day would be better for me and my physical body, as well as my mental state.

Plus, I need to honor not only my bedtime but my ‘be-home’ time, the time each day I need to be home in order to settle down and get ready for bed on time. I learned years ago that I cannot just slide into bed as soon as I get home. On a super fast night, it still takes me half an hour, which is usually rather stressful having to hurry everything along. A typical night makes my bedtime routine an hour to an hour and a half. If I’ve had a tough day, add an extra half hour of wind-down time. So, when my family thinks it’s no big deal for me to be hanging out for dinner at a quarter to seven, I need to speak up and leave, so I can actually be home by seven. Otherwise, I’m already getting to bed late. Just like tonight. I was just stopping by for 15 minutes. Over an hour later, after having been roped into helping with something, I was finally leaving, stressed and knowing I’d be starting the week off lacking sleep.

However, I did tell my grandma that I wouldn’t be back until Tuesday, the day after tomorrow, which was good for me. And she also seemed totally okay with it. I hope she is. As my mom mentioned today, my grandma hasn’t had so much company and so much visit time in who knows how long. She hasn’t had anything like it the past year and a half. And, even when she and my Opa still lived in their house the past decade or so, they didn’t typically have visits more than once a week from family or friends.

I just hope she will heal and will get to enjoy living here.

God, help us all to pursue and to fulfill your will. Heal my grandma, please. Heal, also, my brothers’ dad, please. Lots of healing and love over here would be awesome, of course. Help us all to be filled with your love and your grace. Thank you for this life. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Ballet

I went to a ballet class this morning. My friend has signed up her daughter, who recently turned three, for ballet classes at a studio in a nearby neighborhood. I had joined them to watch that class this week after school one day. While it was absolutely adorable and a total morale boost, it also made me want to do ballet classes myself.

I had only officially done a beginner series of six classes eight years ago, plus a private lesson and a single drop-in in an intermediate class after the series. I also had had a few beginner drop-in classes here and there years before that. Very little had stuck from those, though.

So, eight years after the beginner series, here I am, stepping into a class that is for middle- and high-school-students, but that is technically an open drop-in class for adults, too.

I was terrified, and I showed up anyway. This morning was certainly a morning filled with courage. I didn’t do amazingly – not at all. But I did do most of the stuff in the class. By the end of the floor work, we were doing some things I had not ever learned to do, so I was guessing and making it up as I went, and also stepping back to observe more before trying it out again. All in all, it was a good time had by me. I imagine the kids in the class were thrown by my presence, but I rolled with it happily. And the teacher made it clear that I was, in fact, invited back both for that class and for certain other ones, too. (I even asked if I could take the lower level classes, and she told me that I didn’t need to take them. So, though I was happy yet serious with my inquiry, she was, too. I apparently am functioning enough to stay in the class.) So, that was cool. Woohoo!

I look forward to improving and to doing better each class.

I certainly have things to work on before I go back, and I hope I can make that happen consistently, starting this week. Because I really want to go back and to do better by a lot each time. I truly enjoy the feeling of doing ballet right. It is such a good feeling. Not because it’s right, but because ballet itself truly just feels amazing to do.

God, thank you for this blessing and opportunity of today. Thank you for the dancing. Thank you for my own sense of humour and easy acceptance of my current levels with everything. Help me to honor you through practice and dancing. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

P.S. God, would you heal my grandma and my brothers’ dad, please? In your name, I pray. Amen.

Stress

Today was tough for me, filled with emotions, both of my own and of others. I did things in ways that weren’t the best, but that were the best I could do with the information and experience I had at the time. Now, only hours later, I certainly would do them differently, if presented with the opportunity again. Sometimes, that is hard to accept, knowing so soon how I could have done something so much better than I did. But, as I said already, I did the best I could with the available information. Now that I have more, I can act differently going forward. I did well at first, and I will do well in the future. Every event is a lesson available to me, allowing me to improve for the future. Today was no exception.

Dear God, please, help heal those in need of your healing. Help release the strain held so heavily and highly by the student today. Help him to accept fully your love and to trust in you. Help him to accept the help he needs and wants. And help him to let go of the restraints that prevent him from getting that help. Heal him, please. Thank you for this blessing of such trust. Thank you for this life. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Day one

Tomorrow is the first day of school. I am simultaneously not really worried at all and somewhat freaking out (mostly because I am so ‘no big deal’ about it all). Sure, I want to make a good impression and do a good job and all that jazz. But I also… it’s not that I don’t care about it all. Perhaps it is that the first day, in my mind, is just a day now. It didn’t used to be. But it seems to be for me now, anyway. I can’t get much done in terms of lesson-planning until I start meeting with students. So, I’d like to go ahead and meet with them in order to find out where they all are with everything. Language courses are kind of like that. Yes, we have specific goals for the year, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be able to start right away with new material. Most of them are new learners of the language, and most only have exposure during the school year and in the classroom. So, two months of no class means massive recession of their abilities in the language. And I didn’t teach these particular students last year, so I don’t even know what they truly covered, nor how well they mastered what they did cover. So, my first unit of the year, except for French I, is always a review unit to get everyone on the same page.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to it, I guess. I think it has the potential to be a really great year.

Thank you, God. Please, give me your perfect words this year. Help me to be your servant in my teaching especially. Help me always to pursue and fulfill your will. In your name, I pray in gratitude. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Trust like children

I shared with my aunt today about the kakizome and the idea of these dreams God has given me being like the center of a labyrinth – they were recently just within sight and reach, but have suddenly swooped far away, like I have gone to the outer edges of the labyrinth… yet a labyrinth only has one path, and it eventually will turn all the way to the center goal… we just have to walk the whole thing, which weaves inward and outward many a times. She commented that the labyrinth comparison was a very good one to remember for all of life, that, yes, God is with us and guiding us and there is truly the one pathway on which He is guiding us, even though it seems to wander near to and far from our goals again and again…, but it still will reach there eventually. We just have to trust in God and follow His guidance.

On that note, she also commented that, when we trust in God, everything is easy. ‘That’s why He says to trust Him as children trust,’ she said. Because children trust wholly. As they grow up, they experience betrayal and they learn to be distrustful of others and of the world. But, when children are children, they trust wholly, and it is easy for them to be happy and free. Even when something bad happens, they are sad for a bit, and then bounce right back to being happy and free. They are trusting that they are cared for, that they are safe, that all is well.. even if they aren’t aware of it, they are trusting. And life is easy for them then.

What if we could trust God as children trust life? How free and easy we could be…

So, that is my goal: To keep an eye on my trust. If I am not free and easy, I can look to see where I am not trusting God in that moment. And then I can let it go and give it up to God, and trust in Him there, too. Just from our conversation this morning, I was able to see so much of how I was resisting trusting God, which was why I was so stressed still. As soon as I let it all go and gave it up to God, I suddenly was lighter physically, and was ready to go run errands I had dreaded so much, I had anticipated avoiding them entirely and skipping them. I went and shopped for – and found! – tops for work that fit me at two separate shops. And I had a great time. I wasn’t even stressed about it, though I had been the other day. I noticed the marked difference in how easy it was to find things and also to be okay when things didn’t fit, and just to move on without getting upset. It didn’t even occur to me to get upset when things didn’t fit, be they too big or too small, though that had not been the case the last two trips I’d made to look for work clothes. I’m not saying life was happy-go-lucky today. But it was significantly easier than it had been. And I actually had a great time today doing all of it.

I even had the first shop accidentally not give me the shoes I’d purchased, and I didn’t find out until after dinner tonight. I was loaded with adrenaline when I realized the error, and I was hoping they hadn’t re-sold the shoes to someone else, but I didn’t have this heavy sense of panic I typically might have gotten (or would have gotten recently, anyway). I just took action, found out the shop still had them for me, and got back dressed instead of showering and going to bed, and went to pick them up. I’m getting to bed an hour later than planned. And yet I had a good time even going to pick up the shoes. I’m still in a good mood now, and hour and a half past when I’d hoped to be in bed tonight. And it’s okay. I’m taking steps to improve, and I am trusting in God on a whole new level now… and it is amazing. And it is growing. And I love it all.

And I even had horrible diarrhea today, and I’m still in a great mood. It’s ridiculous and wonderful.

Thank you, God. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023