I’m at SBUX earlier than usual, and just starting to watch people walk in… stumble, really… just put the coffee in the cup and no one gets hurt. I’m having one of those Evolution juices and a venti soy latte. I originally wanted to eat breakfast, but I couldn’t decide on food, so I decided to drink it instead. I’m not particularly hungry. I had a rough day emotionally yesterday- found out a friend has a sibling with cancer and it brought up all sorts of feelings that I am spewing on Talkspace.

Talkspace is online therapy, and it is exhausting. Basically, it’s like blogging with feedback, except much, much more painful because there are no limits. I can say whatever I want with no blowback from readers, which means uncovering even more of the sludge in my soul than can surface here. Excruciating doesn’t begin to cover it, and I’m serious… although if I wasn’t serious, therapy wouldn’t help.

Therapy is much akin to rubbing alcohol. You know it cleans a wound, but you can’t help but say a few choice curse words when it hits broken skin. It stings before it feels better.

I hold myself accountable to an enormous degree, and so it is the same with this therapist, that they think I’m beating myself up too hard. But I’m so good at it! Why take away my superpower?

SHe does have huge respect for the fact that I don’t try to blame my problems on anyone else, though. I know what’s mine to own, and what’s not. But the part I own, I own hard. I’ll be glad with the Freudian analysis of my past is over, and we can move into visioning and values, coping mechanisms and healthy reactions. But right now, what I mean by Freudian analysis is what a general practitioner would call an “H&P,” or History & Physical. It’s basically how I got here and why, along with my chief complaint, of which I do not just have one.

I like Talkspace because I get more help than an hour a week for the same price as a BCBS co-pay.

So if my writing drops off, it’s not because I don’t like you anymore. 😛 It’s that I am so exausted from personal exegesis that I do not have the energy to unpack here, too. Perhaps I can take selected exerpts of what I write on Talkspace and post them here. Not everything is shrouded in secrecy. I’m interesting, but I’m not THAT interesting.

😛

Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.

– Oprah Winfrey

Last year, when Jeffrey Thames took over the pulpit at CCC, he preached a sermon called The Certain Samaritan. This week, he said that as certain Samaritans, it was our job to make sure everyone was on a level playing field. It was a call to action, and the congregation was tracking right along with him. He used a line I’ll never forget, that there should be no big Is and little yous. I love a good grammatical double entendre, and this one made a clear point. We all have sins, even when we think we don’t. If we are called to be Christ in the world, and we don’t use that power, it is a sin of omission, because we are actively rejecting the Christ-called mission to feed the poor, to stand up for whom the Book of Common Prayer calls “the sick, the friendless, and the needy,” and standing in judgment of people whose sins we think are greater than ours.

When my friend Casey was between his sophomore and junior years of high school, he was in a car accident that killed one of his friends. He was crushed because he was the driver, and later wrote a fantastic book about it called Tragedy to Truth. From that accident, he went on to become one of the most popular preachers in the Houston area. When I went to hear him, we hadn’t seen each other since we graduated from Clements together, and I cried all the way through his sermon… not because his sermon was sad or anything like that, but because he had allowed God to put him back on the potter’s wheel. Casey’s success after everything that had happened brought me a bucketload of tears, and I was weeping with joy.

Therefore, when Jeffrey brought in one of the young men he’s now working with at Hope Restored with a similar story, it was another moment of tears slipping down my face, because this boy had gone from years of incarceration to going back to school for a physical therapy degree. He’d gotten interested in working out and exercise science in prison, and that gave him the strength to start thinking about his future rather than his past. Jeffrey made his point… that if no one had been there to stand up for that young man and say, “this man made a mistake, but that is not the man I know,” he might not have made such a miraculous transformation. That standing up for him was letting Christ work through his family and friends. That love and belief helped put him back on the potter’s wheel, because we are clay.

In terms of my own life, I have to believe that these last three years are God’s way of saying there are cracks in your vessel. When are you getting back on the wheel? I also must undergo the transformation of tragedy to truth, because to me, rock bottom was the way I treated both Dana and Argo on the way out. In discovering my emotional abuse, confusion and rage bubbled up inside me that should have come out appropriately and, in a word, didn’t. Now, the rage is directed at me, because I am so ashamed of the way I behaved. But none of that means I am any less worthy than the love of God than anyone else. It’s what I do with that love that counts. I cannot go backward and undo anything, but what I can do is to stand up and own my mistakes, then make it possible to stretch myself out of that self-directed anger into promise.

I have oft been accused of not living up to my potential, and until my 36th birthday, I couldn’t wrap my brain around why.

Why couldn’t I use the emotional toolbox that I used when friends came to me with their problems on myself? Why couldn’t I motivate myself? Why couldn’t I pick myself up by the bootstraps when I could so easily build up others? Why was I so angry all the time? Why did I direct that anger at the people I loved the most instead of the people who deserved it? Now, I know the answer, and so do you if you’ve been with me on this journey. I didn’t feel that I was worthy of love, that people would discover I wasn’t worth their time, anyway, and it was easier to push people away before they figured this out on their own.

Dana was my rock, and in some ways, my redeemer, and I still had moments where I treated her like crap… but only because I was treating myself much, much worse.

I raged at Argo because she was an easy target. I didn’t really know her, and therefore, she was only real to me in some ways. In others, I was just screaming into a void. It was a mistake of gargantuan proportions, because she was the one friend that would literally call bullshit and tell me when I was being a “judgmental dickhead.” If I’d taken the time to really invest in that friendship, without making it this fantastical rabbit hole of emotion, she might still be. In a lot of ways, when the rabbit hole was severed, I was Alice falling unmoored, and when I landed, there was no padding.

Rock bottom. There’s a reason they call it that, and I landed on my head.

Everything I held dear slipped away at my own hand, and it created permanent scars that are healing nicely, but I will always be able to look at them, because that’s the thing about scars… I know this from cooking. I haven’t picked up a Chef’s Knife in years, and yet I still have scars from the days when I did, and a pink triangle on my forearm where I touched the corner of a convection oven. They don’t hurt anymore, but they’re still there.

And so it goes with emotions. Eventually, the scars won’t hurt, but that doesn’t mean I won’t have flashbacks of the person I used to be and the desire to be different… to keep working to be a better person because of them.

Maybe it takes falling apart to come back together, but what I have learned is that all people are really two, and we have to learn to love them both. There will never be a time when any person is rid of sin, but God doesn’t mold us once. God molds us whenever we ask. Not to ask is putting a ceiling on what we believe is possible, and what we tell ourselves makes all the difference.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

I just took two Klonopin and I’m sitting at my desk trying not to cry… partly because I lost a friend and I feel like I’m losing one now.

Weeks ago, The Professor asked me to do something the weekend of the Ghostbusters movie with Danni, Autumn, and the crew. I told her that if I couldn’t get a ticket, I’d love to do something, or we could get together on Saturday or Sunday. I wrote her back and said that I did get a ticket, told her which theater we were going to, and asked her if she’d like to come. Then, complete radio silence until a few days ago, when I finally reached out to her, because it was her turn to reply until I thought so much time had gone by that it was silly and decided to swallow my pride and see if she wanted to get together. She did.

Then, the next day, I get an e-mail saying that she’s in a relationship now and she’s going to be pretty busy at work, etc. We’d gotten sort of close, a relationship that I thought might turn into something, and I was so surprised that I told her I thought it was best we didn’t communicate.

The last time we’d spoken, we’d planned all kinds of things to do, and admitted that we had feelings for each other. We’d by no means gone on any kind of date, but I was just beginning to accept the idea that I might want to go on one. I could be done brutally punishing myself for the past and try to move into the future. Her first e-mail to me sounded like the relationship was exactly where we’d left it- she still wanted to meet at a coffee shop and read/write together.

I wasn’t blindsided by any means in terms of her being in a relationship now, because there was no relationship between us save a friendship I’d hoped would get closer… and perhaps turn into something more as we walked together… where the idea of waking up next to someone else wasn’t scary anymore.

However, I was hurt and disappointed that she ghosted, showed up as if nothing had happened, and then sprung it on me that she was too busy for me between work and this new person. Overnight, she was different.

Overnight, so was I.

Communicating with her was something I knew would hurt, so that’s why I ended the friendship altogether. Having feelings about her in this space is different, because I’m not writing to anyone but me. You’re always invited, but even if I didn’t have any readers, this would be the place where I’d keep my memories.

I’m always certain that people have my URL. I’m never certain that they’re reading, and it can’t matter to me, because I won’t heal if I put others’ opinions above my own.

And then today I saw that Scales and The Colonel had gotten married on Facebook. We’d gotten fairly close, so it wasn’t like I expected an invitation, but I had to deal with my disappointment that I didn’t get a heads up. Maybe she thought I’d try to talk her out of it, but I wouldn’t have. If she’s happy, so I am I. But again, it’s another friend that’s just been lost in this cocoon of relationship that no friendship resides outside of it, at least between us.

I do not understand this, only because I dig the fuck out of The Colonel and never felt like a third wheel. But I get it. She’s leaving on assignment soon and probably just wanted to spend as much time with her wife as she could before she left. She was noncommittal on even seeing me before she left the country, which stings like a motherfucker because I feel like I got to be her friend during a really crappy time in her life and be the supportive person that would listen while she cried, but didn’t get to enjoy her in all of her laughter.

But if there’s something we all have too little of, it’s time.

I know that a little part of her wanted that whirlwind romance to be with me, but I couldn’t do it, knowing that she was leaving in four months and I wasn’t even ready to go on a first date, much less a tenth… and I definitely wouldn’t have been ready to get married the week before she shipped out.

But the Colonel has more resources than I do, the ability to travel the world, so I think that Scales ended up with the right person for her. But it doesn’t mean I don’t miss her friendship, and part of me wants to push her away, too, because she has so clearly pushed me away as well.

Maybe, like Argo, she was a soulmate not designed to be permanent, but to shake me into a different reality, like Richard from Texas in Eat. Pray. Love.

I also had a moment of, “so this is what it’s like to find out big news on Facebook,” relating it back to my separation announcement from Dana. And then I had a huge moment of clarity. You don’t include people in your divorce. You don’t invite them. The problem of who to tell first still exists, because you’re not spreading happy news. It bothered the shit out of me for a long time that Dana approved the post and held it over my head immediately afterward, even though the comments on that post were among the most supportive and loving I’ve ever gotten. I can’t speak for Dana, but just as much love poured out for her as well, but it is not up to me to decide if she felt it.

And even then, the reality of divorce didn’t hit me. I even wrote in the post that perhaps our paths would ultimately lead us back to each other. It hit me much later, after a lot of writing and processing had taken place. That our communication styles would never mesh, that I could forgive her for the fistfight but I couldn’t forget it, that her family was never going to take me in the way mine had wound themselves around her.

And that Dana liked our cocoon, and the fight regarding Argo would never be over, not ever. Too much had gone on between Argo and me that made Dana feel absolutely excluded, and that left-out feeling was the seat of her resentment and always would be as long as Argo was in the picture, no matter what the painting entailed.

It’s pizza night, but I’m not hungry.

I woke up at 0215 and didn’t get back to sleep until about 45 minutes later. Fell asleep to WTF (Alan Alda was the guest). Then, in the middle of the night, I had this dream that drove me so crazy it woke me up. I took a Benadryl last night (thus what I’m having now), which gives me extremely vivid dreams, so I doubt I would have remembered it save that.

First of all, you have to know that my dad is a ridiculous prankster. For instance we’re riding in our van and decide to stop at Mickey D’s:

One of Kelly’s school friends: I bet you won’t mess with the drive-thru guy.
Leslie (thinking): Oh Lort. Here we go.
Drive-thru Guy: Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?
Dad: You’ll have to excuse me. I have Alzheimer’s.
DTG: That’s ok, sir. Take all the time you need.
Dad: I’d like a cheeseburger.
DTG: Would you like fries with that?
Dad: With what……………… You’ll have to excuse me, I have Alzheimer’s.

This seriously goes on for what seems like fifteen minutes. I’m sure it was only two, but the passage of time makes it stretch. The guy was literally dumbfounded, had no idea what to do, and we’re all in the back of the van, crying we’re laughing so hard.

Now, I know this isn’t very PC, but it was almost 20 years ago, and you never dare a Lanagan. Never.

My dad is also an excellent whistler. He and his friend Paul once whistled the Vivaldi two-trumpet concerto just to see if they could do it. In terms of pranking and whistling, my dad will often whistle something beautifully and then end on a quarter-tone, which cracks me up every single time.

So last night in my dream, my dad was whistling something that ended in “Shave and a Haircut,” except he ended on the note corresponding with the word “two.” I woke myself up when I said, out loud, “RESOLVE THE CHORD!”

That’s my dad. Pranking me in my dreams.

It is really eerie that the blog entry I just wrote not an hour ago has so much to do with this sermon. I couldn’t have planned it better, really, which is the best part ever. I didn’t plan it at all.

I told you my favorite example of Jesus changing his mind, and here is today’s Gospel in its entirety, taken from Luke 13:10-17:

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

This is the ultimate smackdown between Jesus and the keepers of the law, a standing ovation of a story that has me whooping and hollering and clapping, even sitting alone in my room typing. Jesus knows that the legal system does not prevent Jews from being cruel to animals, so why in God’s name (literally) does it say that healing humans is “work?” Why is being cruel to humans okay, and being cruel to animals is not?

Jesus slaps the law in its face, using its own words. That’s the most fun in reading Jesus. When he uses the legal system to make the people in charge of it look like jackasses. There’s a beauty in it, really, and always my favorite part of the Bible. To compare Jesus to modern day rebels, Elizabeth Warren stands out as a pure example. She just slaps the law in its face, and as Matt Damon famously said regarding American banks during a speech at MIT:

It was theft, and you knew it. It was fraud and you knew it, and you know what else? We know that you knew it. I don’t know if justice is coming for you in this life or the next, but if it does come in this life? Her name will be Elizabeth Warren.

Yes. Yes, it will.

I don’t know and I don’t care whether Elizabeth Warren or Matt Damon believes in Jesus, but I do know that this is such a Christ-like example of turning power on its ear that the Christ would be so proud he’d throw a parade in their honor.

For instance, take a look at this:

I didn’t think the GOP could write 1 bill to hurt women, vets, Obamacare, PP, AND clean water all at once – but they did it. #Zika

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 28, 2016

Regardless of religious affiliation, there are people out there being Christ in the world, as all Christians are called to do. OF COURSE being Christ in the world is about the soft touch of helping a neighbor in need, giving to the poor we don’t even know but want to protect, and giving of ourselves to our faith community so that we can continue the ministries we wholeheartedly support.

But there’s also that other thing. The foresight to see wrong and correct it. Democrat or Republican Christians are not called to vote among party lines, but to tell the difference between right and wrong. I am not endorsing anyone, but standing up for what’s right. It is not my job as a theologian without any degrees to say for whom you should vote, but I can see individual laws going through the House and Senate and feel the need to slap them the way Jesus did… and slap them HARD.

Right now, it’s Republican policies that are hate-filled, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t stand up against Democrats if they were pulling the same stunts. It’s my job to be neutral when it comes to the party and up on my soapbox for the things Christ would tolerate and the things he wouldn’t.

I don’t think that Jesus would necessarily be for abortion, but at the same time, in Judaic law, there is no prohibition against it. In fact, abortion in Judaic law can take place at any time, a much longer statute of limitations than Roe v. Wade gives us now. However, I do think that Jesus would stand up for Planned Parenthood, not because of abortion itself, but because Planned Parenthood tries so hard to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. I think that Jesus would stand up for a safety net in which parents do not have to fear an unwanted pregnancy because they are so financially strapped that they cannot afford another child which plunges them deeper and deeper into poverty. I think that Jesus would stand up to the pro-lifers that have no plan except preventing abortions and nothing for caring for children once they are born.

If this issue was really pro-life, the people who want that statute would be lined up around the block with bottles and blankets for the children born of unwanted pregnancies we already have. All children are a blessing from God, but it makes it harder to believe it when you have no way of taking care of it… when you have to choose between rent and food. When you have to choose between diapers and electricity. When you have to choose between child care and staying home, because the choice isn’t easy. When you look at the cost of child care in this country, if you go to work, you come home with maybe an extra $100 a month, because 90% of your paycheck is already spoken for. In a two income-family, this may not be as much of an issue as it is for single moms, because even with working and paying for child care, there’s no way to pay for the rent, bills, groceries, etc. without half the country screaming about social programs and how to get rid of them.

I am looking forward to the day when Republicans come back into the fold of working together with Democrats to accomplish great things, but I am probably going to be waiting a long time. Until then, we need to slap the system senseless.

Just as Christ would have done.

The issue at hand is that Jesus did not want to put anything off until tomorrow that could be done today. Why should that woman have had to wait to be healed when it was okay to be kind to an animal and not support the sanctity of human life?

The system failed that woman, just as ours is failing us now. We need our Christs in the world, whether they’re Christians or not. They are pointing the way to marked change, and so shall we. Because we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of Christ… and that means something. It means hardcore advocacy and radical change. It means a fearlessness that needs to be mustered from deep within.

It takes faith, and a lot of it, to be that brave. But I only have two words for you.

IT’S ON.

Don’t be a Democrat or a Republican. Be a Jesus.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

I don’t know why I thought that coffee would keep as long as I tried to… It’s Christmas Blend, if that gives you any indication. I am sure it would taste much better with CoffeeMate and Splenda, but if I wanted coffee that tasted like that I would have gone to McDonald’s. The thing is, though, I turned off the burner as soon as it was done brewing so that it wouldn’t taste burned once it was cool. I have a feeling it will taste much better in the morning, especially if I go to Trader Joe’s and get some “Coconut Beverage.” I could also turn it into a Bulletproof coffee with Kerrygold and coconut oil, but I am still deciding between a meal replacement and actually making eggs or going to Waffle House.

I am also still deciding whether I’m going to church this morning, because I somewhat hate it now. It has nothing to do with the people. It’s that I’m not in choir anymore (long story) and the pews dig into the corkscrew scoliosis in my back, so that by the end of the service, I am in so much pain that it takes about half an hour to really feel ok walking again. Besides, Matt has a podcast and I really enjoy writing my own sermons before I listen to him, because then I know whether I’m on the right track theologically, or whether I’ve just taken off into “The Lanagan Lectionary” that just makes no damn sense.

I got ripped a new one a few weeks back for saying that I thought Jesus was tired and burned out on Judaism, but not for lack of faith. For the way it was being executed. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Sanhedrin were all ready to eat Jesus and his Disciples’ lunch at any given moment. If Jesus hadn’t taken that burned out feeling and used it to great effect, Judaism would not have changed and brought to life the new church he was seeking- one that focused on promise theology and not beating people down with the law.

Jesus and his disciples practiced radical inclusion, and that’s the take-home message. The entire Bible is the journey from how Jesus created his own sect of Judaism, and how that new church eventually became Christianity, because unlike Judaism, the new sect was open to Gentiles as well.

There are several moments that stand out to me, but my favorite is Matthew 15:21-28:

21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

Do you see it? DO YOU SEE IT?

Jesus went from “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” to healing a CANAANITE’s daughter.

Jesus changed his mind, and THAT’s THE POINT.

This is probably not the Gospel for the Lectionary today, so I’ll be writing something else later.

I just want to point out the words of the Book of Common Prayer here, from Rite I, that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs,through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom.” It is just a gargantuan change from the theology of the Old Testament, and something you could wake me up in the middle of the night and I’d be able to recite verbatim.

Though I have a few theological problems with Rite I, because it is not as inclusive as Rite II, I started going to St. Martin’s Episcopal Church at Woodway & Sage in Houston, Texas when I was 17 years old, and Rite I was my first exposure to the BCP. So therefore I have the whole thing memorized, tattooed on my heart, because there are so many times that I have not felt worthy to gather up the crumbs under Thy table, grateful that Thou are the same Lord whose property it is to have mercy. So many times have I knelt at the communion rail in abject pain and sorrow, and acknowledging my sin and my redemption has been the grace that has allowed me to move forward with my week.

These words are harsh, as harsh as I felt about myself, but the forgiveness is worth it. That even though I have committed egregious sins in the past, there is nothing that could separate me from the love of God as long as I truly and humbly repent and make it my goal for these sins to never happen again.

…even as I drink my crappy coffee.

I usually title my entries with what I’m eating at SBUX, but I’m having the same thing I had yesterday. Gold Coast is the “bold pick.” Yesterday I drank it black, perfect in its own way, but today lots of Splenda and half-n-half. Coffee needs fat… at least sometimes.

In other news, I forgot to e-mail Dan yesterday, but I got a great letter from The Professor, so we have plans in the near future. The last time we talked, she wanted to start an exercise program, and I asked her how she was doing on it, because having a workout buddy is so much better for me than trying to motivate myself. It’d be nice to roll out of bed and shower at the gym. I’d rather join a gym or the Y instead of running outside, because of the whole showering before work thing. Plus, a hot tub. Musn’t forget that.

Maybe one of these days I’ll work in an office with showers in the building. Pri-Diddy had that at the World Bank, and I was really jealous because she could get in her morning run without spending the rest of the day smelling like feet. #careergoals

Although to be honest, I really thought I’d be a mommy-blogger by now, exploiting my children for fun and profit… no pictures, though, just saving up for their therapy. I had to give up that dream when Dana and I divorced, but I am only 39 on September 10th, so I have at least three or four years in order to get my shit together. And if I can’t make it through the trying to conceive process, it would be great to adopt a toddler/kindergartner so that I’m not 90 by the time they graduate from high school.

But my life has taken its own turns, and that’s okay. I am happy the way I am, single and loving life because I have the time to turn trauma into promise. Jesus knows I need it. My “40 days and 40 nights” in the desert have provided me with more wisdom than ignoring my feelings ever would’ve.

I can only hope that I have done a good job of presenting my friends with a portrait that reflects their 3-D nature… that my interactions with them are not bad or good, just human. And it helps so much more to talk about good times than bad. It sustains me, keeps me from being a bitter old biddy, looking forward to love when it’s the right time instead of the wrong one.

I feel like I am ready to move on, with the possibility of dating, because there’s really nothing more to say about the rearview mirror. There’s a reason it’s so small. And in terms of my side mirrors, objects are not as close as they appear. Nothing is chasing me, and nothing is keeping me from being able to let go and trust that the direction of my life is going down the path I am trying to create, rather than waiting for things to happen to me. I saw a memory from a few years ago about becoming a confirmed minister in the UCC/DoC rather than going to seminary- in effect, learning on the job. It’s something to explore, because as much as I try to geek out over technology, I can’t be as excited about it as I am about philosophy, theology, and soteriology. As I have sad before, soteriology is the study of salvation, but I am not a big fan of substitutionary atonement (Isaac in the Old Testament, Jesus in the New). I am way more interested in the way we fall and resurrect ourselves. The versatility of the human spirit is hope springing eternal, that things will always get better if you put shoe leather into it. It’s not that I can’t swallow the idea of substitutionary atonement and miracles, it’s that they don’t matter to me nearly as much as the message Jesus presented and the way he went about it.

So what if Jesus bodily resurrected? So what if he turned water into wine? Whether these are oral histories passed down or absolutely real is missing the point.

They are Stories That are All True…. and some of them actually happened.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

I have about 20 minutes before I have to leave for the office, so this may be a bit short. I am dealing with a lot, but handling it nicely, or at least as nicely as I can. I feel like I have many more tools for dealing with anxiety than I once did, and am hoping to get word back on a side hustle working for an online wine magazine. I sent the editor different kinds of samples, and we’ll see what happens. Now that it’s out of my hands, I can only “let go and let God.” There’s only so much I can control, and putting myself out there is one of them.

Getting paid for being a writer would be a dream come true… not that I haven’t been paid on this web site. Your donations have literally sustained me over the years, not because I have lived on that money, but because I have been inspired by it. The money that you give keeps the site going, and furthering my education. The last big purchase that I made was a Red Hat certification with which I’m not finished, but mostly because I got a full-time job in a Windows shop and had to put it away so that I could focus on the things I haven’t used in years. #alllinuxallthetime #noDOSever

I don’t have enough experience to be a system administrator, but I do have enough experience to install LAMP servers (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PERL/Python), run and improve WordPress installations, etc. I use WordPress.com because I wanted the site to be about the writing, but there are plenty of times I’ve had my own server space and administrated it well. WordPress just makes it where I can add content and press “Post.” My own server space would entail making sure all the plugins, scripts, etc. are in the right folders, although the plus is that I could add ads, rather than going to a subscription-based model. WordPress.com is not down with that. I am sure that I could hawk “fine hyptertext products” (thanks, Jason Kottke), but for now, focusing on the content is enough.

I might change my mind in time, though, because it would be nice to have income coming in that I don’t have to watch. I’d just want a site like Dooce’s, where the ads are relatively unobtrusive. I’d also be able to add plugins like a discussion forum that’s better than the comments section on each entry. I don’t know what we’d talk about. Probably everything from childhood abuse to ice cream. It’s all important in its own way.

Plus, I’d have the ability to use CSS/HTML to customize themes that WordPress.com does not offer unless you buy a professional package, and what I have found, since I had it for a year, is that it is not as extensible as I would want. Plus, here’s something that’s also very, very important… secure FTP and a shell into my own server.

That may not mean much to you, but it is everything to a web developer.

I’m working through all the Python lessons on CodeAcademy now that I’ve finished SQL, but I am not as far along as Dana because she was the one with the math/logic brain in the family… although I’m sure it was good that Aaron was a ready resource. I still maintain that she could have a six-figure career, but I’m not sure that coding would appeal to her. But maybe now it would. We don’t know each other anymore, and I’m ok with it.

Whatever she does, I hope she’s as happy as I am, with the few caveats of everything that’s going on in my life right now. It’s intense and scary, with no real escape until it’s over. There’s a lot I wish I could share with her, and the fact that she wants nothing from me is enough. I’m not chasing her, ever.

However, I did write a long letter to Argo in my notebook, for two reasons. The first is that she hates reading handwriting. The second is that it wasn’t to mail. Just to talk to her without her talking back. The “angel on my shoulder” trope is working well. I don’t need to have her input to have her in my life, as weird as that sounds. I can miss her on my own, and I never get responses for which I am unprepared.

No chasing, just thnking.

And on that note, I have to go. I just thought a letter in my notebook with all the real things that were happening in my life would help me to get my feelings out while keeping the promise that I would not write about it here and I would not contact her all at the same time. That feeling that I need her is gone; mostly because I realized that my relationship with her was text, and I still have it.

Letters that don’t get answered are still valid and healing, because it’s my emotions spilled on the page and not hers. When I lost that open line to say what I wanted, I realized that I never wanted an escalated conversation ever again… and now they’re not. They’re one-sided and perfect because it’s more like a diary than anything else, because I do my best thinking while writing letters. As I have said before, the chord that was once between us has become a loopback, feeding me. There’s no place like 127.0.0.1.

😛

I haven’t written a whole lot lately, because most of the things I’m trying to process are unfit for publication. You would think that I would have no shame in this area, and I don’t. It’s just that I can’t tell others’ stories, only my own. The people I want to write about have specifically said to wait, so you’ll hear it eventually, just not “write” now. #baitedbreath

The long and short of it is that I feel hampered in a major way, because writing is how I calm myself, how I understand the world… but I also don’t want to hurt anyone by revealing information I specifically said I’d keep quiet for now.

What I can say is that I have a lot on my plate, literally and figuratively. I’ve had to eat a lot of ice cream lately. Ben & Jerry are saving me one pint at a time. Day before yesterday, it was Banana Split ice cream. I went for broke, when my normal flavor is Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt… to the point where Cherry Garcia ice cream tastes weird to me. There’s also a scoop shop close to me, so I have tried Empowermint, and it’s good, but not any different than any other mint chocolate chip. My favorite at the sccop shop is Chocolate Therapy, but not necessarily because of the flavor. I like the texture of the pudding against the ice cream. I wish they’d make more flavors with pudding in them, like lemon meringue pie… but no one asked me.

This is all just filler for what I wish I could say, but sufficed to say my life is coming apart at the seams. I briefly considered moving back to Houston, but not for any reason you’d think of in a million years. It has nothing to do with the Argo situation, nothing to do with my happiness here, and everything to do with what I can’t say when I wish I could. You’ll know in time, and hopefully your support will coming pouring in the way it always has.

I’ve told Bryn and Aaron what’s going on, and for now, that is enough. As predicted, they were supportive with virtual hugs and kisses, desperately needed. I wish Danni was back already, but I’ll e-mail her later. If you’re friends with me in real life and want to know how to help, drop me a line. I could use it.

The thought of moving back to Houston was a knee-jerk reaction, and lasted all of about five minutes. Because moving to Houston always *seems* like a good idea right up until I get there. It’s been like that for years. I cannot escape my past, and now there’s just so much more of it because I’ll be 39 in a little less than a month. My 36th birthday was the turning point, and how I realized I would never be happy there unless there were extenuating circumstances that required me to be there. For instance, I’d never abandon my family if they were in need of my support. And even then, I wouldn’t be happy. I’d just choose to focus on everything but living there. I can write from anywhere, and if there’s anything that the friendship with Argo proved to me, it was that I could live in Houston and completely escape it at the same time.

I could just live in the cloud and ignore the ground, because I don’t have anything tying me to it. It would be a shitty solution to a problem, but perhaps good enough.

For now, though, I need to stay put. The job market is better here for tech people than it is in Houston, and the last thing I want to do is move to a place where the job search would eat my lunch the moment I got there. I’d be waiting tables or working in a grocery store and I won’t go back to that life unless I have to make room for school, and even then, that would be quite a stretch, because I only have enough to cover one semester, so I really need to keep up full-time work so I can cover more than that.

I just met a guy wearing a Fedora oxford and I am so jealous I could spit. I think they need to change the logo, though. If it were a woman, it would look just like Carmen Sandiego. 😛

Remind me never to get an iced drink at Starbucks if I’m going to write here, because OH MY GOD AM I COLD. The air conditioner must be pumped down to 68.

And on that note, I think that’s all for today. If I think of something else important, I’ll see you later.

Last night, I took myself on a somewhat great date… the exception being that I was going to go to a movie with me and the picture I wanted to see had started 25 minutes before. Now, if I had bothered to look up the movie time, I could have made it. I thought I’d just show up and see what was playing next, and as it turns out, close to 8:00 doesn’t really work for anything. There were two or three things that I wanted to see, but the one that was at the top of my list was “Florence Foster Jenkins.” The great part of my date was going to Z Pizza Tap Room, because I was able to get vegan pizza (my favorite because I love Daiya cheese and “sorta sausage” with lots of veggies) and my version of a Snakebite- Angry Orchard cider and a porter made in Alexandria… had to try it… my old “home town.” The sad part was that I could have used some humor, and hearing the REAL Florence Foster Jenkins when I was a teenager singing the Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute made me laugh so hard that tears and snot ran down my face and I was shaking so hard that no sound would come out. She does get some of the notes…..

After I finished my pizza and discovered I didn’t want to wait around for a 9:00 movie, I went to Cold Stone Creamery, where I had a scoop of ice cream that was half Rum Raisin, half Banana and mixed with walnuts. I should have asked for mostly banana with a spoonful of Rum Raisin, because the rum flavor was so loud the banana was lost. It was still delicious, though.

And last but not least, while I was eating at Z Pizza, I got a message from an old friend, Scoop, so named because she’s a journalist @ Politico, on OK Cupid. I’d basically sent her a message that said, “I was just poking around on here and clicked on your name because it said you were also from Texas and HOLY SHIT! I KNOW HER! That was months ago and she finally wrote back, because as she says, “you see how often I check this…” I don’t remember how Kathleen and I met her, just that we didn’t grow up in Houston together or anything. We met her here, decked out in every possible piece of clothing you could buy at University of Texas.

Anywho, I asked her if she wanted to meet me for a movie in Silver Spring. She doesn’t live that far away- somewhere in PG County- and she sent back a flirt that went straight over my head… and when she said that it was a lame flirt because she was rusty at it, I said, “you don’t want to date me. I’m a hot mess. You should flirt with Claudia Schiffer.” I love a good “Love Actually” reference.

I’m flattered, but I don’t want to date anyone because “hot mess” is accurate.

But it was nice to have two scoops.

---

This morning as I was driving in to work, I listened to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, in which they were discussing one of my favorite TV shows, Steven Universe. It is not a standalone cartoon, but a deep and winding mythology that crosses all kinds of lines, from gender to sexual orientation to alien to human. It makes me happy that in the modern world in which we live, there are cartoons with lesbian characters… when I look at them, I see me.

I also see Dana, and I cry. In fact, I cried on the way into work today, because the commentators were talking about how Ruby and Sapphire are a lesbian couple that fuse together to become Garnet (the aliens are called “Gems”), and they sing this song about how they are so much better together than they are apart, and I could not even.

That’s because I was reminded last night of one of our truly funny Facebook conversations in the “Memories” section.

Here’s my status update:

I had the best coffee yesterday- called the “Indivisible Blend” at Starbucks. It tastes like rich malt, maybe a Shiner Bock without the twang of alcohol? It is so good that it needs neither sugar nor cream. Just itself. I pledge allegiance to this coffee, and to the delicious flavor profile for which it stands.

Here is Dana’s response:

One coffee, under Howard, with Ventis and Grandes for all!

We used to have a running joke about starting a book called “Bleep My Wife Says,” and I am seriously sorry I never got around to it. For instance, there’s this hilarious story:

Leslie: I really love taking Willow with me when I go places, because I don’t feel alone (she was our foster dog for a while).
Dana: Plus, she’s also really fun to play “Slug Bug” with because she doesn’t hit back.
Leslie: Have you been beating our dog?
Dana: ………………….

I talk a big game in terms of dating, but I have to look at my words vs. my actions. Every time someone has wanted to meet up with me, I’ve said I wanted to meet them as a friend. That would last two or three outings before they’d want to start dating and I ran away. The drugs I’m taking coupled with enormous grief leave my libido in the toilet, so not only do I not want to date, I’m not sure I’m physically capable of it. Romance doesn’t occur to me at all, and I’ve had a grand total of two real dates since I got here, and then I freaked and realized I wasn’t ready. I don’t trust easily, especially myself. I really hurt both Dana and Argo, and I feel like I owe it to them to really get over what it was that made me capable of hurting them in the first place before I unleash myself on anyone else.

Again, it was irrelevant that Argo didn’t have feelings for me. I only cared what it was doing to me on the inside, the way I lashed out at her to get her to leave because I didn’t have the stomach to “man up” and say, “this is too much for me” a second time. I did the first time we “friend broke up,” just took a machete to my own heart and tried to live with it, and I just couldn’t. We were back in contact relatively quickly after that, because I couldn’t bear to see her hurt that I’d packed up my toys and gone home.

So I did everything in my power to help her make the decision to “friend break up” with me. It was shitty and childish and totally out-of-character for me, but at the time, I was barely holding on emotionally with Dana’s insistence that Argo was in love with me and couldn’t express it, and the ridiculousness that surrounded it. It was crazymaking, and all I wanted in the world was for Dana to see the absolute truth, that Argo has female friends that she treats like sisters, but would never cross a romance boundary with me, ever… it wouldn’t even occur to her to do so, and the idea that she was a threat to my relationship with Dana was completely laughable. We both wanted to shake Dana until she remembered what was real.

Crossing the romance boundary for me had nothing to do with thinking that Argo was any smarter, more beautiful, etc. than Dana. It came out of pure sapiosexuality, the part of my brain where smart, capable and confident creates attraction because she was sincerely overclocking my processor. I was thinking about bigger things than I ever had before, and Argo’s ability to make that happen for me reached inside my soul and extracted a piece that I thought I’d never find. It was absolutely the reason that I wanted the relationship to end, because at the time, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror every morning. Feeling these excited feelings for two women at the same time created feelings in me that I wasn’t making bad decisions, I was a bad person, and there’s a big difference.

There was nothing in my history that modeled deep female friendship without that element of excitement, even with straight girls, because even though those wires would never physically cross, that didn’t mean that I didn’t have my own feelings about them… it’s just that with the others, I was single and therefore, doing all my processing without offending the one person in my life that should have gotten all my attention… the one I was married to, the one to which I’d pledged my allegiance and committment and a new family that differentiated us from our first families, as hard as that was to execute and enforce.

There are so many things I wish I’d done differently, but I can’t change the past. But that doesn’t erase regret that I carry with me in what seems like the proverbial “albatross around my neck.” I am slowly walking away from it, but a relationship that lasted over a decade doesn’t seem like something I can or should get over quickly… as if I can just put it in a box and walk away… because those feelings will keep resurfacing until I resolve them, and writing helps. I can wrap a lot of things in “Oh God, I never meant to hurt you the way I did,” but that doesn’t mean jack or shit in terms of the future. Argo’s words reverberate in my head every day… the first sentence being that the price of friendship with you is too high, and the second being that not a day goes by that I am not filled with regret at letting you into my life. I can only hope that she was just as angry as I was in the moment, and that those words are not gospel truth. If they are, it sickens me to an enormous degree because there have been so many good moments between us that I’d feel wrecked if they didn’t carry any weight. We are both verbally vicious to an enormous degree, and I can’t help but think that neither of us could have been nearly as awful to the other in person. But that is not for this lifetime unless a miracle occurs, one in which I cannot hope for or imagine because it hurts too much. What I can hope for is that as time goes by, she’ll be able to look back with different eyes, not to rekindle friendship, but to see that everything wasn’t all bad.

What I have begun to see is that the price of friendship with her is too high for me, because she gave me an open line to say whatever I wanted and, without telling me, began keeping a file on what she viewed as harassment… something I would have liked to have known because I didn’t realize I didn’t have that open line anymore and everything I said was taken as threat, when none of the things I said flowed from that place. It seemed like a short leash from “there’s nothing that you could say that would make me like/love you any less,” and if I’d known how uncomfortable she’d become, I would have changed my behavior to match, and in fact, did.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that she did, and I just missed it. I miss a lot when I’m not looking for it, especially since our relationship ran so hot and cold that I focused on the hot and ignored the cold altogether. In a lot of ways, I never knew which Argo was going to show up, and I am sure she would say the same about me. We were both these moving targets of emotion where neither of us knew how to find “home base,” the hallmark of a toxic relationship that was both of our faults and neither. We are both products of our environment, like all people. Because neither of us knew each other on the ground, it was easy to trip over childhood landmines because we didn’t know where they were… and even in the midst of all that, healing took place… and then we ripped it to shreds so that we were more fucked up than when we began. Over time, healthy reactions were beyond us, because it was easy to send both love and hate when you can’t see the other person’s face.

Dana and Argo were the faces I looked to for love, one on the ground, and one in the cloud. As I have said before, I chose the ground because I could see it. And then I’d read something I’d want to share with Argo and the confusion started all over again. I felt like I literally couldn’t walk away, and I didn’t want to, but it was necessary. It’s the only thing that would have given Dana peace, and if there’s anything I wish I could have given her, it’s that.

I hope that peace is being achieved by not communicating with Argo, not making things worse, but the awful part is not making anything better, either. My wires aren’t crossed anymore, and I miss her every day in the fullness of friendship and not the brokenness of being emotionally attached to something the relationship will never be able to sustain.

To paraphrase Emily Saliers, I wish I could bring her heart back to my island, but the sand beneath me has already slipped, and that just has to be all right. I don’t really have a choice. What is done is done. I for damn sure don’t want to fall back into old patterns over the internet, and the chance of her actually wanting to look at my face as we talked is a large negative integer.

So I focus on Danni, Traci, Kim, Sam, and all of the other friends I’ve met in real time that don’t have a history with me of taking things out of context and blowing up over them… on both sides of the equation. They are the faces I can literally look to for love, instead of just hoping that pictures become real.

I also wish that Dana could see me, really see me, but that is not for this lifetime, either. I can only take the lessons that I’ve learned from that relationship and try like hell not to be that person to anyone else. But again, I hope that with the passage of time, she’ll remember the good parts, too.

Nothing is ever all bad. Not even me.

---

Here’s the song I mentioned above…………….

I made my own coffee this morning, French Roast from SBUX. I don’t know why. Usually I feel I need to be in a coffee shop to feel in the right mood to write, which is why I leave so early in the morning. But yesterday was such a day from hell that I was practically asleep before my head hit the pillow at 2100, and this morning woke up 20 minutes before my alarm (0540 for those who are keeping score).

I left my notes on HIPAA at home, so I came home to retrieve them and take the test. I flunked it three times in a row. I was so confident about it because I knew the material cold, and finally I called the testing agency to see if there was something wrong with my computer. This is because there were java applets in the course that would not run, and I thought that some of the information I’d missed might be contained in them. The person on the phone told me I’d missed questions in the same section over and over, and that he would reach out to the instructor of the course.

She called me back and said that the online course did cover the material, but not in-depth, that there was a 400-page manual I didn’t get with the online course… and just basically “this online course covers everything, except it doesn’t.” She said she would give me the class and the exam for free if I could make it to San Diego in September. Right now I’m in the process of trying to get money back from the testing company based on what the instructor told me. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have passed that test if I was literally copying down the slides verbatim and memorizing them… otherwise, I wouldn’t have been confident enough to sit through the exam three times in one day.

It should have been a tip-off that the exam questions were nothing like the practice exam given on the training web site. You had to get at least 80% of the practice questions right in order to pass it, and I did (they won’t give you your exact score, only PASS/FAIL). Apparently, I got at least 5% dumber in like, half an hour.

I am not one of those people who cannot take responsibility for failing. I know when I’ve put in the work and when I haven’t. If I’d blown off the training and not taken notes, I wouldn’t have been surprised that I failed. The surprise was poring over the materials for days and still failing. I am blaming the online course materials because the instructor literally said that it wasn’t the same as the course I would have taken in person, and that there was a whole bunch of material I didn’t get. It also hurts not to know exactly how much I did get right, and how close (or not) I was to passing.

The instructor promised that there was no way I’d fail if I just came to her class in person, but I have other stuff that my boss wants me to work on, so I doubt it will happen. It’s nice that she gave it to me for free, though… and sad that I was so confident at the amount I studied that I was willing to fork over $800 of my own money to prove that I had indeed learned the material that was given to me. I don’t expect my boss to pay for the tests I flunked. If we get the money back from the testing company, that’s enough.

I am incredibly hard on myself when it comes to studying. I learned how to digest material by taking Con Law in college- writing down everything I possibly could so that I didn’t have to be connected to the Internet to study… because studying while connected to the Internet is a bad idea entirely. I mean, I don’t like cat videos (sue me), so there’s that. But there are no end to other distractions.

Speaking of cat videos, I like cats a lot. I’ve had three that I’ve loved beyond all measure. But I like playing with them in person, not watching other people’s. I am also not a cat mom. That shit drives me insane. A cat is not a child to me, and to compare them is ludicrous. I have owned cats. I have not babied them. They don’t seem to care.

I have also never been a “dog mom,” but a dog owner. That doesn’t mean I put them out in the backyard and forget about them. They’re members of my family, but have never and will never have the same status as any child I adopt, have, acquire as step-children, etc.

This is a huge tangent to get me off of the fact that I am desperately sad I flunked an exam that I spent days studying for, and that all of it is for naught. It’s just fucking depressing to an enormous degree, because I am smarter than this. But I cannot help but feel that the deck was stacked against me no matter what I did. The instructor even said that the online course was designed for people who already had a background in HIPAA, and that the part I learned while working in a doctor’s office was barely covered in the material. It was mostly laws passed and when, as well as what clauses fall under each section. The course was not laid out that way, so there was no way to know which sections fell under the Final Omnibus Rule and which fell under the Security Rule, etc… and yet, that’s the way that the test was set up. There were also trick questions reminiscent of Ken Wall (great guy, evil Con Law tests) that said, “choose the MOST correct answer.” And those were tests on which I got one C the entire semester and all As on the others… and passed the final with 102. However, what KWall had working in his favor was that he told us his tests were evil up front. 😛

I am reminded of when I went with Dana to her allergist when she got hives, and the nurse left her workstation unlocked so that I could have pwnd her computer in a hot second. I didn’t, but I should have called the Office of Civil Rights and made a formal complaint, because anyone can do that. If you see a HIPAA violation, report it. This was a blatantly obvious mistake, because not only did I have access to Dana’s medical records, I had access to everyone in that system. It is only because I am a true White Hat that I didn’t peek… just noted their abject stupidity, because I could have gotten into billing as well.

I was just too worried about Dana to make reporting the HIPAA violation a thing.

I can’t help but think that I am partly responsible for those hives, because they are brought on by stress, and we were under a lot of it. I just remember crying in the allergist’s office because as I have said before, it was like watching my baby get a Vitamin K shot in her heel and hearing cries of anguish.

I am strong, but not that unbreakable.

When you go to see an IMAX movie, a real one and not a Hollywood movie, they make an announcement that if you get motion sick, just close your eyes, and the feeling should pass.

Though Dana shouldn’t have had to wait around for me to deal with the enormity of my feelings for Argo to pass into manageable friendship and getting away from sharing secrets that made me want to fix everything, it would have helped if Dana had closed her eyes, and waited for my feelings to pass, because they did indeed. Feeling like I was “in love” with Argo’s brain didn’t last nearly as long as trying to put dirt into the hole I’d dug, but when you break something, it is damn near impossible to put it back together again… and I mean that in the most sincere way with both of them. I just ran out of time, and we each said things to each other that pushed us away instead of closer together.

Regret and shame is a recurring theme, because I don’t want to be that person anymore. I was so anxious I couldn’t breathe, because everything was slipping through my fingers. Just everything. Starting over was my only option, because there was no way that either one of them was truly going to give me another chance, especially when Argo laid it out for me that I was never going to get away from her feeling that I was this dark and twisty character even as I tried in so many ways to try and get her to smile.

In our last fight ever, and should be, she escalated a conversation and I fucking lost it, a place I never wished to go and couldn’t really help because I do not have the emotional tools to deal with being threatened, especially when I feel that things are unjust.

Being an INFJ, it’s the judging part that eats my lunch, and probably why both of them have said that being in relationship with me is “too hard.” It’s a shitty place to be when the people you love the most say that about you, as if I am terminally unlovable. I worked hard on proving that I am not unlovable, that I have dark and twisty moments because of all my PTSD, but that doesn’t mean I don’t also have redeeming and awesome qualities. I don’t think I’ve ever been so broken, so angry, so depressed… because while their negative opinions swirled around me, I could only think of the blessings they’d brought into my life and wanting to give them big thank-yous all around that were rejected in a hot second.

I have no hope whatsoever that Argo will see this in me, because her feelings are her feelings and she is entitled to them, but losing Dana is a never-ending battle for me because she has known me, loved me, for over a decade. I am wrecked that Dana stopped seeing the good in me, because there were so many years of it.

Ones that I remember when I feel horrible that I’ve failed… in more ways than one.

I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me until now. I get free refills on coffee and tea. Therefore, I have decided that Venti is Italian for “too lazy to get up.” I’m not cheap, just practical. Any money I save at SBUX is money I can spend on something else. I mean, for God’s sakes… it’s coffee. Good coffee, but water and beans nonetheless. I was going to stay home and have a Bulletproof, but I decided I wanted a protein box instead. It’s fruit, cheese, peanut butter, a hard-boiled egg, and a raisin roll. Sometimes I spread the peanut butter on the roll, and sometimes I dip my apples in it. It’s all about options, people. The dark roast is caramelly and sweet even without cream, called Kopelanai. I don’t know the origin, but I might find out when I get up for a refill.

There is a baby sitting across from me wearing aviator sunglasses, and it’s about the cutest thing I’ve seen in weeks. Nothing like a baby to get my day going, because BABIES ARE AWESOME… especially with sunglasses that make her look like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. The music is hopping today, too. Kind of lounge with a beat, reminicent of an album series that Kathleen fell in love with called “Cocktail Hour” or similar…

I have so much to do when I get to the office. I got bogged down in a project for my non-profit that I didn’t have time to work on anything else. It was production work, so I couldn’t help but put the other things off, but I wish I’d been able to stay late last night and get a little further ahead… but we work from 9:00-600. The doors don’t open before then, and I don’t want to get locked in… although there’s a couch in the waiting room that is infinitely comfortable. 😛

I also have to carve out some time to look at my notes and take my HIPAA exam, which will probably happen Wednesday, because my Tuesday is booked. I am eager to get it over with, because if I don’t get 75% of the material right, it’s another $3-400 to re-take. I know enough about HIPAA that I shouldn’t be too worried, but I am by nature a worrier. If I pass, however, and keep up my certification, it will allow me to command a higher salary should I ever leave the job I’m in now. This is not an option now, and won’t be for a long time because I really enjoy where I landed, but it’s comforting nonetheless. The cert is renewed every two years, because the laws keep getting changed and molded to fit the new realities of hardcore hacking, and just how valuable medical information is, especially credit card and social security numbers.

I personally don’t worry about security in the slightest. I know I’ve been hacked, am sure of it, and once Dana accidentally gave my passport to Goodwill. I don’t have private information. I just have information now. And especially since I use Linux, I’m already on some sort of watch list, as if using linux is a gateway drug to hacking… because most people don’t know the difference between hacking and cracking, anyway. Hacking is in the same vein as “life hacks,” engineering software to make it better. Cracking is breaking into a system just to fuck shit up for the joy of it… mostly 13-year-old script kiddies who have nothing better to do than to see if they can bring down the DoD or Bank of America just for “fun.” Although, to be fair, nine times out of ten it is incredibly easy… and not because I’ve tried. It’s because people choose passwords that are easy to break and security measures that take no more than a day or two to break. Your best defense against cracking is a very long and involved password… not that people can’t get past it, but to make it where encryption programs take so long to break it that crackers just give up and move on to someone else.

Use passphrases instead of passwords. For instance, D0nald Trump 1s a j@ackass! works quite nicely. You’re welcome.

In terms of Windows passwords, I’m not sure you can use a passphrase, so I tend to take people’s names and put them into hacker-speak, like L3sl!eL!. That’s not my password for anything, just an example. I was born on a Saturday, but it wasn’t last Saturday.

Last night I slept without dreaming, because I was playing games on my phone and realized I was ruminating about Argo and Dana and didn’t want to keep that up all fucking night. As I have said before, grief is so weird. Losing them at my own hand does not make this any easier, and in fact, makes it harder, because I have so many sins for which to atone. I think I have made progress, though, because as I was drifting off, I got a letter from Argo and my response was, “I love you dearly, but no.” Of course, if I got a real e-mail from Argo and it was genuine, I probably wouldn’t say that, but what I do know is that the way I thought about her months ago is gone. I see her differently now, probably in the same way that she sees me differently, too. She told me once that she’d “lost the faith,” and I can say the same… Perhaps because even though I try every day to be the person that God wants me to be, that does not mean I don’t have my human, fallible moments that take me further away from God instead of closer, because there are some moments when I don’t want to face God with my iniquities, either. I want to pretend that everything is fine, and it just isn’t.

There’s nothing I can do to resolve the situation except pray for her every day, because it doesn’t change her, but it changes me. She is not my enemy, nor is she my cheerleader. When she is, it’s the face I make up for her and not in any way connected to reality. It’s just comforting in the face of enormous grief. I cannot even begin to tell you how awful I feel, and in time, I hope to accept myself in the face of being unacceptable, again to quote Paul Tillich. The bottom line is that we fucked each other up, but I cannot own her half… and actually, I’ll own way more than half. But the bottom line is that we both scared each other for different reasons, and it caused both of us to fight, flight, and freeze. I can only hope that not communicating is giving us both the peace we need, but if there is anything I wish I had back, it’s that chord between us that is able to send her my prayers and attaboys, because she truly is the badass I’ve always wanted in my life and never thought I’d get. It doesn’t matter to me what form that love takes, only that I used to have it and now I don’t.

But the main thing is that I am not lonely for her words anymore. I have a tapestry to look back on, and when I feel bad about myself, I go back to the beginning and look at all of our laughter. Nothing more needs to be said because I don’t want to create more pain in which we each have to get over. I am having a hard enough time with the actions we’ve both taken already. I don’t know when my feelings stopped mattering, but it can’t matter to me. I can only hang on to the friends I’ve made since I’ve been here, especially since Pri-Diddy and Elena have moved away.

Danni just sent me a text with her Moscow e-mail address, and I can’t wait to use it. And she will, in fact, be back for my birthday, which rocks like a geologist. I wish I could bring Bryn out as well, but her sister is getting married that weekend, and guess who’s doing the wedding?

Fuck me running. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Bryn, I assume she reads my blog. That’s enough. Don’t let her in. I know you know that already. But it never hurts to say it out loud, because saying it out loud makes it real. Susan is doing the wedding, of course, but that doesn’t mean that Diane won’t try to get information out of you if she can. She has a history of it, like going to visit Dana at work trying to get my contact information and being surprised when Dana wouldn’t give it to her without asking me if it was okay. I am very okay with loving her from waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over here. She doesn’t deserve me, but I won’t put away the rich tapestry of our past. That’s just crazymaking for me, like throwing away all the good stuff with the bad. If I focus on the bad, it’s just a rumination… stuck in a moment I can’t get out of.

We’ve had our Bloody Sunday. It’s over, and it will never go back together. But again, I don’t love her because it changes her, I love her because it changes me. More love, more forgiveness, more releasing of the past because then I can’t let it torture me.

I am stronger than I ever thought I would be, getting away from all the women that for me have divided time, both for evil and for awesome.

Though Argo is under my skin, shallow and subcutaneous, Dana runs much deeper, this river of emotion that isn’t ready to bubble up because I need more time to think, more time to remember, more time to focus on all of our laughter instead of our tears. Because if I can do that, divorce doesn’t torture me, either.

It’s how I am taking my pain and turning it into promise, no matter how long it takes.

Our Old Testament reading is the beginning of a major theological shift on God’s part, or, in the “taking the Bible seriously but not literally” sense, a change in the way people reacted to God. It says in the words of Isaiah that God is tired of being given sacrifices, literally watching the blood of the animals run down (I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats), and gives a speech to God’s people that is worthy of committing to memory:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.
Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard God say anything more loving and giving of equality than “come now, let us argue it out.” There are other parts of the Bible in which God gives up his omniscience/omnipotence, but not in these exact words. We are given an invitation not only to plead our case, but to get angry. To be sad. To confide all our shortcomings and iniquities in hopes of a better tomorrow than the today we’ve barely managed. To be able to stop trying to please God and to have a deeper relationship and understanding of it. For people-pleasers (and I include myself in that group), this verse is a Godsend (see what I did there?)

In short, God is inviting us to put down the mask of perfect and pick up the mantle of human… because the mask of perfect is to hide the sins for which we are ashamed and bring God only the most pleasing aspects of ourselves, without really taking it in that God can see past it in a second. Because what God is offering is not God’s inability to see our innermost selves, but to be allowed to express it on our own without input, like a therapist who sits in his chair and doesn’t say anything for the whole hour. Just takes in our pain and our confusion and at the end, doesn’t offer any suggestions, because the point of the session is not to offer counsel, but to sit with someone as they use you as their sounding board, letting the healing come from inside themselves.

The hard part is doing what is required of us to be better people. God knows that what we’re wrestling with God over is not what to do to please God, but what to do to please ourselves, and that God will listen as we go through the ups and downs of falling into depths unknown and digging ourselves out. In short, “don’t try to be me. Be you.”

When my ex-wife, Dana, and I first moved to Houston, I talked in this blog about being embarrassed to come out in certain situations, that if people called Dana my “friend,” thee were times I wouldn’t correct them because I had to know my audience to feel safe. It was also a public Facebook comment, and my friend Erin changed my life. She talked about how, as a new mother, breast-feeding was very much a coming out issue, because she looked around to see who was watching before she sat to feed her child, or would make sure that her breast and her baby had blankets over them. She reminisced that she wished she had just been stronger, because feeding her child should have been her first priority and not the potential embarrassment. Then she said the words that made me bawl in the middle of a Whataburger… “just be you. Without a cover.” I started a journal not long after that, a hand-written one in my favorite medium, plain white notebook paper with water-blue lines, and wrote that quote on the back of the front cover so that I looked at it every day before I began to write.

I thought that making other people more comfortable was more important than being the affectionate mushball I am fully capable of being, because growing up in Texas had only reinforced my internalized homophobia and I was overly aware of where I was at all times. Erin freed me from my fear in most situations, because of course, there are rare instances when fears are completely “cured.”

It is the same when we are arguing with God. We try to cover up the things that we think will make God uncomfortable, not because God won’t talk about it, but because we won’t. If we made the commitment to talk about all of the things in this world that made us uncomfortable, we could be us… without a cover.

The biggest thing to remember in the words of Isaiah are the steps God wants us to take to be able to stop hiding. Instead of offering sacrifices to a higher being, God wants us to lead from the back.

Seek justice.
Rescue the oppressed.
Defend the orphan.

Arguing it out is going from the God-pleasing phase to the us-pleasing phase, because when we are constantly surrounded by people who need us and respond, that in and of itself is pleasing to God, because it is we as a people changing ourselves from the inside out, even when we do not see immediate results. Sometimes you’ll find yourself helping a little old lady across the street who doesn’t want to go, not realizing that you have “helped her to death.” But then you’ll meet that person in the street who’s lost the light in their eyes, and you see it, and you stop to talk because it has become a mind worm that you cannot ignore… “what can I do to help? What can I do to become the person that God wants me to be?” Because helping that person is helping God.

It is something that Jesus was sent to reinforce.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

I am not a huge fan of the “Daddy in the sky” argument, because I lean much more toward God being in us and around us, the chord that connects one being to another. However, I cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater, either. Jesus is saying quite clearly that it is not the giving of sacrifices and the ever-present drive to please God that will get you any favors. It is looking around your world and truly seeing it. How often do we walk past the homeless and think, “someone else will take care of them,” or worse, “if I give them money, they’ll just spend it on alcohol?” Seeing the world around you does not include sitting in righteous judgment.

I was reminded of this last week when my dad and I were driving around DC, and a homeless man scared the life out of me by knocking on the passenger window in the pouring rain. I jumped out of my skin, and my dad rolled down his window. The man walked around to the other side of the car, and my dad pulled out a couple of ones and handed them over. He remembered another great “Tiffany Talk,” where Dr. Anthony said that she didn’t want to reach the end of her life and say that she had money, but she hadn’t given it away. Her exact words, if I remember right, were, “I have two dollars.” I am not sure where “the great physician” falls on the spectrum of Christianity, but what I do know is that is the most Christ-like thing I’ve ever heard anyone say.

As someone who genuinely believes that it takes a lot of mental illness to be homeless in the first place (because regardless of housing prices, the longer you live on the street, the easier it is to succumb to the madness of your own mind), I have no right to judge how that person ended up in the rain asking me for money. I have never given anyone money on the street, but I have bought plenty of McDonald’s for the homeless downtown. But in terms of money, I’ve changed my mind.

I have two dollars.

Today’s Epistle comes from Hebrews, another piece of social justice writing that stands out as part of our journey toward wholeness… “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

It may not seem like social justice at face-value, but let me make my case. I have no idea what happened with that two dollars in the rain. Perhaps it went to a PBR tallboy, but perhaps it went towards a package of diapers or a can of formula. If I constantly believe the worst in people, I am less likely to give over my hard-earned money. However, if I let go of my preconceived notions, I am able to help bring the kindom to fruition without being able to see it happening, just knowing that it is possible. We walk by faith and not by sight, because those two dollars may not change the person on the street, but the point is how much it changes me to give it. I don’t have to control the two dollars once it’s out of my hands, but I have the power to take it out of my pocket.

It is a sacrifice pleasing in God’s sight, leading by serving… changing ourselves so that we see past me, myself, and I. In this world, it is seemingly becoming more and more impossible. We’re busy, first of all. We walk with our heads down, staring at our phones for another. We are rarely other-aware and not for malice… just plain ignorance.

In both our Old and New Testament readings, the invitation is to LOOK UP. LOOK OUT. Because when we do, we have the ability to be the most Christ-like, because it’s hard to walk by racism, oppression, homelessness, tragedy in all things. God does not want your expensive sacrifices, but the ones that cost the least financially and the most emotionally.

When we are ready and willing to walk by faith and not by sight, we are trusting that God has the ability to bless us the way we are blessing others, without keeping score.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

I have a confession to make. I didn’t start watching James Bond films until Tim Dalton in “The Living Daylights,” so I haven’t seen “Goldfinger.” So when Danni told me that Pussy Galore was quite possibly the hero of the entire film, I knew that she was talking about a “Bond Girl,” but other than that, I was out. So we made a deal. I’d watch “Goldfinger” if she’d watch “Goldmember.” It’s a fair trade, no?

Dan asked me to watch Goldfinger from a feminist perspective, and wanted to know whether I thought the interaction between Galore and Bond was entirely consensual. I just want her to see Michael Caine as Austin Powers’ “fahjah.”

I did laugh walking through The International Spy Museum when I learned that Goldfinger’s first name is “Auric.” It reminded me of my favorite campaign slogan, “AuH2O.” Not that I would have voted for Goldwater, just a great campaign slogan nonetheless. I take clever where I can get it.

So, I just got home from H Street Country Club, so named because it’s a bar with a putt-putt course on the second floor. I was terrible at it, but had a great time… mostly because everyone else was just as good as I was. The thing I love about hanging with Dan is that in addition to making friends with her wife, Autumn, she’s introduced me to so many people. I found my friend Jill’s doppelganger, and her name is Lindsay. Beat that with a stick.

We had this one conversation that doubled me over in laughter. Danni and her friend Traci are both soldiers (although Dan isn’t active duty- she works at State) who basically look like young boys, as do I. I don’t remember how we got on the subject, but we started talking about carding, and I told them my personal triumph of getting carded while buying Sam’s cigarettes. Traci said that she was once told to get out of the deep end of the pool, because you had to be 16. And then Dan hit the home run, when she said that she’d been mistaken for Autumn’s son more than once.

She came in Kings full over Aces, and I just had a busted straight.

It’s been amazing taking all of this new context I’ve been given to work with over the past few years and incorporating it into my daily life. For instance, I can honestly say that I am excited to be Dan’s friend, that I am enjoying taking the chance of being vulnerable and getting close to someone (as much as I can, anyway) without the undercurrent of anything. What I give is what I get, and what I am giving is glowing friend-love, and it is returned. I love that she remembers past conversations and checks in with me to see how I’m doing, without any agenda except genuinely, “how are you?” We’ll still be able to e-mail while she’s in Russia, but no personal comms other than that… so no Facebook, etc. Too much security risk, as you can imagine. The trip is entirely UNCLASS, but that doesn’t mean she gets to check in wherever she goes, either.

To send her off, we all agreed to do a shot, which led to another interesting conversation. I said, “do we want shots, or shooters? My favorite shooter is a red-headed slut.” I think she missed the joke, but she’s strawberry blonde… and incidentally, that IS my favorite. She suggested B-52s. They were out of both Jaeger and Kahlua. So I said, “I think it should be some kind of STOLICHNAYA!” It was really funny to me to say it because I have a horrible Russian accent. In the end, we just had orange Stoli and cranberry juice, a toast to Russia and friendship.

I feel like this entry is jumping around a lot, but that’s probably because I don’t drink much alcohol and I spent most of the night drinking Sugar Free Red Bull and Diet Coke. I’m going to pay for that, I’m sure. Reminds me of the night I went to a bar with AA friends where I proceeded to drink eleven Diet Cokes in a row. I think I was wired for two days after that…. I plan on going to church tomorrow if I can get some sleep in between now and then. If I don’t, I’ll probably write about the scriptures myself. I can fall asleep preaching to myself just as easily as I can fall asleep to someone else. 😛

And on that note, I think it’s time to read for a bit and hope I get tired. Amazon gave away “A Girl Named Zippy” by Haven Kimmel for free the other day, so I got that and bought one of her other novels, one of my favorite books of all time, called “The Solace of Leaving Early.” There’s a sequel to Zippy out now, but I reasoned with myself that I actually need to read some of the books on my Kindle before I add new ones. I’m not finished with Hamilton, but I did finish Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I have a one word review… Meh.

There was one scene that ripped my guts out, and the rest I could take or leave.

Speaking of leaving, have a wonderful trip, comrade. I’ll be eagerly awaiting your return. Your requested review of Goldfinger is on its way…. as soon as I actually sit down to watch.