There’s no heat in my room, and no easy way to fix it. I’m going to have to buy my own space heater, because the heater that we already have is located in the basement and doesn’t rise all the way upstairs. I say this because it just illustrates how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning, because the temperature without the electric blanket and the moment I throw it off is drastic. I am so cold that I tend to actively avoid taking my clothes off to change into pajamas. I just fall asleep in whatever I wore to work because those moments when I have to change or pee are just intolerable, and I put them off as long as possible. Perhaps I will get a space heater for the bathroom as well… or at the very least, some jar candles to warm up the room when I take a bath or shower. Jar candles are highly effective, and perhaps that’s all I need for my room, as well. Plus, I have the chance to make my room smell like cookies. That can’t suck, right? And then I realized that there was more to the story.

This morning, I severely overslept and had to Uber in, although once I did, I was at the office so early there was no one to let me in, and I stood in the cold and thought about why I overslept. My alarm went off, and I snoozed for an hour, foregoing my normal writing time to sleep in. I forgot that once you hit the snooze button for a certain number of times, the alarm shuts off altogether… and therefore, I had no way of knowing that I’d actually slept until 0745, when I normally wake up at 0600. I was coding in my head like a madman, because when I left last night, there was a piece of SQL making me tear my hair out, and I was trying to work it out in my sleep (it really works…. most of the time). It was then that I realized part of oversleeping was fear. I didn’t have this code snippet worked out, and I didn’t want to get vulnerable enough to admit it.

When I was standing outside the office, I had a severe talk with myself, because I got in trouble with myself and I needed to open my own can of whoopass. I had to tell myself that it was okay to be frightened at a new job, but that didn’t mean I needed to give up my writing time just to put off the point at which I needed to wake up and face that fear head on. I missed the window at which I could have gotten on the train by a mere 10 minutes, but that ten minutes is the difference between being on time and 30 minutes late. While that wouldn’t have ever been a thing (we often come in late and stay late), my north star is to be early every day. I tend to beat my office mates by a ton, and it makes me happy. The only thing is that it’s frustrating to beat them by so much that I have to wait for someone to let me in.

But being cold is motivating. When the office opened, I went straight to my computer and opened my coding environment and started knocking things out. I still haven’t solved the problem, but the main point is that when I kicked my own ass, I got results. I was no longer afraid, just determined. Then, when I came to another point at which I wanted to slam my head against my desk, my office mate told me that she would teach me how to use software to make the SQL easier instead of coding it all by hand. When I got vulnerable, so did she. It was a watershed moment, knowing that I didn’t have to know everything, just the right person to ask. There is nothing more frustrating than pushing the “execute” button and having the code error out, because the errors it points out are rarely what’s actually wrong, so they are spectacularly unhelpful.

For instance, if it says the error is on line X, it’s usually not. It’s usually several lines up, which is just a #facepalm all the way around. The good thing is that I am such a grammar nazi that I rarely get errors from something as simple as a missed colon; it’s usually that what I want to say is not what I actually said. As Mark Twain once quipped the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. I am slowly learning the right words, and I’m not a bad coder, just a relatively inexperienced one… and this job is what is going to teach me if I let it. Programmers are inherently collaborative. I’m just the jackass that wants to know everything and make it seem like everything is within my control.

Guess what? Very little is.

I’ve realized that I am on par with my office mates, which makes me happy. I don’t need to be God’s gift to coding on the first day I start. For instance, yesterday one of my office mates taught me how to use a function to make my life so much easier, and if I hadn’t reached out, I would have spent at least an extra hour trying to figure out what to do. I do have experience in SQL coding, but at the same time, I didn’t realize that what I’ve done before is so different than what I am doing now. Databases are all different in their own way, especially in terms of handling operators. This may not make sense to 99.9% of you, but those that get it will understand why something that worked previously has me chain-drinking coffee now.

The part that you will understand is that this morning, I was afraid. Now, I’m not.

Good talk.

I’ve been trying to write an Epiphany sermon for three years now, and I still can’t get it “write.” The title is called “Two Ex-fil Ops,” and the further I dig into it, the more I realize I don’t know what I’m talking about. One of these days, I’ll get it right, and you’ll have the Epiphany sermon to end all Epiphany sermons…. but yesterday, you didn’t.

The main idea is that the angel talking to the Magi and the angel talking to Joseph are the ex-fil ops needed to get the Magi away from Herod and Jesus into Egypt and avoid the Massacre of the Innocents. The longer I wrote, the more it meandered into nothing. So, I had that goin’ for me.

So, stay tuned. One of these days……………..

I have three years to ruminate on that one scripture. So far, I think I’m going to need them.

I think I need to watch Covert Affairs again.

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In other news, it’s still cold.

I took Uber to the Metro this morning, and the driver told me that when he first signed in, there were a few snow flurries. I bought the right coat and I am warm enough, but I need one of those hipster hats, because a baseball cap just doesn’t cut it. Plus, my office is like a meat freezer, so I’d feel comfortable in a toque all day… maybe a wool porkpie, as is my usual. I used to have one that I bought at Roots, with the Canadian winter Olympics logos on it, but one of the cats peed on it and it was never the same afterward, despite washing it and spraying it with 91% alcohol. The long and short of it is that it’s time to go shopping.

I don’t know when I’ll get my first paycheck, but it will be very, very soon… and despite the time I took off when my driver’s license was on it’s way, I’ll still have two weeks and some change on it. I’ll have enough to put away money and get the few things I need to make life comfortable. I have decided that after I get my emergency fund in place, it’s time to start saving for a cheap car. It’s not getting to work that’s killing me. It’s getting home. I am generally perky in the morning, because I go to bed very early, but it is killing me to get home an hour before bed and never making it to choir on time EVER.

But the car can wait. I can put it off as long as necessary, because my financial security has to come first. My hospitalization last year wasn’t cheap, and I need to pay it off myself, but not after the thousand dollars Dave Ramsey recommends to get myself out of trouble if I need it. I don’t believe what Ramsey does in terms of theology, but I follow his financial advice as if it were Egg McMuffins, if that gives you any indication of how much I like it.

So, you start with the thousand dollar emergency fund, and then as you pay off debt, you start to accrue three to six months worth of living expenses as well. That’s why it’s so important to me to buy a car instead of leasing or financing one. I don’t want a car payment in addition to everything else I need to pay. I also want to put some money into one of those medical savings accounts so that I can pay for my doctor’s visits and medication with it. I won’t worry about extra for emergency room co-pays, because I hardly ever need them. I don’t want to take a chance on putting too much in, because that’s money I’ll never get back if I don’t use it. Right now, I don’t know how much my doctor’s visits and medication will cost since I am switching over from Medicaid to an HMO provided by DSI.

We’ll just have to see. The main idea in this essay is to be financially responsible for what’s coming in, and to bless my bank account like I bless everything else. How you feel about money is just as important as how you spend it. I have an incredible road ahead of me financially, because I’m not responsible for anything I don’t want to be… although truth be told, Medicaid was so excellent that I am wary about switching plans, but at the same time, Medicaid is for people without income, and it needs to stay that way. I am so thankful that my safety net remained intact, and I will never be able to repay my gratitude except in what I do from here on out. Giving back to my community in Silver Spring is so important, with the exception that after grad school, I don’t want to locate my church here, because CCC is such an important part of my life that I do not want to “compete” with it.

It’s about my own journey now, the one where I am ultimately responsible for everything that happens in my life, because I do not have a partner to share it with. This is not a problem, this is just reality.

Reality is fun. I think. I’ll keep you posted. 😛

I am not ready for Monday. I spent yesterday cleaning out my room, but it’s not completely done yet. I haven’t started the laundry, and it’s just sitting in baskets along the wall, taunting me. I’m at a Starbucks close by, drinking coffee until I feel I have enough energy to start, because generally, writing puts me in the mood to get shit handled. I’ve put away everything that’s been weighing me down, and I can move on. It’s definitely a win-win situation. I also don’t think I’m preaching today, but we’ll see. It’s Epiphany, which is a loaded Sunday for me that I would rather forget exists because I’m not at Bridgeport getting my star from SarahAnne, inside information that I absolutely will not give you because it’s far more worth it to show up and see what I mean, since some of you may read this before Bridgeport starts this morning. The only thing I *will* tell you is that one year, Dana and I had just been to the OB/GYN the week before, and my word was “expect.”

I miss Dana and our journey so much that sometimes I cannot breathe, and the best advice I’ve gotten so far since I sent her the e-mail asking if she wanted to get together and Counselor replied was, “you were trying to be a big person. Fuck them. Time to let her go.” Easier said than done as I see our baby in my dreams, wondering what he or she would have looked like if we’d managed to get past all of my abuse issues and how they changed me. It is so true that I am not the same person she fell in love with- not even close- and yet, I wanted her to be able to love that woman, too. It’s never going to happen, especially if Argo continues to be a part of my life, and she might. We’ll see. Nothing in life is certain, but our apologies to each other seem to have taken and I can only hope they will continue to bring us into a new light, one not tainted with anything, but light so bright that we’re blinded by it. Even if we never meet in person, I like being the person that e-mails to check in. We don’t live that far from each other, but as predicted, we don’t treat each other any differently. We’re still just those friends living in the sacrament of writing, and that is so okay with me. So. Okay. Writing to each other is a good thing, a way to establish new boundaries and to see what will take in the future and what will not.

All I can say is “God of the Universe, protect my precious Argo…” as I have said for many years now. That being said, a big part of my divorce from Dana is that she just would not make room for Argo and I to be friends on our own…. not that I didn’t deserve that level of scrutiny when I was in the middle of the mess, but at the same time, I kept saying that it would settle and it did…. However, what did not settle was Argo being my friend. There were things that Argo told me that she didn’t want shared with anyone, and when I broke that rule, there was hell to pay. I didn’t think there was anything she was telling me that couldn’t go to Dana as well, but I was so wrong it hurt. That being said, nothing that Argo wanted to share with me would have isolated me from Dana. It was that secrecy deserves honesty, but always respect. That’s a line from the Outlander series, just in case you’re wondering. In a way, sharing what Argo was telling me was disrespectful of our friendship, but I am a verbal processor, and in my need to talk about what was going on between Argo and me, I justified breaking our pact. And, to be honest, there was a point at which Argo told me that she was going to pull back on talking with me because she didn’t want to say anything that I couldn’t share with Dana, so some of the things I shared I thought fell under that agreement, and they didn’t. For that, I will always be sorry, because of course there are things that you share with friends that don’t automatically go to your partner. We weren’t sharing anything that couldn’t be compartmentalized into “Argo’s space” and “Dana’s space.”

If I was Dana, I would have been threatened, too, but surely there were things that she shared with friends that she wouldn’t have wanted to get back to me, either…. or secrets shared by her friends that they didn’t necessarily want passed on. It’s a two-way street. There are friends you have severally, and there are friends you have jointly, but that doesn’t mean there is threat involved. For instance, if Counselor was having a problem, I seriously doubt that she would have wanted Dana to discuss it with me, because Counselor’s secrecy deserved respect, as well.

When I crushed out on Argo, it was nothing more serious than the mark Diane left on me, and if you know Diane well, you know that I came by it honestly. I can think of several friendships over the years where Diane struggled with the same ideas I did, ideas passed on to the next generation without malice, just example. Being in therapy has totally changed the direction of how I feel about friendship, and what it is supposed to offer rather than the mistakes I’ve made with them. I am ready to be close to another woman in that women friendship we all hope for… sometimes with the same person for a lifetime, and sometimes different people at different times. For instance, I think Samantha and I will continue to grow together, because we live in the same house (sort of- I live in a multi-family home). Even though I make enough that I could have my own place if I wanted, I don’t. I enjoy that there are people around me that really care, that watch out for me, that listen when I am sad. I feel adopted, and that feeling isn’t going to go away easily.

I had that friendship with Dana, and that is what I miss the most. That I felt adopted into her family long before we became lovers instead of just friends. I had to take a long time to process that idea, because I didn’t know if my feelings were also a mark that Diane left on me, or what I felt for Dana was truly genuine. It took three and a half years to know the truth, that I loved her more than air. It eats away at me that I lost that love for good, but we have been so close over the years that I hope once Dana is done being angry, that this will not be the end of our movie. I have a lot to process before I’m ready for a friendship with her, too, because when we got married in 2008, my ovaries exploded and I wanted nothing more than for her to be my “baby daddy.” As it turns out, though, her sperm count is really, REALLY low.

I have to get rid of the feelings I have that we belong together, because while on a surface level, I have completely given up the idea that we’ll get back together, it hasn’t gone deep into my soul, the true knowing of it. Honestly, I believe that I am still in shock, even though we broke up almost a year ago now. Even that feels shocking, that it’s been almost a year since our ugly blowout and picking up our toys and going home. I’m not ready for a new relationship, and I won’t be for a long time, but I know for sure that my approach won’t be any different. I want to be friends for a long time before I decide whether I want to commit to someone. I want to know what contract I’m signing. And, God willing and the creek don’t rise, I want that person to give me my space with Argo, make room for her in their lives, because I don’t want her to go away just because I’m dating someone else that feels threatened by her presence in my life…. because there is no threat. Argo will be thrilled beyond belief when I find that person that truly ignites my soul, and I hope that person will know that they cannot be my entire world. I need my friends, both on the ground and in the cloud, so that if something happens and the relationship doesn’t work out, it doesn’t feel like my whole world has just crumbled into nothing.

I felt that way with Dana because I thought that we were interdependent, and after months to think about it, codependency reared its ugly head. My thought process changed the longer we were apart, because you can always recognize these things easier once you’re out of a relationship than you can when you’re in them. I realized how much we were responsible for bailing each other out of our problems, and how much we took on of each other’s lives until they weren’t separate anymore. We became DanaandLeslie rather than Dana and Leslie, if that makes any sense at all. People used to call us by the other’s name, and I used to joke that it was because we looked so much alike.

I want a relationship where my girlfriend/wife isn’t threatened by me saying I need my space. I’ll see you in a few hours without having to tell her where I’m going, because sometimes I don’t know. It doesn’t mean turning off my phone. I’m generally reachable. It’s just that sometimes I want to do specific things, and sometimes I just want to wander around DC with my camera and my notepad alone, without knowing where I’ll end up. I also want a girlfriend who isn’t threatened by me wanting my own bedroom, or even my own apartment, because I am solitary to a fault, and I want to invite her in, rather than so much togetherness that I give up my independence. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to sleep together at any time, but it does mean that I want my own place to go when we fight, because fighting is just unavoidable. I also want my freedom in terms of making my own writing schedule, and not having to worry if I’m keeping her up with the click and clack of the keys.

In the words of an article I saw recently, I want to be single…. with you.

And on that note, it’s time to get back to work. There’s laundry to be done. Day off is now over.

Depression always lies, but it always knows the very best lies to use against you.

-Paul Serna

Paul is a friend from high school, and this was his Facebook status today. I told him it was poetry. Depression uses lies so insidious that you tell yourself they must be true, and they feel true in the moment, when you can’t see what’s real around you, even though it is truly right around you.

Hold on. I need some tea for this one.

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Steeping.

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Better. I realized that the one I drug I normally have on board, caffeine, wasn’t. It helps, as does ibuprofen, when I get a headache from not taking my meds at the same time each day. Last night I treated myself to a sleeping pill and no alarm this morning. I didn’t just wake up. I eased into my day by watching television. However, this is the first time I’ve actually been out of bed all day, because going to work really takes it out of me. I leave the house two and a half hours before I need to get to work 9:00 AM), and I don’t get home until almost 8:30 PM, at which time I take a sleeping pill, watch some TV, and get ready to do it all over again. I take a sleeping pill when I get home because if I do not, I will stay up until all hours of the night, ruminating on both lies and the truth, sometimes without being able to tell which is which. Then, the next day, I can’t focus because I haven’t slept. I would rather be knocked on my ass with a sleeping pill than take a chance I won’t do well at work. I love my job, and the CEO needs me to get up to speed quickly because he wants me to fire him. 😛

In fact, he has his laptop with him on vacation in the mountains. I can see why he wants a break.

But this entry is not about work. It is about readiness to work, and my commitment to it. I don’t care that I don’t have a social life. It’s not what I want at this time. What I want is to be lost in my own little world, coding and writing and (fingers crossed) going back to school. I have given up on Howard for undergrad, because their distance learning is not up to speed and there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to be on campus and at work simultaneously.  Plus, I am still enrolled (just not registered) at University of Houston. I don’t know how much they charge per online class, but I make enough that within a few months, I should have enough for at least one, possibly two…. especially if I keep living the way I’m living, which is buying enough groceries to keep me alive and leaving the rest in the bank.

I pay for everything else, like Starbucks runs, with gift cards, which I mete out judiciously by only ordering coffee or tea… for two reasons. The first is that it’s cheap, and the second is that the fancy drinks do nothing for me. They’re sweet to the point of cloying and more calories than you should have in an entire meal. More than once I have fascinated other people by them saying, “have whatever you want,” and I still just order coffee. To me, those fancy drinks can be equated to when MTV stopped playing music videos. Starbucks used to sell coffee. Now they sell candy. The coffee is just a side business.

I don’t drink coffee at home anymore because I don’t want to get up even earlier just to drink it. I can’t take my coffee on the bus, and I can’t drink it fast enough if I Uber to the train, because I can’t take coffee on the Metro, either. And if I stay home to drink coffee, I will not write. I need Starbucks to act as my personal office, because I will take up all the time allowed with getting ready if I don’t get my ass out the door. I’ll play with my hair, I’ll experiment with make-up (my face is breaking out, plus make-up keeps the looking like a 15-year-old boy at bay), I’ll pack and re-pack my backpack. In short, instead of writing, I’ll just putter around until it’s time to call for the car or walk to the bus. Writing keeps the lies at bay, therefore I would rather call for the car and get everything ready in a hurry because someone is coming to get me (in a good way ;)).

Speaking of make-up, my dad mailed me my foundation, but I had to go and buy eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick (well, tinted Burt’s Bees) when Samantha traded driving me around for a pack of cigarettes again and since I didn’t have my wallet, they wouldn’t sell to me. My inner thought process was, Jesus God, I don’t even look 18? High school was 20 years ago! I bought her a large apple juice instead, and a Cheerwine for me, which made it tolerable to both of us. It was flattering, in a weird way, but also depressing. The clerk said, well, I’m just using my own judgment, and I thought, clearly he cannot see the crow’s feet on both sides of my face and the silver hair slowly coming in at my temples and eyebrows. At the same time, I am less than two years away from 40 and I got carded for cigarettes. #winning

…And speaking of grey hair, I have been letting my hair grow out naturally without dyeing it red, and I was shocked at how much grey was cut off in the back. SHOCKED. It’s time to start dyeing it again, I just can’t decide what color. The red has looked good on me for a long time, but I’m ready for my natural color with blonde highlights, courtesy of the benzoyl peroxide in my acne cream. When I figured it out, I started putting that bitch in my bangs on purpose. I have to watch out, though. I’ve accidentally customized some of my t-shirts as well.

The point in all of this is that make-up or no, I am beautiful. The lies are when I tell myself I’m not. When I get depressed, I remember that Meetup I went to for Women in Their 30’s, and just how many women wanted to go home with me that night (I didn’t indulge, I just let my ego be stroked until I was tired and ready for bed). I wasn’t wearing anything special, as you’ll see from the picture if you click the link. I was just me.

I just read that link again and laughed when I saw the line, I’m too polite and Southern just to put it all out there, because it just illustrated to me how different my online and offline personalities truly are. Really must work on that. Either I need to be more aggressive in dating offline, or more reserved online, and perhaps both. The wall of not really knowing what’s waiting for me on the other end of an e-mail or instant message gives me a bravery I could never have face-to-face.

One woman in particular read me the riot act over it, and I’ll never forget it. She stopped being my friend immediately, just butt-quick, with no chance of reconciliation even though I meant no harm by it. I was just being snarky, outrageous me. I knew she was happily married and had no illusions about it. There was no there there. She’s just hot, and as far as I can tell, she knows it. I didn’t think I was telling her anything she hadn’t already noticed herself. 😉

I was so embarrassed that I hurt her, and that’s probably what I’ll remember the most. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t apologize enough to make things right again, and one of the reasons I’m trying so hard to live in peace now. I don’t want to be someone capable of hurting another like that. I don’t want to live my life always wishing I could take something back.

I was brave with Argo for very different reasons. Very different. She had become my soulmate, not in the classic definition, but in the Elizabeth Gilbert definition; she was someone who came into my life in order to shake me into a different reality, and those people are not always designed to be permanent. She defined I wish I could take it back, and at the same time, after Dana and I broke up, I had to know the truth. Dana told me that she thought Argo was in love with me, too, she just wouldn’t tell me because I was married. I had to know whether Dana was right or not. Her ruminations on Argo’s threat got to me, and to me, to not ask the question was foolish.

As it turns out, Argo is consistent in her heterosexuality, and that’s fine with me. I hope whomever she chooses is fantastic, and I can let go of Dana’s insistence and my own confusion because of it. Plus, if our friendship has been any indication, I have no interest in doing any worse a number on each other than we already have.

First children fight to the death in a race to be right. It would be a thermonuclear war of a relationship, and I have had enough of that to last my whole life. If Argo wants to be my friend, that is enough for me. I don’t want to ever take a chance of fucking that up again. She is so precious to me as is, and always will be, whether we are in communication or not.

I focus on the small chance that we will move onward and upward, and not the ugly fights that blew us apart, unnecessarily in my own race to be right. When I am depressed, I think to myself that there’s no way someone like that could love someone like me, and when I am not, I know for sure that I am someone worth getting to know. Depression is full of lies. Of course I am interesting and funny and clever, but I would never think that when I’m sad.

Depression lies to you by taking your own insecurities and multiplying them until you cannot move, paralyzed by analysis. Bipolar depression makes it where you feel great about yourself, and then you just wilt. It’s a never-ending cycle, but with medication, it is manageable. I am not one of those people who starts to feel better and stops taking their meds, common in bipolar patients, because I am smart enough to know that I am not miraculously cured. It’s the meds that are making me feel better.

It keeps the lies at bay.

Most of the time.

Writing is late this morning because I dragged ass and made it to Starbucks to drink a doppio con panna and run to the train, but I didn’t get my usual morning writing time. The only reason I’m writing now is that everyone in the office, including my office mate, haven’t arrived yet, and I don’t have any projects from yesterday to finish before they get here. This entry may abruptly end like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, because when my office mate gets here, it’s time to put together our to-do list and get busy… although since it’s New Year’s Eve, I think we’ll be out of here by 3:30 or so…. which is good because I just could not fall asleep last night. Too much going on in my head, because like a lot of people, when I lay my head on the pillow, my brain has to remind me of everything I’ve ever done wrong in my life. It’s the time when I can’t wait to fall asleep, because the same problems on which I ruminate tend to work themselves out in my dreams.

Because Counselor asked me not to contact Dana under any circumstances, I get closure by dreaming about her. I talk to her all the time, for hours. The nice thing about dreaming is that I always get the responses from her that I want, because I’m making them up. We don’t fight, we discuss calmly, and we laugh…. oh, how we laugh. Not only do we talk seriously, old inside jokes come up and sometimes I laugh so hard I wake in the night with joy.

When I awoke, a Facebook memory that made me laugh was Dana is the best thing that has ever happened to me. #lafawnduh There are very few pains in life that cannot be made better by a quote from Napoleon Dynamite or The Big Lebowski…. or paraphrasing them to fit your needs. For instance, this is not ‘Nam… this is divorce. There are rules.

Apparently, one of them is maintaining no contact, which is easy, and so hard. It’s easy when I cry, and hard when she makes me laugh. Because we’ve been best friends for so long, every day there is a Facebook memory with her in it. Most of them are seriously, seriously hilarious. Facebook has introduced a new feature for “managing ended relationships,” but I don’t want to use it because those memories make me so happy.

I don’t want to focus on pain. I want to focus on joy, and I’ll take it wherever I can get it… that being said, letting pain out is important, too. I wrecked a good relationship because of my mental illness, and the fact that I grew so much as a person in the last two years that my actions and reactions were not the same anymore, and I literally was not the same person, for better or for worse. The resolution to our fistfight was even hilarious…. She agreed to take 75% of the blame if I would take 25%, and we high-fived. As I have said before, I would have settled for 51/49, but she chose to be generous and I will never forget it.

My kindness was that Dana’s dad is also a lawyer, and has several bottles of Johnny Walker Blue for being a badass with some of his clients. I bought the smallest bottle I could afford and brought it to her with the words I just wanted to tell you that your dad is not the only badass in this family. We were broken up, but at the same time, there’s not going to be a single point in my life that I won’t treasure her friendship and think of her as family. What she does with that information is up to her, but there it is regardless. I am sad and disappointed that we could not work on things anymore, but she got this idea in her head that I was obsessed with Argo, and not just processing things that had already happened, which was a whole hell of a lot. Argo and I had our own issues, but not romance… just deeply personal to both of us. We both needed to say things to each other that freed us…. but it was having that freedom that made me crush out in the first place. Obsession is too strong a word for processing the past, and because of it, I lost someone I considered the deepest friendship I’d ever had in my life. I can only hope that Argo knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that after my move and all of the things I’ve done to establish myself here, as well as reconnecting with old friends, that of course I wanted to be a part of her real life so we could cut the Internet bullshit, but it wasn’t the most important thing to me about moving. Getting away from everything I knew was. That being said………………………

In my mental illness, I did some things that showed it clearly, and I know I hurt her. But at the same time, when my meds were corrected and I saw myself in an out of body experience where I could comment on seeing myself lost in blackness, I corrected it on my own. I am an INFJ, just like Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr. I don’t know that I have their visionary capabilities, but I want to try. They’re my favorite preachers, and to live up to their examples is intimidating and exciting all at the same time.

When I go to Howard for grad school, I want to study race relations as a writer…. not as a class. As observations from digging around and people-watching. I am interested in social justice as a practice, and I can’t think of a better place to start. I kind of want to be a watered-down version of Jeremiah Wright- passionate and yet, not political. There is no room for politics in religion if you are in the practice of accepting everyone for exactly who they are.

I feel that i have the capacity to vision now that I am not weighted down by my past mistakes, and have no interest in starting any relationships except networking and friendship. I want to see my friendships with both Rev. Matt and Rev. Susannah deepen, as well as Rev. Audrey, who comes from the black church tradition and can bring a crowd to a standing ovation because they are so pumped up by her words.

I was hurt by love, but now I want to live in it.

Amen.

 

 

I was standing in line at Starbucks this morning for my Venti French Roast and the woman behind the counter said, “here. This is free.” It was a huge snowman cookie, the one I’d been eyeing not one second before. It had to be some kind of reward attached to my Starbucks app, but I’m pretending I got cruised just to stroke my own ego. Or maybe I was being cruised, and I’m just an idiot (I usually am about these things). Picking up that I think other women are attractive? Easy. Telling when people are attracted to me? Not so much. Not so much at all.

I need an app on my phone that instead of making matches, just says, “she’s looking at you, jackass.”

I’m in a punchy mood because I made it to Starbucks on time this morning, the coffee is fresh, and the onslaught of humanity has not yet begun. It’s 7:04 as of this writing, and it doesn’t start getting busy around here until 7:30. By then, I’m finishing up and heading to the train. It’s a win-win situation.

Overhead, they’re playing some kind of Bob Marley album that feels like indy coffee shop and not Starbucks. As far as I could tell, no one behind the counter was wearing patchouli. Which reminds me that I need to go to Whole Foods.

This morning I saw an article on Facebook thanking her friends for catching her when she was down, and it hit so close to home that there were tears streaming down my face as I read it. She fell because of alcoholism; I fell because I was too proud to admit my bipolar disorder/PTSD was WAY out of hand until I couldn’t hide it anymore. Letting that much emotional pain ride on that much anxiety without medication to keep the physical effects under control was the wrong. move. entirely. It’s no wonder my entire life blew up- I’d been trying to pretend it was fine since I was a teenager, not knowing why my relationships wouldn’t work out, why everyone looked at me like I had three heads because I just didn’t get it…. well, I don’t think anyone will ever stop doing that, but you get the picture. There are things that actualized adults know that people who are faking it don’t. I am starting to catch up, one day at a time. I feel better than I have in a long time, and wrongs are starting to “write themselves.”

It’s been a hell of a journey, and in some ways, I’m glad I have record of it. In others, I would gladly set fire to the server and watch it all burn. Going backward is enlightening and painful all at the same time, but they are different pieces of me, and thank God I have friends who are willing to put up with the bad parts to get the good. I would like to think that the good parts outweigh the bad ones, but I’ve only recently started to feel that way again, because in some sense, I thought the bad parts were bigger than the good ones because I couldn’t not. Not since I was a kid. As I have said before, meeting Diane at the time that I did in the way that I did made me feel like I was damaged goods, and I’ve carried that burden for far too long. Susan unwittingly said so when she said it was this “big bag of shit I’d been carrying around forever,” not knowing what was in it, and not listening when I tried to tell her. But she was never going to be an objective audience, because if I was Diane’s partner, I wouldn’t believe me, either. But kids just do not have enough malice aforethought to make something like that up, especially with so many details that have stayed the same for years and years, under duress or not.

There’s a homeless man trying to beg for change wandering around, and I wonder if he knows that no one carries cash anymore? I’m betting at least half the people here have paid with their phones. I did, and I’m just barely a yuppie. I have an iPhone 5c, which I believe stands for 5cheap, because the battery life is terrible and I have to keep an $80 Otter Box on it just in case it drops from my bed to the floor. I’ve had it long enough that I think I could upgrade, or just buy a new plan out here if I wanted, but I hardly ever use my phone. I’d rather use my iPad instead. I can even take my phone calls on it as long as it’s hooked to wi-fi.

People ask me all the time as a tech person what kind of phone I would get. Not sure, but Android over iPhone because I use Linux. I don’t really care about the OS of the phone itself, just that the iTunes store encrypts all your music so you can’t get it back off the phone, and there is no version of iTunes for Linux (yet, at least). You can try running an old and busted version using a Windows emulator, but good luck getting the hardware to work in a virtual machine without a lot of gut-wrenching pain. I’d rather have something that works natively with Rhythmbox and Banshee, the two media players I use on Linux the most.

Wow, this entry has skipped around a lot. But that’s just where my brain has gone this morning as I’ve sat watching from what I call “the technology loft,” so named because all the tables that are upstairs have outlets. However, it’s time to get moving now. Maybe I’ll see you at lunch.

love you miss you mean it

Having a coding issue that is taking up more time than I want, because it’s got to be some stupid, small issue that I can’t see because I’ve been staring at the code so long. It looks right, but it’s not. So I’ll keep looking as my eyes glaze into brain melt until I find it. Because I know I will, and then I will treat myself to a Diet Coke, because I earned it.

I’m also downloading a movie to watch on the way home- Little Giants, one of my favorites. I may even stop at Macy’s in Metro Center because if I find this bug, I earned a trip to Macy’s. If I do not find this bug, it is retail therapy.

Whatever happens, I’m stopping at Mickey D’s on the way home for some ice cream. Can’t decide whether I’m going to be a purist or get Oreos in it. If I get the bug out of the way, I deserve Oreos.

I’m usually a purist, though. Mickey D’s ice cream tastes like white. It’s simple and delicious. I go for pure. At Dairy Queen, the blizzard I like the most is bananas only.

Seriously, this bug is driving me nuts. I’ve done a code compare, and fixed the differences, and it’s still wrong. But I WILL NOT GIVE UP. I will make that code my bitch if I have to stay late.

Last night I went to see The Big Short and treated myself to Mod Pizza. It was the best date ever because I don’t like to talk during the movies. No one was around me, and I got the full effect. If you haven’t seen it, it’s hysterical AND depressing. It’s about betting against sub-prime mortgages, the kind where they don’t even check to see if you have any income and hope the loan defaults…. because invariably, it will if you buy too much house on too little income. However, there are some really hysterical parts in it, as well.

When it comes out on Blu-Ray, I’m going to watch it again. Ditto with The Force Awakens, because I had a family sitting next to me when I saw it in the theatre and I missed some of the dialogue. I was really angry. Can’t people see that if you pay $20 for a ticket, you’re bothering all the other people who paid $20 and want to WATCH THE DAMN MOVIE? I get that you want to take your kids, but there’s such a thing as too young for Star Wars. I don’t want to hear “sit down” for two hours.

When I got home, I fell asleep to Finding Carter. Totally fascinated by the series and I got to watch it kid-free and under the covers. This is why I don’t generally go to the movies. I like to watch movies with my pajamas on. And while I have no compunction about going to the theatre in my pajamas, it’s cold out.

My sister got me a Henley, a thermal, and a sweater for Christmas. I wear them all together. When you are as small as I am, it doesn’t take much to get really cold, really fast. I’ve lost a lot of weight over the last couple of years, mostly because I don’t eat if I’m not hungry, and I’m not hungry *a lot.* At work, I generally don’t eat anything because I am lost in code and can’t take a break. Just. Cannot. You’re the only thing that pulls me away, because I wrote a blog entry at Starbucks and forgot to connect my iPad to the wi-fi, so it didn’t publish… and I was out of time to bother with connecting and publishing. Had to get to the train on time.

It was basically about dragging ass all the way to the train because I took a sleeping pill last night that just had me walking through Jell-o this morning… which is why I need to earn that Diet Coke.

I’m still dragging ass, and it’s 1:30. However, my focus is incredible because I am only doing one thing.

Making that code my bitch.

 

Hey, you celebrate your way, I’ll celebrate mine.

Two things happened that totally jazzed my day. The first is that the envelope arrived at the office containing my driver’s license, so I can go back to work tomorrow. The second is that I got a notification in my Starbucks app that I have now reached Gold Level, which means that I get free refills on coffee and…… wait for it…… ICED TEA. My favorite thing in the whole wide world to drink is their iced black tea with cream. People think it’s weird as I watch them put cream in their iced coffee, but I think it tastes like Thai iced tea, so I do it anyway. So there huh.

If it seems like these things are on the same level of excitement, they are. I have my life back, in its completeness. I can be at Starbucks by 6:00 or 6:30 to await my 7:40 train again, drinking coffee or tea (as much as I want… squee!). I go to Starbucks and write so that I’m fully awake by the time I get to work, because I can’t take my coffee on the train with me. It’s a win-win situation, despite that. I get to think in longhand and then listen to a podcast or play Plants vs. Zombies or read or do any of the things that I would be doing at home, anyway. In fact, Amazon Prime lets me download movies and episodes to my phone so I can watch offline. I haven’t done it yet, because I don’t have much space on my phone, but it’s cool that I could watch TV on the Metro nonetheless.

Right now I’m obsessed with an MTV series on Hulu, though. It’s called Finding Carter, and it’s about a teenager that gets arrested for sneaking into a carousel with her friends, and is waiting for her mom to come and bail her out when the police take her into a special room and tell her that she was abducted when she was three and now her real parents have found her…. so she has this whole new life with all these people that she doesn’t know. It’s absolutely fascinating, and the woman who plays her real mother is someone I couldn’t put my finger on…. but I KNEW I KNEW HER. I hadn’t been paying attention to the credits, and when I saw her name, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

When I was a kid, my favorite soap operas were The Young and the Restless and Guiding Light. The woman that plays the real mom is Cynthia Watros. If you were a Guiding Light fan in the 90’s, I’m betting you just recoiled in horror. Watros played Annie Dutton, one of the most evil characters in the history of soap operas, to the point that Watros told stories on Oprah of fans hitting her with their umbrellas in airports. Seeing Cynthia Watros on TV made my heart flip, because in this role, she’s actually nice. I am hoping and praying that there will be some sort of Annie Dutton joke on Finding Carter, because it would make my day, as if it hasn’t been made already.

I am excited about getting to see my coworkers and celebrate New Year’s with them, and to get my license before Donut Day. We have Donut Day every Wednesday. I try to get there a little early so that I can get one with jelly in the middle. Those go first. There are also bagels, so for lunch I have a bagel with cream cheese. It’s bliss. It’s so much fun to work for a company that really values its employees and tries so hard to keep them happy. Our holiday party was incredible. Prime rib for everyone, and I had key lime pie for dessert.

It’s really put this whole Dana thing in perspective. So I lost her. But I’ve gained so much over the past few months that it’s not enough to stop me from being happy, because happiness is happening without her. As I have said before, releasing the burden of worrying about her is so freeing, because now I know she doesn’t want me to worry about her. She’s got her people and I’ve got mine.

It’s nice to have people. I didn’t want to begin again, and it happened despite my protestation about it. I am on the other side of a nasty divorce when I didn’t want it to be. I have a sneaking suspicion that even though Dana knew she was marrying a writer, she didn’t realize the scope of it…. and that’s okay. Whomever enters my life from here on out will have to accept it, because it’s not something I do. It’s who I am.

I have $1.83 to prove it.

When you think of a 12-year-old boy, your mind does not automatically make the connection that he is a man…. old enough to get married, have children, and create a life for himself outside of his parents. And yet, in that time and place, it was custom. A boy became a man after his bar mitzvah, and even though the Gospel does not record that he had one, I like to call his “Q&A” session The Casual Bar Mitzvah, because indeed, that is how it presents. He wasn’t just a man, he was acting like it. He gave the other rabbis a lot to think about, and they were astounded at his insights.

But to me, this story does not hinge on his theological answers. It hinges on the way he clearly mistreats his parents and how frightening that must have been for them…. and when they finally find him, to be quite honest, he treats them like crap.

I am not a parent, so of course my frame of reference is going to be different than someone who has actually stood in a birthing suite and watched a tiny baby emerge, or someone who has actually been in labor. But the friends I have who are parents say that it is the end of life as you know it. That all of the sudden, it is the end of eight full hours of sleep and your heart being limited to your own body. I have no doubt that Joseph and Mary felt the same way. When you are someone’s child, it does not matter how old you are. Your parents are going to be protective of you no matter what. Passover was such a large festival that I don’t believe for a second that they forgot him- just that Joseph thought he was with Mary and vice versa. So, with their hearts walking outside of their bodies as they realize their child is missing, they rush back toward Jerusalem… and they are far enough away that it is not an easy trip. I imagine their panic growing as they cannot find him, and when they do, I picture frantic anger… the kind where both parents just come unglued with anger and relief.

Some theologians agree that there was nothing wrong with Jesus’ disappearance, that OF COURSE he should have been at the temple. That it was the start of his tempering fire. While that may be true, Jesus’ reaction was to minimize his parents’ frustration by saying, Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” Oh, well. That makes it all better, then.

For Mary, it was in effect, saying that she was foolish. For Joseph, it was establishing that he was also foolish and in addition, a very clear “you’re not my REAL dad.” It was classic petulant tween, even though he was supposed to be an “adult.” Because he was a child by today’s standards, I can forgive him. But not right away. It takes time to heal from a wound like that. To me, this is expressed in a nice, clean way by Luke saying they did not understand what he was saying to them. Their worry was justified, and Jesus did nothing to comfort them in their distress… also a tweenage thing to do because they are not other-aware. They are not old enough to see how Mary and Joseph needed him to say that he was sorry for worrying them, that he loved them, that he wouldn’t just disappear again without telling them where he was going.

Alternatively, I am sure that they were proud of Jesus for his accomplishments in the temple, because they knew he was going to be a great leader someday… but that someday wasn’t here. The story says that Jesus went home with Mary and Joseph and was obedient to them. It does not say that he took his manhood and ran with it, even though he clearly could’ve. Mary and Joseph are also not recorded as saying to their 12-year-old that if he wanted to act like a man, he should move out and get a job. Forgiveness abounded, even though Jesus had done wrong.

Mary says that she treasured these things in her heart, but I do not believe it began that day, in all of her panic. The Gospel says it does, but what human on earth can be stung like that and not need to have time to get over it? When your heart walks out of your body and your children refuse you, it doesn’t go away easily. It stays with you internally just as much as the scars and stretch marks that show on the outside.

Her feelings must have been complex, because she could see her son taking his place among the great rabbis of his time. And yet, she still had a ways to go in order to get him ready. Tweens do not have the concept of community, that they can lean on their parents for help, because by then, they just want to do everything themselves. In 7th grade, my homeroom teacher had a sign on her wall that said, “hire a teenager while they still know everything.” Would it have been any different for Jesus? Would it have been even harder for Mary and Joseph to stand up to Jesus knowing that not only was he a man in the eyes of his community, he was also born to unite the people Israel? To me, it is the same as parents of average intelligence being born with a genius or a prodigy. They literally know everything, logically, anyway… but how do you get them to know that intelligence is not the only thing they’ll need to survive in the world? There’s enculturation and socialization to be done… and yet, how do you get those kids to accept help with all the things they don’t know versus all the things they do?

As adults, real ones and not 12-year-olds bar and bat mitzvahed, are we really any different? Are we able to accept help for all the things we don’t know, despite all the things we do? In pain, we tend to isolate and pretend that we are FINE, thank you very much…. while inside, there is a raging storm of emotion. There’s personal problems like divorce, poverty, death…. and plenty of situations that aren’t happening to us, but we feel they are. When someone shoots up a school, there is national mourning. When terrorist attacks happen, we wonder if our community could be next. We want to do it by ourselves, and when we don’t reach out, there is no room for grace.

There is no knowing what people will do to respond to your pain, and if you let them, they will. You will receive the gift of people trying to help you, and they receive the gift of having tried. People are not perfect, and sometimes they say the wrong things, which makes us wont to retreat even more. But if you retreat when people say the wrong things, you will lose the gift of hearing people say the right ones. You will not rise above the wrong things people have said, because you’ll realize they’re not saying the wrong things out of malice… they’re just human and don’t know what to do.

This sermon makes me go back to my youth group, who upon hearing that I’d gone through a divorce this year, held me in prayer and hoped for my joy. Because I had kids ranging from 12 to 18, I did not give them any details, but they knew them, anyway. Several of them had gone through their parents divorcing, and so they knew what it felt like without me having to say a word. They hoped I would have joy in the coming year, and I knew within myself that I did, and I didn’t have to look very hard.

I leaned on my community, and they caught me. In hearing about Jesus’ audacity in the temple toward his parents, I realized that I had true power in my hands in terms of leading my kids to be the adults I know they can be. I can help be responsible for their enculturation and socialization. I can teach them to care and to lean on each other when they need help. I have kids just like Jesus, who come to me with gifts beyond their physical ages. My challenge is how to give my kids the wisdom that Mary and Joseph needed to impart to their son, so that not only would he be the Son of Man, he would also have time to be a fallible human, as we all are.

Luke shows us Jesus’ humanness and the way his parents forgave him for it. It is up to us to follow Mary and Joseph’s example of unfailing love, both for our children and for the world around us.

None of us make it alone, but God, how we try.

What would happen if we just let grace and forgiveness happen? What would happen if we began to receive those gifts, and not in a surface-y way? What if we were able to see and reflect on them for the widow’s mites of hope that they are?

Mary and Joseph forgave Jesus for the way he hurt them. It is an example of grace handed down through the years from Mary and Joseph to Luke to us.

What would happen if we took it?

Amen.

It all started when Dana wished my parents a Merry Christmas and not me. I’d known she’d flown in on Christmas Day, and she hadn’t contacted me. I was feeling like a real baby about it, and one of my friends let me vent and said all the right things as we drank beer “together.” She was at her house and I was at mine, but it was communion, nonetheless.

Eventually, I decided to “man up” and contact her, because e-mail goes both directions, and I thought it would be a dick move on my part if I didn’t contact her at all. I told her that if she wanted to see me, I wanted to see her. She never replied. She got Counselor to say that I was not to contact her under any circumstances.

I told Counselor that my first reaction was “WTF? I don’t understand her animosity if she thinks my family are her friends.” They were when we were getting along, but I sent the e-mail from me and from counselor to my family, and they agreed it was a bitch move, and the best revenge was to live well… actually, I was more kind than my friends. One said, “in a few years she’ll try to contact you, and you can ignore her then.” I told her it depended on where I am in my life then, because just because Dana was “mean to me,” that doesn’t mean I have to be mean back. I want peace, and that doesn’t mean starting shit with Dana in the future. I’ve had enough drama to last my whole life, and knowing Dana does not want contact is extraordinarily freeing to me.

I celebrated my freedom, but not too hard. When I drink, I don’t wake up with hangovers. I wake up with heartburn. I drank enough for a Pepcid, but not enough for a Tylenol. 😛

I am moving on with my life. I actually told Dana that it was no thing if she didn’t want to see me, because I have my own stuff to work out and have been doing it for months. My healing was not dependent on her. It is happening despite her. My life is complete the way it is, with church and friends and the determination never to leave DC, not ever. I want to set down roots, real ones, the way I did in Portland.

I will see Pri Diddy in the next couple of weeks, and that means more to me than crying it out with Dana. However, I am sure that she has a lot to be angry about, a lot to process. But she clearly felt, and I picked up on it a lot, that she had it wired that she was the victim in all of this. But that was months ago, and perhaps she doesn’t feel that way anymore. I’ll never know, and I’m good with it.

One of my friends told me that having Counselor do her dirty work for her was weak, and I’m hanging on to that phrase because it’s true. If Dana wanted no contact, she should have said it. I could have taken it, no problem. It’s not my job to control Dana’s reaction. I was just trying to reach out. What she does with it is up to her, and I have my answer.

Of course it’s sad, but it’s also happy. The blessing of not having to worry about her anymore is the best Christmas gift ever. I am free to put down that burden, because it weighed on me greatly. I’d stopped feeling like we should get back together long ago, but I *was* interested in creating some sort of working relationship, kind of a throwback to our early years of just palling around Portland together. But if that is not possible, I have plenty of other friends to lean on in pain and in joy, which comes in the same breath. Several people got me to laugh with their responses, which was the best medicine.

Being funny is something I’m good at, and my friends aren’t bad, either. 😛 I look forward to laughing with them more as time goes by, and I am looking forward to the future I want to create rather than being stuck in the past. I am bigger than this. Dana wants to be a footnote in my history, so be it.

I have plenty of people to look forward to in my future.

Amen.

Dear Nadia,

Before I started writing this letter, I was in a foul mood. Just angry at God and everybody and the horses they rode in on. I was shaking with sadness and grief, your description of cortisol and sin coursing through my body like rapids on the Colorado because I complained to a friend that it was difficult seeing my ex-wife, one where loving each other turned out not to be enough, wishing my parents a merry Christmas and not me. I moved to DC shortly after the break-up because I needed a physical boundary, knowing that her parents live here and that even if our paths could not be parallel, at least they could be perpendicular.

But we are not in a space where that is even possible right now, as much as I might want it. A friend told me that indeed, she was in DC, and I told her that I really didn’t want to know that because then I had to deal with the fact that she is two hours away instead of over a thousand miles. My friend did not mean to hurt me, because she thought that I’d at least know my ex was coming.

I did not.

She apologized for putting a kink in my day, but she didn’t need to. If I really want this perpendicular path, things like this are going to happen from time to time and I have to deal with it the best way I know how… going on a walk and listening to you preach.

As I was walking, sin and cortisol melted into the same “fire in the belly” that you carry, the one that needs a king who wipes out ISIS and Al Queda and Boko Haram and the people that canceled Firefly after 14 episodes (I’m a Browncoat as well). Now it is Christmas Day, and the king we need as we fall on our knees is here.

[Just as an aside, the line about being into Sandi Patti as a kid is the gayest thing you’ve ever heard made me snort soda through my nose… hilarious and…. accurate.]

I walked for over 40 minutes, and listened to several sermons that resonated with me. The two men that preached were both excellent, and I am sorry that I do not know their names…. although when one said that seven years ago, he’d been a woman named Mary, I thought, “maybe that’s Asher!”

However, the sermon I needed to hear was the one on Christ the King Sunday, because today I need a savior so desperately… a savior that will comfort me in my distress and distress me out of my comfort. A savior that will take my cortisol and sin and turn it into a forest fire of belief that healing myself is about giving to others… being able to put my life into perspective that this pain is only temporary. That I will move on, letting go and even if I am not happy about it, time will pass, anyway.

Prevenient grace is God’s gift to me and what I do with it is my gift to God, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t dragging me by the ear, kicking and screaming while the violent wind of that Holy Spirit is trying to talk to me, trying to tell me that through the power of Christ, I am bigger than this grief. I am bigger than this anger. I am bigger than this sadness. I am just, well, more than I am right now if I will just listen. If I will just stop with my own rumination on the past to make room for the future because it will be everything I have dreamed if I let it.

Letting it is where I trip. We all get caught in our worthlessness loops and I am no different. My ex-wife told me two things that got my attention. The first was that I would never amount to anything. The second is that she thought I had the capability to lead millions, and she was kind of jealous. In moments of worthlessness, I think that not amounting to anything is quite accurate. When I get out of that loop that says I am incapable and start to see the future, I see myself in that dream of maybe not leading millions, but at least one that leads to two and two that leads to four and so on and so on.

In my hours of need, I know I already have my one. His name is James, and he was the first to say flat out, I will follow you. It was a sincere moment of falling on my knees because I knew that he was not talking about my personality, but my ability to lead with holy authority instead of my own ego, which constantly needs to be knocked down a peg, so I have that friend, too. She said, I don’t do church or organized religion. I said, I don’t need you for that. I need you so that when I start talking to God, I don’t start to believe I AM one. She called me a judgmental dickhead once. She’s doing her job very, very well… and also stunned me into complete silence by saying simply, I don’t believe in God. But I do believe in you.

These are my people, just like you have yours. But since James was the first to throw down and exclaim his belief, I named my religious organization, St. James and All Sinners, after him. It’s not a church… yet… but will be once I am ordained. There is no building. It exists online…. and yet, I know for sure that people are reading my sermons and taking them in. We will have a building one day, and for me, that staircase is starting to take shape.

[Another aside… I hadn’t heard about HFASS when I named it… it just fit because my people in DC are just like your people in Denver. Also, I lovingly call HFASS “hf-ass.” It is anything but, and yet it makes me laugh every time.]

I just wanted to thank you for helping me, as I was walking along in the wind and the rain, to remember WHO I AM. I am a servant to the baby born today, living and growing with him as he turns from infant to petulant tween into a preacher so great we quote him 2,000 years later.

It hasn’t been 2,000 years since you started preaching, but I certainly love quoting you. You are with me in tears of laughter so great that I can’t even get sound out, as well as tears when I realize that what you’ve said is so important to my own growth and development. I have so much gratitude for the gifts that you’ve given me, just by being you.

I will close by saying that because of you, I know for sure that as a tattooed lesbian with punk rock hair I have a place in ministry. Because my vision is not complete, when I noticed that one of my friends always writes with long ellipses, I took it to heart. I am not just praying with words, but on the spaces in between as well……………………………

Thank you for filling one of them.

Pax,

Leslie

 

Because Luke is a doctor, I always picture him coming out of the birthing suite with the good news of Christ’s arrival. However, in looking at Biblical history, we know for certain that this was not the case. Mary went into labor among horses and cows, dirty straw that could have been Jesus’ undoing by infection alone. As I have said before, one of the miracles of Jesus’ birth was not that he was born a savior, but that he lived… despite odds that seem insurmountable today. Yet, it was foretold by Isaiah that despite all of the things that could have gone wrong, the baby would eventually reunite Israel and bring peace and justice to the Jews who had waited for so long to see it.

Isaiah writes:

For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.

I will never read this passage in the entirety of my life without hearing Imogene Herdman in my head saying, “my God! He’ll never get out of first grade if he has to write all that…”

At the same time, I also realize that this is another of Jesus’ baby pictures, ones that clearly paint his picture with words years before he was born… another candidate for the first page in his baby book. Jesus was the answer to many people’s prayers for hundreds of years, and I have to wonder if in all this prophesying, did they know what awful circumstances in which this miracle would occur? I’m betting on “no.” For if there was a Savior to be born, surely it would be one of speculation and intention. Jesus would be either born at home, or at the very least, in someone’s home.

But alas, no.

In other words, shit happens.

If you think I am using profanity just for the shock value, I’m not. It is a clear double-edged sword. Joseph and Mary had to travel and it was non-negotiable, because ignoring a decree from Caesar Augustus would have been……….. unwise. Life got in the way of Mary’s pregnancy, and there was nothing to be done about it. Additionally, we are talking about a baby being born in a stable. The smell must have been intolerable, and thinking that there wasn’t cow and horse manure all over the place takes away from the horror of the situation, but doesn’t make it any less true. When talking about humble beginnings, I’m not sure it gets any worse than this.

However, in darkness, there is always light if you look for it. Angels appeared to shepherds watching their flock, and at first, they were afraid. The angels quieted their fears, and they become some of the first people to know that the Christ-child has arrived, and among the first to spread the news. The angels did not choose to appear in the middle of the Sanhedrin shouting “I TOLD YOU SO.” They appeared to the poor and lowly, who took the angels’ words to heart:

…they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.

Shepherds were among the least-paid and least-respected people in their society, and at the same time, when they talked about the angels and the baby, people believed them. It is another miracle in the birth of the Christ-child, that people so poor all of the sudden became the people owning the room, captivating audiences with their stories of seeing angels walk among them, and making haste toward the manger to see the baby for themselves. They are Jews who would have read Jesus’ baby pictures for themselves, and I have no doubt that when they arrived at the manger, it was a moment of true awe and an absolutely overflowing river of emotion. I can imagine all the “it’s him! It’s really him! I never thought I would see this moment, and now it’s here!” The quote that runs through me when I see this picture in my mind’s eye also comes from Isaiah:

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness–
on them light has shined.

It is as if Isaiah also predicted this moment of shepherds walking in the dark, literally, watching over their sheep… and then a “multitude of heavenly hosts” shows up, bringing an incredible amount of light with them.

Notice, and really take it in, that the light was not given to people who already had enough through their ability to be financially solvent… the light was given to people who needed it the most.

My questions to you this Christmas Eve are whether someone has brought you light when you needed it the most… and whether you have brought light to someone else. Just as Jesus was sent into the world as a tiny baby, our light does not begin with a roaring campfire, but a tiny spark. In later years, Jesus would preach about only having faith the size of a mustard seed, and nowhere is there a better analogy for the way he arrived. He did not suddenly become an all-powerful professional Christian superhero. He was tempered and refined in his faith, learning to speak with holy authority over time and making mistakes in the process. He was sent to earth to be a human, and despite all of the Christian theology that will tell you he was perfect, my take is “not so much.” We are called to love Jesus for everything that he was, including the only record we have of his childhood.

We’ll talk more about it on Sunday, because the Lectionary covers Jesus’ disappearance at 12 into the temple. In that pericope, I believe Jesus’ humanness showed in the way he treated his parents. He would have known The Ten Commandments, and “honor thy father and mother” is right up there. When Mary and Joseph finally (FINALLY) find Jesus, he says two things that make me know he was a tween complete with implied eyeroll.

The first is that when he was found, he scoffed by saying (and I’m paraphrasing here) “why wouldn’t you know I was in my Father’s house?” To me, it comes across as petulant, along with the clearly stated “you’re not my real dad” for Joseph. I cannot even imagine how Jesus’ parents felt in that moment, but for me I can’t read those scriptures without wanting to wash Jesus’ mouth out with soap.

Light did not come for Jesus as a fully-formed set of stadium bulbs. Light came to Jesus the same way it does for us… sparks that magnify exponentially until hopefully, we are able to spread the same amount of peace that he did.

Advent is not necessarily a penitential season, but it does move toward the solstice, the time when physical light returns to earth in longer and longer amounts, multiplying exponentially as well. It doesn’t always speak to the forgiveness of sins, but it does speak of turning inward, and learning how we can turn our darkness into sparks that multiply within ourselves. It is taking the darkness that lives within us and really looking at it, holding it out where we can see it in all its ugliness and letting go to make room for the tiny baby that lives within us. We start with the baby every year, but where are we going to finish?

The Rev. Dr. Susan Leo says that Christmas Eve is the one night where the membrane between heaven and earth becomes so thin that we can reach up and touch it. What kind of peace would we receive if we actually took the time to do it? What would happen if we, as the people called to be Christ in the world, took the time to reflect on this enormous gift?

What kind of gifts would it inspire you to give? None of them cost a thing, because remember… the people who were given the light of Christ first didn’t have two mites to rub together in the first place. The gifts given to them by the angels were sparks of belief that they, in turn, gave to others.

On this night, the night of all nights, make room for the baby. There is no better way to see hope than through the eyes of a child.

Amen.

Yesterday, I finally made the commitment to watch Return of the Jedi. I watched it at my computer with my headphones on Defcon OH MY FUCK to ensure that I wouldn’t fall asleep, and I’m glad I did. When you watch any Star Wars movie with headphones on, you get to hear more of John Williams’ magic than you would otherwise. The score was just magnificent. I think I’m going to rewatch all of the Star Wars movies with my headphones on for that reason alone. There are nuances to the music that just cannot be picked up if you’re sitting several feet away from the speakers.

That being said, I didn’t NOT like the movie, but it wasn’t my favorite. It might as well have been called Episode VI: The Muppets Strike Back. I did like the few human moments with Darth Vader, but on the whole, it was like, “oh look! There’s the Judoons from Doctor Who! Plus, I know that one of every nerdboy’s fantasies in the world is Princess Leia in that gold bikini, but seeing her on a chain with Jabba jerking her neck back was so violent and rape-y that I nearly fast-forwarded through those parts. The Ewoks weren’t any less annoying, but there were a couple of parts that stood out. The first was when the Ewok got all the Stormtroopers to chase him so that there was only one guard left in front of whatever place it was they were trying to sneak into. I don’t know names. I only know that it’s where the controls for the defense shield were being held. I also loved the part where the Ewoks and Chewie stole the big walker thingme. The Stormtroopers never knew what hit them.

And how did people not know that the Sith Lord was Palpatine? Seriously. You could totally tell it was Ian McDiarmid (or someone who looked just like him) under that black robe. Too lazy to look it up. Plus, the voice. Seriously?

It’s going to be interesting in The Force Awakens to learn who the new masters of The Dark Side are. My mom read on my blog about being on the fence about spending the money to see it, and sent me a Regal gift card in the mail. My mother is ON IT, people. ON. IT. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow, because I don’t have to be back home for Christmas dinner until 5:00. It would be fun to open presents and then go see a really great movie. I don’t care if it’s the crappiest Star Wars movie ever made. Seeing Star Wars on Christmas is going to be awesome, no matter what I think of the movie itself. It’s not supposed to be great cinema, anyway. It is gorge yourself with popcorn and strap in for the ride. Besides, I love JJ Abrams. I was not a fan of Star Trek, but I went with Dana to see the movie, anyway, and I LOVED IT…. mostly because John Cho was in it. I kept waiting for someone to slip and call him “Roldy.”

Star Wars is a guilty pleasure for me. I am not a drooling fangirl for it the way I am for The Doctor. However, it is one of my favorite series, and I’ve watched all the movies (even the bad ones). In fact, I could have skipped Episode I entirely and not missed a thing. However, I do believe that Jar-Jar Binks is a Sith Lord, more powerful than even Palpatine. There’s lots of videos proving it, and I can’t link to them all, but it’s true. Jar-Jar uses the force just as well as the Jedi, and he’s always right behind Palpatine, as if he is the puppet master. And why wouldn’t a “muppet” character be the ultimate Sith Lord when Yoda was the ultimate Jedi Master?

I also thought it was interesting, given how close twins are, that Luke never mentions to Leia that they’re twins. And the prequels fucked it up in canon if Leia says she remembers images of her mother. That was just ridiculous. Amidala dies in childbirth, doesn’t she? Maybe force-babies can remember their birth or something. Because that is totally a George Lucas way of explaining things.

I am sure there are a lot more plot holes than just that one, but it seems to be a rather large one. Oh, well. Suspension of disbelief is Star Wars’ stock and trade.

But I just wanted everyone to know that I will no longer be surprised when someone mentions Return of the Jedi It’s about time I re-watched it. Perhaps I just wanted to keep that father/daughter date sacred. For whatever reason, I’m glad I watched it. Seeing Darth Vader actually have feelings for once was awesome.

I’m not sure I’ve told this about myself, but when Dana and I went to see Episode III, during the part where the helmet is being lowered onto Anakin’s head, I clasped my hands together and started whispering “please be James Earl Jones…. Please be James Earl Jones…. Please be James Earl Jones….” and then Dana had to physically restrain me from jumping out of my seat and cheering.

So now I’m ready for The Force Awakens. FINALLY.

The envelope with my driver’s license hasn’t arrived at my office yet, so basically I am sitting here bored out of my skull until it does. It’s been amazing how quickly I’ve gone from enjoying so much time alone to rebelling against it, especially with coworkers I dig so damn much. The company is small, and most of the employees are related to each other in one way or another- some are in the CEO’s family, some are friends from church, etc. It reminds me very much of working for “the family business” back in the day as the doctor’s medical assistant. It’s just that this time, I’m working for someone else’s family, and hopefully I will become just as beloved as the other medical assistant I worked with, Vikki. She isn’t related to me, but might as well be. At the time we were working together, we both had Jeep Grand Cherokees, and every night when we finished our paperwork, I’d say, “Vikki, are we Jeepin,’ cause that’s how we roll?

I ended up selling my Jeep when gas went over $4.00/gallon in Portland, but I miss it SO DAMN MUCH. My favorite thing is that it was older, a 2001, so I could afford to have the one loaded out with every possible accessory that could have come on that thing. It even had driver presets, one for Dana and one for me… because as you’ll remember, I do not like to drive. Before we were even dating, the second driver preset was hers and hers alone. 🙂 Before I had my Jeep, I had a little Ford Focus that we drove everywhere. Her driving settings are much different than mine, and since it was less than a mile from my apartment to hers when we first started hanging out in earnest, I learned to drive with her settings for the five-ten minutes it took to get to her house, then sit in the passenger seat until she came down the stairs. It made Dana laugh every single time.

Which leads me back to the story of “Mr. Pops-a-Lock.”

Dana did not see a mattress frame that was carelessly thrown into her parking space at her complex, and she ran over it, popping one of my tires. Since I had roadside assistance, I called them to change the tire so we could go get a new one. The company itself was called “Mr. Pops-a-Lock,” but that became the boy who arrived’s nickname for all time and space.

Dana and Amy are waiting upstairs as I deal with the tire, and no lie, he was one of the cutest guys I’d seen in like, forever. Keep in mind that I am now *dying* laughing as I type this. I cannot get enough air into my lungs. I may pass out.

At the time, I was ridiculously single, so I didn’t think there was anything wrong with crushing out on a boy I’d never see again unless I asked him for his phone number. I was going to, and then he started talking. He had a lateral emission lisp, and I learned this when I asked him if I was ready to go with the whole tire situation and he said, “yesth, ma’am.” It was the cutest thing known to God and man, but then I thought about bringing him to parties and how I knew that every friend I had would pick up that lisp behind his back. It was so shallow, and so true.

So I go back upstairs and tell Dana & Amy this story, and of course when I got to the part about taking him to parties, they’re on the floor imitating him as well (see?).

It must have been a day or two later and I’d forgotten all about “Mr. Pops-a-Lock” when Dana and I started a game of what we call “Drunken Trivial Pursuit.” Basically, you start with straight whiskey or tequila so that the answers get harder as the night goes on because you can’t fucking remember them.

It comes down to the winning question, which was “what medal did Nancy Kerrigan win in the 1994 Winter Olympics?” Dana gave me a grin so evil that I knew something was coming, but wasn’t sure what…………..

She looked at me and said, “the thsilver.”

By then several shots of whiskey had been consumed, and what would have been a little funny sober left us gasping for air. Tears and snot were running down my face and I was laughing so hard I couldn’t even get any sound out.

Game. Over.

In more ways than one.