Running With Scissors...

This has been a hard week. God and I patched things up, but I have had heartache like I haven’t known since the beginning of this blog…

I am one who questions, and analyzes EVERYTHING, especially when I think I did something wrong…I don’t like to make the same mistakes twice.. I don’t want to have to learn the same lessons again…I HATE being heartbroken. It is a kind of pain I cannot escape or get relief from quickly…

This week I have questioned… and I have bled…

It seems I am being forced to choose… shrivel under pain… or grow…

I wish I could say I am brave, and that is why I choose to learn and grow, but that would be a lie…

The truth is I have a very low tolerance for pain.. Especially the kind that comes from the inside like this does.. The kind that feels like you cannot do anything to escape it.  Like there is a knife lodged in your gut, actually, harpoon was the word that kept coming to mind this week…

Sometimes it will let up for a brief spell, and you can get a moment of relief… But eventually you have to take a breath and the pain returns…

I try not to “bleed” on these pages… I don’t know why… I guess I feel like I need to have things figured out before I write them here…But that left me no place to get them figured out…

 In His goodness (see we’re getting along much better) God has given me a place to bleed.. To learn… And to heal… My Valley Girls…My Siren Island… They know just how long the bleeding should last to cleanse my wounds, and what medicine to put on them to start their healing..

They also know the answers to many mysteries of the Universe…They shared one with me this week…

Some of you may already know it, Some of you will think it’s rubbish.. But I am going to lay it all out here because it has honestly, CONSISTANTLY, REPEATEDLY… STOPPED the pain ..WHEN I do it that is…

See, the Spirit Guides are with their dad this week, and  I was supposed to be somewhere else… with someone else.. but he was not real…

How do I know this? Well, he threw me away like a candy wrapper the first time I did not make HIM feel good, because I myself was in pain... I tried to explain it, but it fell on deaf ears .. pounding the truth into me… NOT REAL..

Still, foolishly… I miss him… The Voice …..He is one of the most “stubbornly” heartbroken and tormented people I have known.. But I cared for him so deeply… It feels sad to admit, but I still do..

Some days I had to YELL… I had to tell myself to “Shut up, turn around, face forward, and FOCUS!” No real friend would have thrown me away like that… not looking back.... not giving me the “benefit of the doubt” . I could not have mattered to him in any way. …Not real.

This only twisted the knife deeper…  turning my pain to hopelessness..

See, of ALL the men.. in my life, only two have had the “gift” I so treasure… The Golf Pro, who was truly poison and in hindsight, I see did not actually have the gift, it was just an act.. And…..The Voice…

Why did he come into my life at all? It feels cruel.

What’s the lesson here? It’s not like I was running with scissors, or playing in traffic….Can I please just learn it so I can move on?

Be careful what you ask for… Isn’t that what they say…

This is what I heard this week…What if… What if my feelings of pain, discomfort and stress are an alarm that I am believing an “untrue” thought?...

This possibility has cracked my head open. Yet I feel inept to share any of this. Who am I to pretend like I “know” anything..

I do good to just stay afloat most days…And I can’t promise I won’t fall down again. I only know that so far, I have been able to do this technique and get some relief from the pain in my heart...

This “technique” is called The Work.. It’s by a woman named Byron Katie…

When the pain returns, which it seems to always do, I can use The Work to question the thoughts that bring the pain.. Because that IS how it happens, how it works… A thought comes along and without challenge or question it brings me to my knees. I hope to learn to question them more quickly.. I hope it becomes second nature, and can become be a tool in my arsenal of healing…

I’m going to post some video links.. I’ll also share a link that has a downloadable outline of her book, and a bunch of audio clips… 

The Work Of Byron Katie MP3's and outline 

I feel like the videos explain it better though…

After the video links I’ll write the words I’m using to pull the harpoon out of my gut…

A summary of The Work by Jenny McCarthy.. She talking about a down-loadable movie about it called Turn It Around...

 "I hate my body"....

"I need to know why people love me"...

"Unconditional love happens in a questioned mind"...  Talks about death...

Here's a link to The Work's website with these videos and more listed...

The Work of Byron Katie - Videos

 So how has this helped me? Well, when I feel pain about the Voice, when I feel like he threw me away … I say to myself..

So he should have “kept” me?

Do I know this is true?

Do I absolutely KNOW that it’s true, he should have kept me? No, I do NOT know this is true. Reality is God and when you argue with reality you loose… The reality is he didn’t keep me.

How do I feel when I have that thought “he should have kept me”? I feel worthless, used, unloved..

Who would I be without that thought? More peaceful, accepting…happy

Turnaround- “I should not throw me away” “I should value me”.

Well, if not KEEP me he should have been my friend, been as kind to me as I was to him.. given me the benefit of the doubt…

So… He should have been kind to me, should have been my friend?

Do I know this is true? YES..

Do I absolutely KNOW this is true? He should have been kind to me and been my friend?… well…yes.. though reality says he wasn’t..

How do I feel when I believe this thought? Unloved, unappreciated, unseen, unvalued…

Who would I be without this thought?.... More powerful, feel like I owned my decision.. like I decided to be kind regardless of what I was getting in return.. More accepting, of myself… feel good for being kind..

Turn around –ahhhhh…. “I should be more kind to me, a friend to me”…

Here’s a hard one…

He is the only man that could move me the way he did with words…… mmmm… AND sex…

Do I KNOW that is true?…No but I’m afraid it is.

Do I absolutely KNOW that he is the only man on the planet that will ever move me with words AND sex?...No

How do I feel to think that thought? Bad, hopeless, lost, lonely… SAD…

Who would I be w/out that thought….happy, free, excited to see what comes next….

The moral of this saga is that I am learning to be kind to myself so I hopefully will stop drawing unkind men to me…

I am learning to love myself.. I’m still not sure what the flip that looks like, or means but I’m trying…

And… I’m learning pain management…

What if ….what I feel when I remember the Voice isn’t sadness, but.. love… Do I ever really want to “get over” loving someone?  In truth, he was as real to me as many of you here are…I’ve heard it said that no act of love is ever wasted…I choose to believe it applies here.

I know I want a mate. Not just ANY mate, a mate to my “soul”….… This thought does NOT bring me pain.. So I will let it stay… And until he appears, I will work on becoming a soul mate to myself..It is not as easy as I would like…

I had an insight this morning. Remember that feeling of being loved that I first thought was the Golf pro thinking of me, and later thought was maybe the Diamond?.. How about this.. What if it was just me, loving me, all along?.. I like that thought…

In the past it has been hard for me to feel love for myself like that… Hard to accept it from others too…  It becomes like a “hot potato” that I feel the need to pass off quickly..

I’m trying to practice just sitting with it… and maybe .. if I can master that.. I won’t sit alone…

I know this stuff I’ve written today is “out there”, and if some of you never read another blog post again I will understand… To be honest I’m never sure why you do in the first place I just feel so grateful that you do..

I feel grateful that you are here.. loving me through it all…Letting me heal by tying these thoughts, lessons….a “travel log” of my journey… to tumbleweeds and send them out of me…

As a side note, I’ll confess that I hid the entrance to my pond for a bit, took down my online profiles. But the Sirens had me put them back up.. only with SEXIER pictures… and chastised me to be tougher on some rules.. Rules that would have ether made the Voice real, or weeded him out,  before he got so deeply in my heart.

Since they patch me up when I fall, I’ll do it their way for a bit and see if I can learn to glide more gracefully, with fewer impalements on sharp objects…

Thank you for loving me through it all…

Angels on your bodies..

Prairie Girl.

Emergence....

Emergence…. Did I “call” myself thru the darkness of the night by saying I would in fact.. emerge? That is what Sally thinks…

I actually slept through the night Sunday night… first time since Valentine’s day…Hmmm… Valentine’s day…the first day I first heard that Voice…The Voice I loved... I don’t want to talk about the Voice right now.... … Maybe I’ll talk about it later but right now it feels sad…

I don’t think there is any significance between sleeping and the Voice, because the Voice has been gone for days now… Since a few hours after I heard about my pastor’s wife..

I do not know why I finally slept… but I’m thankful I did..

I had little faith Sunday that I would see, much less feel God, but I went to church anyway..

It was beautiful.. it was simple, and unpolished, as most everything in that church is…

The woman who spoke was the dead woman’s best friend. The person their 12 year old daughter was named after actually..

She had been asked to do the service last week, before her friend died… and had chosen to speak about storms….It was… lovely.

Some of you know my history, but I realized the other day that most of you do not…

When I was in my early 20’s I worked for, and traveled with, a well-known non-denominational, charismatic, evangelist in the deep south.

In one of the first posts here I told of my not -so-impressive “talents” with psychic phenomena. I think I even said a little about how they were used by the church…

There is more to tell… I have seen things… done things.. that I cannot explain. I will tell you about that soon, but what’s relevant to this story is that when I left that ministry I never darkened the door of a church for anything but a wedding or funeral again. Not in more than 20 years.

But this pastor …was different.... He was able to walk that fine line between speaking of God and speaking of Love… Does that make any sense?

There was no judgment, just enlightenment… which maybe is all the explanation needed…

He uplifted, educated, and encouraged me to be a better person without making me feel judged for who I still am.. This has not been my experience with organized religion in the past…

So…I kept going, and every Sunday continued to be surprised… and blessed.

As I left the service this past Sunday, I told him so… Told him that I’d been away from church for 20 years and he’d brought me back… He sobbed.

My heart hurts for him… It’s hurts for his daughter…And selfishly, the past few days, my heart has hurt for me.

I missed the Voice.

Selfish… wow, that’s hard to admit…I don’t want to see myself as selfish but I guess I have to admit I am. That’s what the Voice called me… Interesting….

I guess this brings me back to the Voice…You know the one I’m speaking of…The Voice I let myself love… The one I thought saw me but really seems to have only been transmitting vibrations from a distant source…

Do you remember the time before satellite radio?

I remember being a kid and driving long distances at night… Riding in the back of the car just waiting for night to come because you could get all kinds of radio stations that didn’t come in during the daytime… Broadcasting from sometimes even two states away…like magic.

Back then I lived for those radio theater-stories that you could only hear on the radio at night…. I loved letting the words create pictures in my mind.. Pictures projected against blackened windows reflecting only the insides of the darkened car…

Well, that is what the Voice did for me these past weeks… Reflected the insides of me. The things I thought no one else could see… The lovely, and the beautiful. The brave, and the special. And apparently the not so beautiful too…

There’s a saying I’ve heard my whole life “Believe only half of what you see and NONE of what you hear”..

Well, this would mean I could believe none of what the Voice said?

Or maybe this is the exception to the rule.. I could believe just half of what I heard… But then…should I throw out the negative and only listen to the positive?.. Maybe.. But didn’t we just establish some truth to the negative?.. I am selfish… But maybe just not in the exact way blamed.

The Voice taught me many things. I feel so grateful and blessed for the brief time I heard it.

It taught me;

1)   To be open to God, and His plan. That is, on the days I believe in God right?

2)   That everything happens for a reason, even chance meetings… No matter how brief..

3)   That I have gifts…One being that I am “perceptive”… “sensitive”.. Another being that at times, my words can be good like medicine… I like that thought.

4)   Also, that I give too much. And, if I am not careful, “takers” will drain me dry and cause me pain. 

This last is interesting in light of being called selfish, because my act of “selfishness” in this case felt to me like “self-preservation”.

I gave the best I could. But when I was feeling so much pain it was keeping my stomach in knots.. My heart in knots.. I had to stop, change… say “ow”…

I must confess that my words were not like medicine at that moment.. unless getting shot in the butt with a dull needle full of bile counts as medicine..

My words were interpreted as being “unhappy at not getting my way”.. not getting what I wanted…

There “might could have been” other choices….alternatives… compromises… but that would have taken reality….Not just transmissions from the “ether”..

It still feels bad to think that I hurt someone I cared about by trying to take care of myself. I do not know how I could have chosen differently.

The Voice was magic to me… And just between you and me, I choose to believe it still is... Wherever it is..

I like to believe that it is broadcasting in the darkness… doing its beautiful projection for some other passenger in a darkened car.. Maybe giving her hope that someone real will come from afar and say those things in person…

If it’s okay, for right now, I’m choosing not to hope for that for myself…Not to look for the source of the transmission…Just for now…I feel like resting… Please don’t be disappointed in me.

For right now I choose to be happy even if I have to “fake it until I make it” I’m going to choose happy…

"If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem." Richard Bach

Sally says we can release the bondage of the chains holding us if we just release judgment of them… The people, events, choices that have left marks across our hearts, our very fiber.. were necessary to make us who we are today… If we release our need to judge them… good…bad… a mistake… we will be able to see their gifts…

I am the person I am today, and have the beautiful Spirit Guides, because I spent 12 years with a prick…If I release the judgment… “he’s a prick” I can focus on the gift…

Today, I’ve been focusing on my gifts… When I hug the Spirit Guides today I don’t just press a cheek to their head.. I feel… every strand of hair… I smell… the outdoor scent of kids who have been playing.. And I pray I never have to practice these lessons after losing one of them…

Someone might call me a failure for being divorced.. Say “you did it wrong, that marriage thing”… Well… I choose to release judgment of me too…

“You're always free to change your mind
and choose a different future, or a different past.” Richard Bach

How does one change their past? What is a past? Its just the story you tell… So to change your past you tell a different story…

You “re-frame” it… I like that thought… Re-frame the story like you would a picture… Tell it differently…. Of the relationship that “failed” tell yourself it lasted the perfect amount of time… … How do you know? … Because if it had had an extended shelf life it wouldn’t have gone bad…

What gifts did you take away from it? Would you be as patient and appreciative of the good in people if you had not experienced someone treating you badly?

You get the point…

Happy is not a natural, effortless state.. It, like love, is a choice. And if you don’t consciously make it you may unknowingly push Happy away with both hands when it comes near…

This brings me back to the 12 year old girl who says God must not have a heart…

As a Hospice nurse for many years, my mom experienced many things that cannot be explained other than to say that we are more than our bodies… More times than I can count when one of her patients died, family in other locations.. sometimes different states.. would report that, while they didn’t understand it at the time, at what turned out to be the exact moment the patient died, their children got out of bed and started playing. Later saying they were playing with grandpa..

Or In one instance when the parent got home from the hospital where her mother had died, her child said “Grandma stopped by and said you’d be home later and to tell you not to worry about her”…

I’ve told my mother that if anything ever happens to me while my babies are little to just know that there was a reason.. There was something they needed that I could only give them by being in a “different” form.. Outside of this imperfect and often weary body…

That is the only thing that brings me peace…The thought that there is a plan, and while I don’t know it yet… maybe that girl’s mama did.

This morning I was tired. I didn’t want to work out, but went to the gym anyway.. I definitely didn’t want to swim.. but cousin Julie was already in the pool so I did…

After a while I realized that the only other woman in the pool with us looked familiar, but not from being there before. She was the guest speaker at church.. The best friend…

So, I went and told her how she blessed me.. I told her these things in my heart that I’ve told you.. and in the deep end of the pool, we treaded water.. ..and cried.. Life is strange.

This is the verse from her service that struck such a chord with me….

Isaiah 43:2

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

When we got home from church Sunday we had Sally’s wonderful husband look this verse up again...I then read my previous blog post to her.. She laughed when I was done and said.. “emerged huh? That’s an awful lot like through”…. Which had been the recurring theme of the message…

I spent the rest of Sunday evening feeling a little bit happy… It lasted all of Monday too… I can’t explain it.. I’m not even gonna try.. I will just CHOOSE not to look a gift ‘happy’ in the mouth… To just enjoy however long it might last..

Today.. it’s taking conscious choice again.. But HEY 24 hours happy!!!!!!!!! That’s progress.

I wish you a gift “happy” too.. And when it comes I hope you rub it all over your body and savor every second of it…I love and appreciate you more than you can ever know...

Angels on your bodies.

Prairie Girl.

“Then God must not have a heart”….

I started off yesterday with a question…

What do you think you could see if you weren’t blinded by your vision… If you didn’t limit yourself by what your eyes tell you they see?

But as my day ended I no longer cared about the answer. I no longer cared about much of anything to be honest…

Today all I hear are these words rolling around in my head… “Then God must not have a heart”… and today…I do not have the strength to argue with them…

The sweet preacher who has ministered to, and taught me so much, these past few months lost his wife unexpectedly yesterday morning… Their 12 yr old daughter, who is autistic, said those words when they told her.…

As my day ended… I too questioned the heart of God.

I know of three of my precious soul sisters who love and encourage me on this blog have lost children in the recent past…

Two of them also suffered the unexpected loss of marriages this past year alone…

And here I sit.. post after post lamenting my lonely heart.. How insignificant is my broken heart in comparison…

I speak of how I ask God this, or believe in God for that, yet is there any doubt that my friends and my preacher did the same and God seemed not to hear them…

The pastor’s wife was fine 2 months ago then fainted. Come to find out she had a tumor pressing on her brain.. Dangerous operation.. but she came through with flying colors.. Went through rehab with amazing success was back at church last Sunday…. No one saw it coming…Not now.. not after coming so far.

It’s the hope being dashed that feels cruel..

The Knight appearing at the pond, only to walk away and not look back.. Why let him appear at all?

Why let us hope? Just to watch us be brought low?

My mother says when we ask God for things… really important things… we don’t think about the fact that God might have just said no… That it wasn’t the right thing for us, wasn’t the right time.

Or possibly that the other soul we were praying for or about had a journey of transformation of their own they were on…

She likens it to a parent who tells a child “no” they cannot do, or have, a thing they ask for.. The child honestly believes that the parent truly does not care, or understand them,  or love them..

I do not know what to feel or believe tonight.

I am soul sore, and bone tired.

So, tonight… I’m going to lie down and let all that is in me drain from me.. and I will sink…

Sink into the sadness that surrounds me, and covers people I care about..

Sink into the acceptance that I may never really find what I’m looking for..

I’m going to sink into my aloneness and let it be… it really does not feel so bad tonight...  

Tonight…I’m laying down my striving.. looking.. hoping.. believing. I’m going to let it all seep out of me.

Try not to think less of me for laying my faith…..my dreams ….down for a little bit. Tonight they are just too heavy.

I thank you my sweet friends who have loved me all through my journey… Taking time to tend to me, and bless me, even in the midst of your own grief. You are so brave, and beautiful. And tonight you are the closest thing I see to God…

I can hear my great grandma’s voice saying “this too shall pass”…

I do not know how I will have transformed when I emerge on the other side of this.. but, I do know I will emerge…And most likely. continue to blab.

Prairie Girl.

Oh Ye Of Little Faith - A Fairy Tale

A long time ago in a place that doesn’t really exist.. There was a beautiful girl…She was magic. Part healer, part siren, she could heal your body with her touch,  minister to your soul with her words, and dazzle your eyes with her beauty.

It was this last part that caused her untold grief. Men would promise anything. Pretend to be anything… to supposedly win her heart, but in reality they wanted to posses her gifts. Then, when she loved them, and gave herself to them they would not feed her spirit. They refused to tend to her, or nourish her. When, as a result of this treatment, her gifts would grow weak and disappear,  they would misuse her and treat her cruelly…

So..one day when she was free, she decided to create a “spell”… a curse possibly, but one that she believed would protect her from the wrong men and bring her only the right one..

She left her beautiful palace and went into a wasteland, building a quiet cottage on a pond. She disquised herself in rags and dirt, letting her hair grow long and tangled..

No ordinary man that passed by would know her as  the perfectly beautiful, magic, woman who was said to be hiding out there.

No ordinary man who passed by would ever know by simply looking that her arms were the Sanctuary that would give him peace from pursuers.

Her voice was the torch that would light his way home through the darkest night…

Her words were the medicine that would soothe his soul…

Her body the balm that would heal his wounds, and bathe him in pleasure…

Her smile the water that would quench his thirst…

Or her eyes the messengers that would call him to love….

No ordinary man… but the true man.. the man she had not waited for because she had not believed he existed… He would know her… He would recognize her..That is the “spell” she cast into the Universe…

Many men passed by.. they drank the water she offered them and felt more refreshed than water alone could make them feel... They listened to her words and felt more hope than words had brought before…

They felt drawn to her but could not understand why.. She did not appear to them as beautiful, or attractive…But her eyes.. her lips… there was something about them… As though once she might have been beautiful… No mind… they were on a quest to find the Perfect Beauty, because SHE was magic…SHE would give them healing and pleasure, and everything they desired from a woman…

Then one day there was a stir in the wasteland… The woman could see a figure walking in the distance… And behind him, everywhere he passed, green appeared…

As he drew closer she could see that it was a Knight wearing armor that was dented and covered in blood and muck. He walked with his hand on the hilt of his sword as if expecting to have to fight at any moment.

A man who had seen great battles.. Yet, with every step he took, grass grew in the print he left behind… Springs of water, long dried up began to burble… But he did not see any of this. His helmet prevented him from seeing to the left or right and his purpose kept him from looking behind.. He did not hear the cries of thanks from the people he passed…Clueless in armor was he.

As he came to the woman’s pond she spoke to him… So mesmerized was he by her words, her voice, that he could not look away… He drank her water and was refreshed. He listened to her words and was soothed like he never thought to be again…Her eyes, he felt that he could look into them forever..

She had never met a man so aware of her gifts. So close to recognizing her for who she was…

She offered him something she offered no other. The gift that would be the tell tale test. She told him if he would remove his armor she would minister to his wounds with her hands. Doing so would reveal her identity with the healing of her touch.. But he refused. He said he was on a quest to find the Beauty Of The Wasteland, and that he was saving his wounds for her.. SHE was Magic, and he had fought long and hard to be with Magic…

As he turned and walked away the woman was almost overcome by the need to reveal herself to him… He had to be the one she was waiting for.. He just needed another minute to see it…

A hand on her arm stopped her and she turned to see a Wise Crone…The Crone said “just because he is the best man to find you, does not mean he is the best man that WILL find you…. And THAT man will stay.”

The End.

I told you that I hear a resounding “oh ye of little faith” in my head… I’m working on it though…

I do feel more peaceful, and believing…

I had this thought recently… What if last fall when I was overcome by a voice I've never heard before.. An urge to do something I swore I would never do.. Move to Oklahoma. What if that was that my Diamond calling me?

I just couldn't shake the feeling "I gotta get to Oklahoma, gotta get to Oklahoma"... what's in OK? everyone said.. ah "family, work, IDK .. I just gotta get there"... I faced off to a raging ex-husband and even he could not come up with a reason to stop me...I was faced w/packing a 2600 sq ft house into a 22 ft stock trailer...then living w/family for 6 wks...all because I had to get to Oklahoma... I heard a call..His call..

I’m trying to have faith that my Diamond, if he isn’t near me now, is out there with this overwhelming feeling “I gotta get to Alva, Oklahoma, gotta get to Alva, Oklahoma”… Because he hears me calling to him too…

And when my mind and heart get peaceful.. even if it’s only for a moment.. I swear I can feel him…THEN my mind, the mighty weapon and often BANE of my existence, pipes up… “Where? Who? Why do you feel this way? Huh? Huh? What’s it mean”…. Oh sit down, shut  up, and hang on…Enjoy the moment. Remember “Blessed are those who don’t see and yet believe”… Just feel.. mmmm….and don’t it feel fine…for the moment…lol. Hey once today I got it to last for 15 minutes!!!!! Now that’s what I’m talking about…

This fairy tale message was brought to you by Sleep Deprivation Incorporated…

I’m going to try and take a nap now…

Angels on your bodies.

Prairie Girl.