Searching for Sacred

Insert foot in mouth, followed by ankle, calf, knee, oh heck, just swallow the whole leg.   This was me earlier this week.   In an attempt to fit in with the group and bring humor to the table, I ended up being completely insensitive and ate a whole lot of crow.   My obsessive brain replayed the tape over and over again for hours.   I go home, sleep, wake up and the tape started yet again.   Then the shame voice, “You are an idiot.”   The rationale voice tried to talk louder than the shame tantrum.   It was a mistake (a big one), but no one died.   There will be opportunity for repair.   I am human and I errored.   After 24 hours, my rational brain won and the obsessive loop of shame settled down.   The whispers of shame are still there, but it is no longer the dominant voice. I spent a little extra time this morning reflecting on what exactly happened that led up to the tasty crow and the subsequent obsessive loop.   A...

I had an unhealthy obsession with all things Holocaust as an adolescent.   Much of this obsession centered around understanding resilience in the face of the unthinkable.   I cannot remember which I read first, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom or The Diary of Anne Frank , but both works completely changed my life.   It set a trajectory of many term papers to come along with reading the wisdom of Eli Wiesel and Victor Frankl.   And for years, the fascination remained – why did some not only survive, but also maintain hope and compassion? I have a recurring dream where I am some type of resistance worker being chased by secret police.   I am always wary of my surroundings and keenly attuned to the fact that I carry papers that represent peoples lives.   I often am searching for food and safe hiding places.   I connect this dream to seeing myself as a rebellious survivor.   Recently, I was commenting on this obsession and it was suggested ...

Don’t judge a book by the cover.   Or as my oldest child who happens to be a foodie would say, “Don’t judge food based on how it looks” (this coming from the kid that eats braunschwager like its candy).   For those not familiar with braunschwager, think liverwurst. One of the highlights of my ER job is all the interesting people and stories I get to meet.     People usually do not come into the hospital looking their best, so it is hard to imagine them outside of looking ill, injured, and broken.   But if I get past the surface, there is a wealth of stories.   The other night, I helped checked in a man who won an Academy Award.   I have taken care of a POW shot down over Munich in WWII.   I had a patient who spent a few years in a POW camp in Danang, Vietnam.     I have taken care of Holocaust survivors.   I took care of someone who rescued stranded hikers from the National parks.   On the surface, they are the forgot...

Today it was Matt Lauer.   Before today, it was Kevin Spacey.   In the past few weeks, the #metoo movement has taken off.   It seems the last straw broke the camel’s back and women have had enough.   I have heard and read comments ranging from admiration for women’s bravery for speaking out to blaming and shaming other women for waiting too long and accusing women that they are only going on a witch hunt.   My heart is saddened.   I have daughters and a son who are watching this play out.   I wish I could blind their eyes and cover their ears to all this ugliness, but hiding the truth is exactly what led us to the place we are now. I have my own stories of sexual harassment.   I had a professor at a prominent university who sexually harassed most of us female students.   For me, it was groping my pregnant belly and telling me how sexy pregnancy made me.   To others, it included sexually explicit text messages.   Accusations...

A huge part of my current mid-life awakening is to address this part of me that is stoic – this part of me that is an emotional idiot.   It is one thing to know what emotions belong into each situation and then to act accordingly, but it is another to actually feel these emotions with reckless abandon.   I was/am tired of pretending my way through emotions.   Tired of only experiencing the surface of what this emotional life has to offer.   I was/am ready for the fullness of what my mind, body, spirit and emotional life has to offer. To feel to the depths requires trust.  Trust that if I feel, I will not get hurt.  Trust that I can stay safe despite what emotional state I am encountering.  Trust that rage and despair will not choke the life out of me.  At age 40, I am trusting this process; trusting the journey that my emotional life has to offer.  Yes, I am feeling old grief and it sucks.  But on the flip side, the ups are becomi...

We sang a song at Mass this past Sunday.   Psalm 23, “Shepherd Me O God,”   and this song was out of place.   We sang it at the end of Mass, not in the typical Responsorial Psalm location (another Psalm was sung there.)   As we started singing, my soul woke up.   Immediately I knew this was reflecting the longing of my inmost being.   Click here if you want to hear the song.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP3eGsqGWZk . The refrain goes like this, “Shepherd me, O God/ beyond my wants/ beyond my fears/ from death into life.”  The eerie tune combined with these words led me to a place I was not expecting.  Faith has not/does not come easy for me.  One reason, rather than the song above being my theme, I have lived more by Simon and Garfunkel’s “I am a Rock.”             “I’ve built walls / A fortress deep and mighty /That none may penetrate.” Or as one friend so politel...

I believe my youngest slyly entered this world to teach me how to love and live life to the fullest.  I say"sly" because she was "Twin Baby B."  Twin Baby A was a boy, and with us already having a girl at home, we probably would have stopped trying to have more children.  God had other plans and brought us the AMAZING gift of Maddie. Maddie sees and navigates through this world opposite of my tightly controlled, organized, perfectionist ways.  She will spend three hours cleaning her room on Saturday only to be unable to walk across her floor on Sunday.  What I see as mess and junk, she sees as opportunity and the start of something beautiful.  She collects everything that glittersand shines and then uses her treasures to create art and three dimensional worlds.  She is friends with everyone and wears her heart on her sleeve.  She needs ten hugs before I leave for work and an extra long tuck in before she goes to bed.  She has a contagious ...

I work night shift in a Level 1 trauma center/emergency department.   I love my job.   I love my coworkers.    This is a job where it is not uncommon to hear, “Will you come help me get clean up this patient?” and you never really know what bodily fluid or massive wound/injury is needing cleaned.   T his is an environment where we help one another without hesitation.   We work side by side coding patients and saving lives.   We work together to restrain violent patients.   We give each other reassuring looks before we walk into a dying patient’s room.   We see a lot of crazy stuff and do not think much about how it may affect us.  After all, it is what we do.   But to manage the stress, we are a crew that finds time for playfulness and laughing at what others might find inappropriate.   Saturday night, I was walking around the hallway at work when a coworker jumped out and scared me.   I jumped and nearly wet my ...

I am reading Daring Greatly , by Brene’ Brown.  This is a book about authentic living and the courage to be vulnerable.  It is about confronting shame and developing resilience to shame’s attacks.   For this moment in my life, her writing is speaking directly into the needs of my spirit.  It is like she is reading my mind – hearing the questions I have struggled with and writing with such honest gentleness I am able to hear and digest.  It is annoyingly painful, yet I can feel a current of joy underneath the pain working its way to the surface. I have spent the better part of my life building up shame resistance.  I freakin’ hate shame and all its nasty thoughts and feelings it brings to the table.  That voice that says if people really knew me they would be disgusted.  If they were to see me, they would run in fear.  That voice that says I am not worthy of connection; not worthy of love.  I hate this voice and the havoc that ...

In my younger years, I played guitar in various worship bands.  I was never much of a singer as I cannot carry a tune in a bucket, but strumming and chords I can manage.  My first guitar made it through my college years where I would throw a journal and the guitar in my car and find a quiet spot in the mountains to think, write, and sing my heart out in these secret singing sessions from the soul.  Not the smartest thing in the world driving into the backwoods mountains alone, but to quote John Muir, “The mountains are calling and I must go.”  These times alone in the mountains were the spots where my soul found voice.  Where I could sing off key with no judgment and let the poetry flow from my pen and guitar.  From this vantage point, those times look like hippie loving freedom and glory days.  In all honesty, these were times of wrestling with God, faith, rage, and grief.  And it occurred in isolation outside of community....

Beaches and Swimsuits. I just got back from a beach vacation.   Translation, the nightmare swimsuits!   Open up the inner dialogue of comparing my body to everyone around me and criticizing my own imperfections. I am chubby.  I told my husband before we married that I would always be a little bit fat and if was not able to accept my fluffy body he probably should not marry me.  While I joked about my fluff, my internal voice was downright hateful.  I hated my rolls, muffin top, and cottage cheese thighs.  The dialogue in my head was verbally and emotionally abusive.  I punished my body with diets, starvation, and restrictions only to begin a cycle of binging, stuffing, and carb frenzies.  I punished myself by refusing to buy new clothes until I lost that 20 pounds and could buy the size I thought I should be.        In a healing session, I was asked to breathe in compassion....