I'm sure I'll soon be told that it's inappropriate for me to post my feelings on my blog but because I've basically been told not to elsewhere, I need to get it out somewhere.
In the last two years I've been through so much. Too much. I don't think most people could come through it all with sanity. And that is, assuming they had a relatively level life beforehand, which I did not. Something about my childhood, I just view things so very differently than most people. I am perpetually socially awkward and typically left out. Yes, even at the age of 26 and a mom of a one year old it bothers me. I have no mom friends that I can ask things, no one with kids offering for Teddy to play with. And I worry that it will really affect him.
A quick recap: In June 2009 we felt led to move to Alaska. While we were there God really did a lot on Doug's heart and showed him how backslidden he was. It took so much trusting in the Lord and courage to leave everything and everyone behind and start a new life. I drove across country while Doug had arrived a few weeks earlier. I encountered a lot of problems and never knew I had the strength I did to just keep pushing through to reach the goal. We got there and had nothing. No furntiure, no jobs and my brother was staying with us until we could afford to fly him home. I remember one time I was crying and telling Doug that I didn't know how we were going to pay bills and that we didn't even have a couch to sit on or a bed to sleep on (we were sleeping on borrowed cots). He just kept saying the Lord would provide and I said "I know, but a couch isn't just going to fall out of the sky for us!" Literally as soon as the words came out of my mouth there was a knock on the door and a girl from church had found a couch for us and brought it over!
We did a lot of growing and learning in the Lord. I felt more accepted and at home there then I ever had before. I have such a soft spot in my heart for children. I often think that maybe if my own siblings had been more accepted at church, maybe if there was a sunday school then they would have stayed and not made all the other choices they did. Maybe the other kids around them also would have been taught some better behavior towards 'outsiders.' They made me Sunday School teacher, had just started the program, and I loved those kids dearly. People fellowshipped every night, and day. We'd be invited over and get to hear testimonies and have a great time with people. I've been at this church for roughly 16 years and have never had that happen. For quite awhile it was the happiest we had ever been.
But then things changed. We noticed a few problems with doctrine and thought they were innocent errors only to find out that they weren't. We found out that the leadership of the church was severely messed up. We still loved the lay people but the leadership was scary. When Doug told the pastor that we'd have to find somewhere else to worship and that by that point we were considering moving again (VA was only one of many possibilities at the time) and he offered to build a house for us on their communal land. Yes, communal land. I won't go in to everywhere here but suffice to say that when we left, we tried to live anonymously for the last 2 weeks and did not let anyone from the church know our final leave date. We changed our phone numbers our second day in VA. I seriously was afraid to answer my phone, the front door, go shopping etc. We still have dreams that these people are trying to reach us. Every time I see a grey Nissan Titan my heart skips a beat. The other day I saw a man in the Wal-Mart parking lot and he looked like one of the deacons from the church and I started to panic. There were some very painful things said over the whole thing, and by people that I thought were better friends than I had ever had before.
Coming back to VA was hard. We didn't know what to say to most people, we didn't know what they were thinking. We didn't know how to explain what we had been through, how we felt. I've always felt excluded at our church in VA, but it's where we belong theologically, so I'm trying to make the most of it. There's a very long and painful history to all of this, that no one really knows about because quite frankly no one has asked, or even been close enough for me to talk to. If you can not make time to talk to me but every few months and outings together etc. are even less frequent then please stop kidding yourself. We're not best friends. We were best friends, for a year or two in high school but now, I don't know you better than a bum on a street. And the ones that don't consider us best friends, I know even less. There's just no way I could sit and tell them all of these things. In fact, I tried one time and it was like I was speaking a different language entirely.
This is the first time I've put that out there for anyone aside from my husband and mother to know about. I just can't keep holding it in. Since I was 10 years old I would hear rumors that different people have been told to stay away from me. I don't know what I did at 10, or who it was that decided to pass that kind of judgement on a child but it's really not cool. I've been living under this condemnation for 16 years. Having people keep their distance from me, being told I'm not good enough. In that 16 years I've seen a lot of people fall and be picked back up, I've seen a lot of bad things happen and be forgiven. Why not me? Assuming I did something bad in the first place. What did I do that was so bad? I feel like to coutner this I have to try to live as perfect as possible and it's just a stress I can't handle. I've reached my breaking point.
Right now just gettign to church is a huge challenge. Making it through those doors with all of us clean and fed and on time. Everyoen else I know has family that can help them at least a few times a week so they can try to get stuff done. Even though Doug has a better job, he's still gone for most of Teddy's awake time. Then because we're living in my father in law's basement and it's so tiny and the walls are so thin we try to sit in practical silence until it's our bed time. I don't have the freedom to walk up the stairs to pee much less to vacuum my living room like most people do when the baby is asleep. Once I'm at church I try to keep Teddy in the sanctuary as long as I can. Because I have to climb over 2 people while dead lifting Teddy so he doesn't end up kicking the pastor's wives in front of us. Then the nursery is overflowing and it takes forever to get a turn at the high chair or changing table. Teddy is fully mobile now and does not want to sit still for nothing and of course doesn't understand why he can't go and play with the doors like he can at home. Most people bring their kids in and out as needed but it's just too hard for me to get out of the sanctuary.
For months Teddy had awful sleeping problems. Church is actually at his bed time. Naps were always thrown off on church days and he just couldn't stay up. But he couldn't tune out chruch and fall asleep either. I finally resorted to arriving an hour before service started, I'd wear him in a carrier, stand in an upstairs bathroom with no lights on and a sound maker on my phone blaring on high and bounce him and shush him the whole time. He didn't sleep for a whole hour, usually just 30 minutes, but it was enough to help get him through service. For months he'd be so overtired that he'd just scream and scream the whole way home. He'd wake up with night terrors sometimes, I've been told they can be induced due to lack of sleep. He's doing great with sleep now but dealing with all that and now his mobility is just too much for me. I feel like no night goes right and no one else has all the hard times I do. I'll be curious to see how some of the up and coming babies act when they get his age. I wasn't around to see how the ones that are turning 3 were at his age (I was in Alaska) and the one that's a few months older than him just has a different personality. But right now I really feel like I can't do anything right when it comes to church and Teddy. I can't even chang his diaper there by myself because he's constantly wanting to roll around and get down and walk. Just the thought of having to handle church makes me feel like I'm on the verge of a panic attack. And that's assuming there aren't bigger issues like the time his diaper leaked at the church dinner and I didn't have a change of clothes for him and here it is 30 and he's pantsless. And while I'm looking for something in the diaper bag I get knocked over by a man trying to get a drink, after I got bumped into all night long and Teddy was wanting to get down and walk all night long and was also getting bumped into.
Adjusting to living with my father in law and then having a newborn while Doug worked awful hours and a stressful job proved too hard. We moved out when our renters left our condo, only to find that they had trashed the place and the whole neighborhood went downhill. Doug quit Applebee's and we soon lost everything.
We declared bankruptcy only a few weeks ago. We're living with my father in law. And through all this, I haven't sat and said everything to a real life friend. The church stuff, I don't think anyone not from my faith would remotely understand. But there are a few non-church friends who I have at least talked to about some of the things.
And now Teddy is weaning some. It's a slow transition. We're down to one session a day, he nixed the night time one about 1.5 weeks ago. What no one told me is that your hormones are out of control during this time. So, as if I don't have enough on my plate, now I've got this and I literally feel like I'm losing my mind. I'm not myself and I've recently done a very stupid thing. No one is more upset than me. While I think on paper comapred to the mistakes other people can make it's not the biggest deal, it is. It's the worst thing I've ever done. I've tried to make it right by the people and they refuse to accept my apology. That I could live with I suppose but the thing is for the last 16 years I've been conditioned to believe that I'm not worthy of God's love and forgiveness.
Right now I'm swinging between remorse and rage. So much remorse that I want to curl up into a ball and never see the light of day again. To never try to show my face again. That nothing will ever be right again and that the last 16 years of my life that I've lived a good life is now forever tainted and will be remembered only by this. On the rage side I'm unspeakably mad that I'm being held to a double standard. That I know what I've done is not unforgiveable. And that the people I have hurt have hurt me and others in the exact same manner, and have not been met with the same reaction. I keep trying to tell myself that God's grace is sufficient for me, that Jesus paid it all and that if they can't forgive me and that if everyone else gets involved and somehow thinks less of me then that's between them and God. I've done my part, I've sought their forgiveness and God's. But the problem is that I'm crazy and this is my weak spot. So about 80-90% of the time I think the other thing. That I'm so lowly and unforgivable. I always feel low but it's even worse now that I've done something bad. I'm not sure if I'll ever really forgive myself.
And what makes it even worse, is once again, I got told that a person was warned about me from the start. My mind doesn't even know what to do with that. It's entirely consuming me. Who told them? When? Why? Again? Really, what did I do to deserve this so long ago? I consider myself a very observant and consciencous person. I'm always trying to think of how I can make someone else's life/day a little easier. Whether that be to scoot out of the way in the ridiculously tiny church nursery before they need to ask or to let someone have a seat when it would be easier for me to, with the baby and daiper bag and all. I try to anticipate others needs. I totally failed here, but is it really going to erase 16 years of kindness? If by their fruit ye shall know them then does one bad apple negate my whole tree?
I guess I'm looking for absolution or at the very least for someone to tell me that I'm not crazy for having my thoughts race out of control about this and/or I should give myself a break because a person can only go through so much before they crack.
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