How do I believe in 101 when I’m still here at 99?

(5 minutes at a time – superchick)

That lyric has really nothing to do with what I want to write…but I was listening to Spotify and that song came on and it felt really uplifting…the lyrics go on to say ‘everything will work out to be just fine.’ And that is so true. It might not look like God has a clue what he is doing and how what he is doing could possibly ever lead anyone to him…but he never writes throwaway chapters…and now that I’ve written that, maybe some of this does relate to some extent.

This week I heard a teaching on this verse:

Titus 2:3 older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good

The message was that we should be looking for opportunities to mentor and disciple younger women, because you never know who is in your life for a reason and you only get so many opportunities to really make a difference. That was convicting. In the September/October timeframe I said I definitely wanted to protect people from experiencing what I did…and then we got to December and I was terrified and I really wavered and turned from even thinking about chasing that passion. I was too worried about my own safety…and while that never stopped me before, I’ve learned to care about myself, but more than that, I was worried I would put myself on the line and just be defeated anyway. But what if this is my chance to have a part to play in healing a broken system?

It also made me really thankful for the people who have wrapped around me to care about me. And sad for the people who were expressly in their position to support me and didn’t. And it is easy to be discouraged by all the bad people in the world, but it is important to see the good, too. Like how healing it was to go to the tortillaria for lunch with someone who cared about me, and to go to the place I volunteered who were willing to accept me for who I was and give me the roles I was ready for when for the previous year I’d been torn down weekly by someone who should have been the one cheering me on and the one guiding my progress. And the same type of thing happened this year when things went down.

The one last thing I will say about that is that older and younger doesn’t have to be a chronological age…it reminds me of the day me and the other residents this summer determined a way how everyone was oldest in some way, because somehow at some point we decided it wasn’t fair for just one person to be oldest. Everyone has something to offer. I don’t remember everyone’s reason to be oldest, but as you might have guessed, mine was that I’d been a pharmacist longest…someone else had been at that particular hospital longest…someone was chronologically oldest…etc…

Changing topics…when you rely on musicals and songs for most of your theology because you don’t really read much, there are pieces of stories that get a little distorted or lost…for example…Estherday. There are a lot of things the musical got right, but, umm, when I was reading the actual book and listening to a sermon, I realized they kinda skipped that whole Xerxes intentionally got rid of his previous queen because she refused to be treated like an object rather than a human…so really Xerxes probably wasn’t so sereneless because he was queenless…more like he was sereneless because someone showed him that other people have feelings and therefore treating them like objects isn’t a longterm solution…but that made the ending of the Esther being brave enough to eventually ask for what she needed and the king being open to hearing more about God all the more incredible…and it also makes me feel guilty like I should be doing something to protect people instead of worrying about my own safety. I really don’t know if valuing my own safety or reaching out to try to make changes is the right answer…but when Esther faced the possibility of death and moved forward to protect her family and friends, it seems really shallow for me to not move to protect people when I feel like I am in a place where my life itself is not on the line even though I do feel like I have a lot to lose. So yeah, I guess I have a lot more questions than answers…one of those questions is if there even is anything I can do, but I am feeling like I at least need to honestly ask myself those questions instead of letting fear keep my light in hiding.

I’m not ready to live without you…hold fast, love lasts…

(Without You – King and Country)

 

This is still how I feel about my dad. I’m not ready to not have him. I used to communicate with him pretty much every day and it still feels so empty to not be able to text him or call him or email him or anything else anymore.

 

The calendar says it has been almost a year. But it still feels so incredibly recent. An at the same time it feels like it has been forever since I had my daddy.

 

And honestly, there is also kind of a second loss going on…because I am trying to figure out if in heaven my daddy will still be my daddy or if the loss really is forever and I can’t have him back…and that kind of took away my hope for someday.

 

These thoughts came from a discussion of Matthew 22:23-33 and Mark 12:18-27. In these passages is when people kinda tested God about re-marriage, asking if a woman marries all the brothers who is she married to in heaven? The answer is none of them because God is the God of the living, not the dead. So I’m no ordained pastor or anything, but it seems to me that extrapolating from there if people don’t have their marriage relationships in heaven then they probably don’t have other family relationships either. Will my dad even know me when we go to heaven? I know it is a dumb place to be stuck because God makes it really clear that heaven is going to be awesome and perfect so obviously whether we know each other or not we won’t care about that whatsoever…but it is really hard on this side losing the someday getting daddy back.

 

…I looked and looked but I really didn’t find any actual bible that pointed towards any other conclusion…the only kind of exception being the comment about seeing the sinner on the cross in paradise but since the speaker was Jesus and Jesus is God that doesn’t really count because I know God will know me and I will know God in heaven. There are some Christian songs that suggest otherwise…but there isn’t any rule that every Christian song must be 100% theologically accurate and some very obviously are not accurate so I know I can’t determine my theology solely from lyrics that make a prettier picture…but I really like the picture the song Real Dad by Stephanie Pauline paints with “and Jen’s dad holds her again when she is 80.”

 

And because while it feels good to admit what I’ve been thinking about, it also has me crying right now because admitting it made it more real…so I think it is time to write about something totally different and surface level to pull myself back into normal life.

 

So yeah, I was reading today that we all trend towards introversion as we age, but extraverts will never cross the midpoint between extraversion and introversion. That made me think.

 

Sure, a lot of kids want you to “look at me” wen they are younger and grow out of that…but there are also kids who are incredibly reserved and would rather play unbothered alone. And I’m sure there *are* older adults who don’t want to be around people, but I feel like the majority are looking for someone, anyone to be with them and listen to them.

 

And then I thought about myself. I had basically zero need for other people when I was in middle/high school. Did I like occasionally being around other people, sure, but I was also totally content going about life on my own…but then in college I started learning about the world of social. The more I learned, the more that was the world I wanted. I was no longer satisfied with my world being population me. Hello inner extravert. All I wanted was to be with other people all day every day. I basically lived in the success center so I could be with people all day…and when that was taken away I tried the cafeteria (fail – it was super uncomfortable when the first few days of the semester all it took was me sitting down for Certain Someone to come sit at the table next to me so I swore off the cafeteria unless I had enough people around me to feel safe and was facing the middle of the room and the entrance to hopefully see in advance if Certain Someone was coming near me)…so I found that the lobby seating area was the best place for me – outlets and chairs and usually a microwave made it the perfect place to be around as many people as possible while avoiding Certain Someone…until she figured it out and decided to use the microwave right next to me even if it had a line rather than one of the ones away from me that were both closer to her office and had no line…but at least she wasn’t dumb enough to try to invite herself to sit at my table there, so I knew she’d be gone soon-ish even if it was not a safe feeling having her in the same room as me…but anyway, all that to say I definitely went the opposite direction from happily alone to thriving on together time.

 

Well, then I continued reading because I ain’t no quitter…another sentence said “shyness and social anxiety are about fear, introversion is about how we are wired.” I could take that apart and point out that shyness and social anxiety are also about how we are wired…but I mean, I do like the thought that even if you so desperately *want* to be with people you might still be alone because of fear…and there was definitely some transition time for me between wanting to be with people and actually leaving my room to even have an opportunity to be with people…

 

…so yeah…

 

Speaking of extraversion and my need to be with people…I think that is why I get so annoyed with Covid rules…the first rules that came out were solely about separating people. That is so incredibly harmful to everyone’s mental health and it really showed in our ED and admissions at the hospital pretty d*rn quick. I would rather die of Covid than suicide. I don’t think cloth masks and the way people tend to wear their masks is actually all that effective…but…if masks had been plan A I wouldn’t have been nearly as opposed to them…but I have two problems with masks ignoring the whole people making decisions seem to think that masks just magically appear on people when they need them thing…first, with a mask, if germs get into/onto your mask they will be up against your face for an extended period of time, thus increasing your risk of actually becoming infected vs those germs just being able to continue on their journey (which is why masks were originally discouraged unless you were already sick or caring for someone sick). Second, and possibly at this point more importantly, masks seemed to be a physical representation and extension of the social issues that had already been imposed…so instead of being just another moderately inconvenient rule to follow they became the One Evil Thing I really hated… Masks became an extension of the social isolation of never ever seeing people in real life and therefore masks were the enemy. I mean, at this point I can even wear a mask all day without taking antihistamines and I don’t like wearing it but I’m not about to scream by the end of my shift…so really it isn’t the mask itself making me angry…

 

And I really don’t know where I was going with that beyond just away from the previous topic…so I think it is time to stop writing and maybe come up with something more useful to do…

A worship song a day keeps the devil away?

Yeah, that probably isn’t true, but this is.

 

When I got up this morning I had the song Starting Over by Plumb stuck in my head…

 

“What came true was our worst fear, but I’m gonna love you with all that I’ve got, like it or not, no matter how hard. We couldn’t explain all the damage we’ve done, so I’m for starting over.”

 

Also, while I was cooking spicy rice for dinner (it wasn’t supposed to be spicy, but the spicy red pepper packet that said it was one serving I split up into 6 meals thinking that would make it just a little extra flavor in each thing…but instead I was just glad I didn’t use it as a single serving, because even split up it was super spicy) another worship song (I can do this – Plumb) came on that I really loved because it feels a lot like how I *want* to feel right now.

 

“I’m trying to be brave, be the girl you say I am. I will cross the ocean into the unknown. I will face the darkness. I am not alone. I will fight against the voice that says to quit. Shout it from my lips that I can do this.”

 

It also just feels hopeful.

 

“This storm may never change, and I won’t always need your hand.”

 

Even if life feels like a storm I *will* learn to stand in the rain.

 

Also, that song reminded me of another by Plumb: I can’t do this.

 

“I woke up late, guess I’m never really early. I hesitate, only to fail. I get so tired of procrastinating. I need a change. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this by myself…I can’t pretend that I’m fine.”

Lol, I guess I was really loving Plumb today…

She feels so alone

(Hero – Superchick)

Even when I did 99% of my communication in writing and body language and the other 1% was primarily sitting in classes at school, I acknowledged that there was a power in “with” that is impossible to replicate in the online realm. I mean, I did also claim that I didn’t really *need* real life people because I had the internet where it was easier to communicate anyway…but…I also was saying that while still engaged in real life community…and still acknowledging the power of “with”…so clearly I didn’t know what I was talking about.

 

Back then though, people kind of thought I was crazy to think internet communication was good enough…and now people are trying to say we are more connected than ever because people are making more effort to communicate online than they ever tried to connect in person. I disagree. The internet connection for me now that I do not have the in real life people is more like hey, I think we should remind you what you don’t have. The idea is great, but it hurts.

 

And when everyone else is on the internet too, eventually you hit a point where the connection stops. That happened during “church” yesterday and I was already so fed up with this dumb thing…and then I was like girl this thing is recorded. Close the computer, go skate, and then come back when everyone else is done and then there’ll be enough internet to go around. I would have told myself to study, but no internet also means I can’t access my study materials…so there’s that. So I got dressed in real clothes and went skating…but my anxiety wouldn’t let me bring my water bottle so I figured it was really only safe to go as far as the parking lot across from my building…it was kind of fun once I figured out that the areas that were super sandy weren’t going to be good places to skate. There were lots of fun treasures to explore in the parking lot now that the snow is melting (but I’m trying to move soon so the only one I took home was a penny). I was proud that I remembered to stay way away from cars considering parking lots do not have a lot of things to grab to stop or places that are very safe to fall to stop and running into a car to stop is a bad plan…doesn’t necessarily mean I noticed every car…I did almost skate right into one a couple times, but I noticed in time…but I was skating to drown out the outside world so my whole world was the area right in front of my face and I was listening to a book AND singing to myself and it was windy outside so I wasn’t necessarily going to see, hear, or sense a car coming…I figure it might not be super safe, but if I get hurt probably the hospital won’t release me without a ride home which means I actually earn a few minutes of social time so it almost would be worth it to get just a little bit hurt.

 

Plus, my ability to study when there are zero people around is not that great. My mail person doesn’t even knock anymore when she drops off my mail…not sure if she just got tired of me wanting to have a conversation every single time or if I got a new mail person who just doesn’t knock because none of the substitutes ever knocked, but it gets really lonely over here. Someone on Instagram, she has been on quarantine for a potential exposure and is going super stir crazy and now her city is going on a 14 day shelter in place and she is annoyed but is looking forward to tomorrow when her quarantine ends because she already has plans with a bunch of her other single friends to all hang out together during this time. I feel jealous because I don’t have that. I just live by myself.

 

I have this idea that since gatherings of 10 or fewer are still allowed to do like a progressive dinner kind of thing for events that would usually be larger than that so like have a few meeting spots and then people rotate sites so you still see all the people during that time just not all at once and the hosts would have to change each week so that there weren’t any people who never got to see each other…I have no idea how to organize that or anything and I know nothing about video chatting platforms so I’m not sure how that part would work either, but if I could figure it out, that would be awesome, because this extravert needs some real live people in her life.

 

Yes, I know once in a while I’ve called myself an introvert. See, it isn’t a lie because some people consider introvert/extravert to be based on how much you talk, and I am mostly quiet in most situations…and so I do that sometimes because it is so much easier to just go with introvert than try to explain that I’m an extravert that really struggles to communicate. Lol, on the topic of things I hate, I also hate how hard I have to work to communicate. I hate that I will accept people’s words for me that I don’t have anything specific to share when the truth is that there is something that I really really want to say that my mouth is refusing to share or that there probably is something I will want to share in a minute or two when the pressure is off, but when everyone is looking at me waiting for my answer my brain just feels like all the words have been squished out and I have no idea what I’m supposed to say. It’s like the fact that it is my turn to talk just puts too much pressure on me and I literally can’t. It isn’t that I am disengaged or hiding or being stand-offish…paradoxically if I don’t care as much the words are more likely to come easily. It isn’t a chosen refusal to participate – oh how I *want* to join in. It literally is an I can’t and while I do look thrilled when I agree that I have nothing to say, that is really the relief that my turn is finally over and what you don’t see is the anger and shame that I failed again that closely follows that relief.

 

The other thing this social isolation has done is taken away the daily contact I had with other people. Sometimes that comes out as me talking non-stop when I am in the presence of another person, but other times it comes out as losing a lot of ground in my ability to participate in conversation…and I suspect the longer this goes on the more it will lean towards that option. It is frustrating when I have had to work so hard to get where I am today for that to be taken away.

 

On the positive side, slowly the OCD is improving. It definitely is still here, but it doesn’t feel like it has taken over my whole life anymore at least for now. It is becoming less of a belief that I caused the pandemic to start and closer to just a thought, as in I can now not only acknowledge that it is irrational, but I can now also acknowledge that it is somewhere between maybe and probably not true. So yeah, the world feels less hard from that perspective, but as soon as the OCD came down enough for me to want other people in my life again I fell hard into the deep desperate loneliness…so yeah. This might be the most random ramble-y post I’ve ever written…

And so we come restless within…drifting so far from where we began

(Anchor our hearts – Journey Collective)

Sometimes you just have to tough love yourself and be like the goldfish and m&ms you had all night don’t count as both breakfast and lunch…and you know you are starting to heal when you can move on and choose to count it as lunch and heat up some cinnamon rolls for breakfast after church…yep, I did have breakfast literally after noon. Flexibility is survival. Actually I read on the internet Saturday night, to survive is to swim in strange waters. I’m not quite sure what that means, but it sure sounded pretty…and I like swimming.

So I started this post on Sunday I and had really good intentions of finishing it except that I was so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore and then I went to work and then I raced against the clock to get all the things done because I really wanted to go home on time after being at work until 5am that morning and being back at 1430…and really I left just a little late but I really probably should have stayed longer…so yeah, I totally forgot I was even in the middle of righting a post until a few minutes ago…so I guess now instead of working through the things I really should be doing I am going to finish this…which is dumb because the only semi-useful thing I’ve done today is put a Christmas gift in a grocery bag (because I you want pinterest perfect gift wrap you don’t want to invite me…actually, if you want pinterest perfect almost anything you don’t want to invite me…but it is very rare that anyone compliments my gift wrapping (lack of) abilities…the only exception is probably the time I cut the sleeve off a shirt and tied off the ends with twisty ties. That was super easy and actually looked good…

I kinda left while worship was still happening at church yesterday. Worship is one of the parts of church that really matters to me…but I can’t honestly say God is “never gonna let me down.” He already has. Am I working on forgiving him, yes, but does that take away the fact that my dad is dead, no. We got to the end of the song and I was like as soon as people are moving around I am slipping out…but still, I’m counting it as a huge win because no crying was involved…

And I didn’t get out of bed until after noon today, so going back into day shift tomorrow is going to be so fun (hashtag sarcasm)…like I do want to be back on day shift, but this isn’t exactly how I would prefer to transition back in…

And some random thoughts…

My favorite Christmas songs right now are “Sweetest Gift” by Craig Aven and “Maybe” by Nichole Nordeman. I also am loving “Anchor Our Hearts” by the Journey Collective and a song I can’t figure out the title of but some of the lyrics are “your life dreams are shattered and you’re torn apart…She was such a good description of a picture perfect man and he said to savor it…days seem to linger and hours feel like days…and you’re wide awake” and that’s all the words I can remember which was not enough for google to find me the name of the song…and when I googled shattered Christian lyrics the only song that came up was Broken Together which is a good song but not what I was looking for…

The End.

Oh, and also last night when I was responding to a priority/trauma red, I didn’t feel the huge weight of grief like had been happening before, so now I do feel again like I can find my passion in emergency response again!

If you believe the way you say you do…

(Unloveable – Plumb)

There are some things that make me really angry…mostly when people degrade other people. There are quite a few social media and news articles right now degrading a particular pastor. I don’t care whether you like or dislike this pastor or about the quality of his sermons. This is about his quality as a person. Every person is intrinsically valuable because we are created in the image of God. Nothing can take that away. It is possible to dislike someone without maligning them by name on the internet. Are there times I speak negatively about people – absolutely, I do not claim to be without sin – but it makes me even more angry to hear it when people are doing it online by name.

There were allegations that 17 years ago this pastor sexually abused two women. This pastor states that while parts of the claims are true that other parts are not true. These allegations are being investigated by neutral parties…but to read the social media and news presence it sounds like the allegations have been identified as truth. In America, we are supposed to believe in innocent until proven guilty, because it really hurts to be treated as if you are guilty when you are innocent. At this point as the investigation has not concluded, we still need to assume innocence, not guilt. Additionally, based on the evidence I have seen, I think there was maybe some poor judgement on everyone’s part, but not sexual abuse by this pastor. This isn’t about what I think though, it is about not creating your own truth and using it to malign a man who has been using his life to serve the body of Christ through his vocation.

Even if this pastor *did* abuse those women, I don’t think that should change how we treat this man. First, even if you are not a Christian, you have to realize that people change over time. That was half his lifetime ago. It would basically be impossible to be the same person you were half your lifetime ago. Second, if you are a Christian, please recall that God commands us to forgive over and over again. Like the song says, “how many times should I forgive 70 x 7…don’t use a calculator to figure it out, forgive as God has forgiven you. That’s what it’s all about…love your enemies bless those who curse you, do good and pray for those who hurt you.” I don’t remember where I heard it, but I know I heard something about the bible passage that song is based on that it doesn’t mean that you can stop forgiving once you reach 490 times, and actually the numbers in the passage where actually not directly translated and actually are likely to mean a LOT larger number than they seem to be as they currently read. God says the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life. He doesn’t say that the wages of this particular sin is death but that one isn’t so bad. He doesn’t use a valuation version of justice like we do…in fact, God’s opinion is breaking one law is just as bad as breaking every single law, so if you’ve ever been jealous or told a lie then in God’s eyes you are no better than a mass murderer. So yeah, EVERY pastor is human, every pastor sins, so you can’t say someone can’t be a pastor because he is a sinner. Umm, hello, but you might want to remind yourself after Adam and Eve got hungry and ate the wrong apple that every human has sinned, and unlike the Awana food color demonstration, sin doesn’t get diluted as the generations are further removed from the original sin…not sayin just sayin…

Also, this is totally unrelated, but sometimes on facebook I stir up some drama just because people are bein’ idiots and need a wake up call (usually some idiot trying to proclaim that God doesn’t believe in vaccines…). Recently someone was like wow, you must be pretty high and mighty to think you know what is important to God…and it was really hard for me to be polite instead of replying something super snarky like, well it isn’t really that hard as long as you can read seeing as how he wrote it all down for us inside this giant book called the Bible…instead I just ignored it because if you don’t have anything nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all. Also, God definitely wants you to take care of your body, because your body is his home.

Also, unrelated again, but if you haven’t ever dumped out a hot/cold pack into a bowl of water you totally should try it…the little balls grow until they look and feel like magical little spheres of jello. I was smart enough not to put them in my mouth to see if they taste like jello though…such a fun texture though. They do squish into little pieces like jello does when squeezed. It is pretty impressive and now I probably will not own any hot/cold packs much longer…except I really need to not destroy all of mine since that is what I use to help control the volume of my radio, because the volume is screwed up because I’ve had this radio and clock duo since second grade so it shows its age.

Lately I’ve been awake by 2am every morning…so by the time I get home from work even though I’ve been on day shifts I am exhausted and just done. Which is why it took my most of a week to get my clean laundry put away…it feels like defeat, but I mean finally getting that done also feels like success…but so much of the day I just feel like I am barely surviving and I don’t necessarily always care about surviving…but I can’t die either because that would be a mess and that’s not fair to everyone else. And that is frustrating, but I guess that is why community is so important, but community can’t be there all the time and sometimes even when they are there they don’t necessarily always understand and it can be isolating. People definitely expect me to be over this by now. They expect everything to be normal again…but it isn’t and it feels like it’ll never be normal again and it heaps on more burden that I can’t meet their expectations and so that is one more place I am falling short. I just want to be good enough. I couldn’t get a residency. I couldn’t save my dad. I can’t even grieve and recover right.

I also feel bad because I feel like I have written all these things about God, but honestly me and God have a weird relationship right now. I need God to be real and good because if he isn’t real then I never get to see my daddy again, and if he isn’t good then my daddy isn’t having a good place to live. He doesn’t even have a body yet so he needs to at least have a good place to live. But God doesn’t feel good. God has had so many opportunities to keep life from hurting so much and he didn’t. It doesn’t feel like God cares. I don’t know if I want a God who doesn’t care about protecting his children. I don’t know how to put all the pieces together.

And I heard on a podcast that memories can only be recalled a certain number of times before they are worn out. As you remember them more and more they will start getting blurry until vivid stories become concepts and eventually cannot be recalled at all. I don’t know if biologically this is true, but I know it made me sad because I don’t ever want to lose any piece of my dad. And I know it made me angry because now it feels dangerous to remember because what if this really is using up the last times I’ll get to remember my daddy? I want to have my daddy back but I can’t have that so I don’t want to accept that I can’t have the memories either.

Thank you for finding me when you did

(Dara McLean – Your Forever)

 

I feel like God totally fails at the big things, but I have to admit that he has been faithful with a few of the small things…most of those small things being putting people where I need them sometimes.

 

Not just now, but for a long time. Like how the summer after third year I might not have been able to come back for fourth year if it hadn’t been for one particular person who had taken over and cared enough to realize that there was a lot more to the story than she was hearing. I might not have been ready to tell anyone what had been going on because this idiot was busy protecting the little girls when she should have been protecting herself, but this person was willing to work with me to find out at least enough information to understand that the story wasn’t what certain someone was telling. God didn’t protect me from being abused and didn’t protect me from getting in trouble, but he put someone in the right place to keep me in school.

 

Totally an unrelated side note, but it is crazy how little insignificant details become ingrained into memory…especially considering how much of a struggle just remembering the things I need to know for life is right now…I remember when I got to hang out that summer with my friend and towards the end of our time together I was holding one of her kids who was wearing a yellow textured onesie and we were sitting on the swing and she was going to give her kid a sandwich but the bread was moldy and I was trying to contain my tears because her mom was on her way over…like why in the world is all that information in my brain when there are so many more useful things that could be taking that space?

 

Anyway, back on track…

 

Sixth year when my world was falling apart I had a friend who left me the sweetest voicemail ever (because my dumb phone couldn’t accept phone calls) and invited me to sit with her at a conference at church. I so desperately needed together and needed someone to care and she invited me in. She saw me when I felt written off by most of the world. That day she gave me a place to just be normal and talk about things that were important to both of us. Later she was willing to sit with me when I’d eaten a couple bites of food all day and hadn’t slept in a while and just be there even though I was in no shape to use my words to contribute. God not only didn’t give me my dream residency but also gave me no residency at all. Not in phase I. Not in phase II. Not in the Scramble.

 

I mean, there were totally other people being rockstars for me in both those situations, but the point is that God totally failed at the big things but gave me people when I really needed them.

 

Fast forward to August. God totally failed at the whole dad thing. Like Britt Nicole says, “feels like I’ve been here forever, WHY WON’T YOU JUST INTERVENE? Can’t you see the tears keep falling and I’m falling apart at the seams.” Lots of people prayed. And God didn’t heal my daddy. “Little girl terrified. She’d leave her room if only bruises would heal. A home is no place to hide. She runs away from all the pain that she feels. But every day’s the same. She fights to find her way. She hurts. She breaks, She hides and tries to pray. She wonders why. Does anyone ever hear her when she cries?…everyone’s singing but she can’t seem to smile. They never get past arm’s length. How could they act like everything is alright?”

 

I wanted my dad to be alive and I didn’t get that. Now I just want the pain to go away. I can’t keep doing this. It’s too hard. Life keeps moving for the rest of the world, but mine stopped and now there is this huge chasm of time I feel like there is no hope of ever being able to cross to reach the other side where I could join everyone else again.

 

But again, through this there have been people right where I needed them to be. When I felt lonely in the hospital room that I wanted to escape but didn’t feel like I had anyone I could text my best friend called me and came…and then came back early in the morning before her first day of work for the year

 

And someone else came into my life at just the right time as well…I had started feeling like death was the only way out of the pain when she came along side me and celebrated my birthday and was with me for a little while…and then I felt again like death wasn’t an answer which took away the little shred of hope I was holding on to, but is arguably safer. I say arguably, because I mean, once you are dead nothing can hurt you anymore, so one could also argue that dead is safer than alive…dead still sounds good for me, but not like a good overall solution anymore. So there is this tension between doing what is right for me and doing what is right for other people. But I mean, people do say do what feels good to you…and you know what would feel awesome to me? Have someone make me a physical since I haven’t had one of those in years. Eat a crap ton of skittles before going. Get blood sugar check which is (hopefully) way out of range. Repeat skittles trick for recheck. Get prescription for insulin. Inject entire vial before bed but refill vial with water so it looks full. Die peacefully in hypoglycemia that hopefully my body can’t fix. Like I know that is not a smart plan and that as a pharmacist I have to be really careful because pulling something like that could potentially cost me my license…so you definitely didn’t hear that here…but like that is one reason why you can’t just do what feels good.

 

And today I got to borrow someone’s baby for a while. It feels so good to have a baby. I had to give it up at the beginning of service, but I got it back for a little while later and like people say distraction isn’t the best way to handle pain…but we have a word for those people: wrong. And after church someone took me to hang out at the mall for the afternoon. Usually after church I go home and cry and then try to figure out getting lunch in my face. Being able to be with someone for a while let me feel included and feel more calm before going home…I came home and changed into pajamas and threw my dirty leggings into the washer for a rinse cycle (it would have been really smart to throw some detergent and other dirty laundry in there and actually end up with clean instead of just not stained clothes, but I’m not that smart). And I mean, I did at least think about doing the dishes that have been sitting on the counter for the past three weeks before I started crying…and I gave up for dinner and figured sour gummy bears and a double hot chocolate counted as dinner as long as I made it with baby formula to get some nutrition in it. I mean, I had a balanced lunch and if I’m actually going to drink it then anything that gets fluid into my body is a win. That brought me up to 28oz of fluids today. I can’t remember the last time I even got close to that. So I guess we’ll see if my prediction the other day that fluid status was what was making it so hard to get out of bed was right…

 

I was thinking today (yeah I do that sometimes…lol…you just don’t notice because I’m not good at it so even when I’m thinking my ideas are dumb) that maybe why I am falling apart by the end of church most weeks isn’t just that I’ve been home alone for the weekend…I haven’t actually read the book “The Body Keeps Score” but the title combined with what I heard recently-ish that sometimes your body remembers significant times and places before you are aware of it made me think maybe it is because Sunday is when we turned off support. Maybe my body knows that Sunday was the beginning of the end. Maybe I should read the book and if that is actually what the book is about maybe it’ll tell me how to make my body forget, because fighting to hold in tears is awful. So far I haven’t had to walk out to get it together, but I’ve been close…and there have been times during the before/after church part where I left to “go to the bathroom” but really to be alone before I lost it and then to pull myself back together. That isn’t how I want to live my life. I want to go back to when worship was what I came to church for, not just one more thing separating me from an escape to calm my body.

 

Speaking of music…Stephanie Pauline’s song “Real Dad” is so much more meaningful to me now than it was before the accident. “I know God loves every child somehow, but the Bible says he loves you in a special way. Their last hug before he died Jen was 8, now crayon cards invited dads for father’s day. They go all around the room, her turn comes too soon…And Jen’s dad holds her again when she is 80. There’s no one without a real dad and there’s no replacing a real daddy. Listen. Your real dad is up there in heaven, and he loves you more than I can even say.” Here is the link: https://youtu.be/Nju8tJu5tdo

 

I’m still struggling with the God loving me in a special way part…like if God loved me so much why didn’t he save my daddy? I don’t get it. I feel angry and abandoned and not loved in a special way…but the part about Jen’s turn coming too soon? Well, that is how I felt at Camp in October. The college student who was assigned to help my group, we put him in charge of picking out ice breaker questions (like there was a print out of generic surface level questions to ask)…of all the questions he could have picked like your favorite color or if you have pets or how old you are, he picked how many people are in your immediate family. I didn’t know what to answer. I didn’t want to leave out my dad…but he was (and still is…) dead. My turn definitely came too soon. I answered that there were 5. It didn’t occur to me until much later that maybe I could have just said one because as an adult technically I can be counted as the head of my own family…And now I want to be 80 so I can hug my daddy. I miss him so much.

 

Also, I’m really sorry I am so negative lately. For that matter, I’ve been negative basically the entire time I’ve had this blog…I wish I could go back in time to when life was generally happy. But I can’t. It feels like I just barely make it through one wave when another comes crashing down on my again. Someday I want to be free. I want to be happy. But I can’t.

 

I recently discovered the Instagram page LiveFromSnackTime. It is a compilation of funny quotes from kids. Like “When your heart is broken, it’s like a thunderstorm on the inside.” “So many feelings for one brain.” “I have enough friends, but thanks for asking.” “I don’t know why I’m mad. Let me ask my mom.” “My aunt is my mom’s sister. Small world.” “I appreciate my teachers for teaching me words that help me argue with my parents” “My butt has a line of symmetry.” “I don’t eat fish, but I drink their house.” “My test is wrinkled because I gave it a hug.” ”If you lick my hands again you can’t be my friend.” “I put myself in someone else’s shoes and they didn’t fit.”

‘Cause even in the chaos there is peace

(Symphony – Switch)

 

I probably have a few almost totally written blog posts waiting for a title on my desktop on my laptop…most of which are probably so old that it is time to just trash them…but instead of finishing any of them I am going to be write a new one…so yeah…

 

On Sunday, someone said like “they were happy because they had time to cry.” And that got me thinking. They were happy because they had time to cry…but I try to be happy by filling up my life as much as possible so there is no mental space and no time to cry. So yeah, I wasn’t really sure what to do with that statement, because it kind of spoke to me, but seemed like backwards of what I felt like was right for me.

 

I was the girl who broke the rules and stopped taking her break at work when the grief was too deep because I didn’t want to have space to cry; I just wanted to work. I’m the one who felt so good getting in my car at 5am to go to work, rushing from there to VBS, leaving church around 8:30-9pm, only to do it all again all week…and then the next week didn’t have all that time and it was so hard when the grief came crashing down again and I was at risk of drowning under it all again.

 

So yeah, it definitely seemed like the key to being happy was staying as busy as humanly possible. Removing all margin from my life. Filling in the voids like an intense game of tetris to keep out the darkness…but those words were tugging at my heart that maybe that wasn’t the best way to live. Maybe I was missing something.

 

I don’t like change, but I do like learning and growing, so I figured it was worth thinking about, because my life has had a lot of pain and chances are there will be more at some point.

 

Then Monday morning I saw this quote on Instagram: Avoidance is just prolonged suffering disguised as safety.

 

Do you know what I was doing when I was obsessively playing games like Bejeweled Blitz on repeat to the point I was barely even cognizant that one game had ended and the next begun in March and April this year? I was avoiding to the best of my ability having any margin at all to process the pain in my life so that I didn’t have to face the tears and how much it hurt. It felt safe to play the games over and over.

 

That quote on Instagram wasn’t even supposed to be about that kind of avoidance…but the fact that I connected the dots told me that this was definitely something I was supposed to be paying attention to.

 

And as I was trying to put all this together and figure out what this all looks like in my real life…and like really, how can I be a functional human AND give myself space and time to grieve? It isn’t like it is very feasible for me to just take a week or two off of work and all my other commitments to just sit home alone and cry…and all the internet people also say isolation isn’t the key either, so I mean, there is also that to reconcile into the picture…while I’m thinking all these things, guess what else I see on Instagram?

 

“How People Typically Change” Level one is described as being aware there *might* be a problem but no real intention of changing. Level two is where I was/am: you’re aware there *is* a problem but you’re ambivalent about changing so you think about pros and cons. At level 3 you are aware change needs to happen and start making the change happen. At level 4 you have already changed and are evaluating the change, and at level 5 you enjoy the change and want to maintain it and know healing is a lifelong process that requires consistent work.

 

So yeah…I still don’t know where I am going with this.

 

I know almost a couple weeks ago I traveled to one of the places I applied in phase II because when I asked for feedback they asked me to come in person. I said yes because I was so desperate for feedback I’d have done almost anything. Over time between saying yes and actually going I didn’t guard my heart so much and eventually came to the point where I had decided the reason I didn’t get the position I wanted was because they had a better one for me they wanted to offer if I were really serious enough to come in person. By the time I actually got there enough reality had gotten through my thick skull that I pretty much knew and had accepted I wasn’t getting a new job…and unsurprisingly, I did not receive a job offer that morning. I also didn’t really get any direct do this to get a residency next year though…but they were so kind and polite and friendly that I didn’t really notice until I was doing the final good byes that I really didn’t get that one thing I really felt like I needed. On the drive home I felt like I kind of had to grieve not getting a residency again…but I couldn’t really let go because I needed to be ready for work when I arrived…but at the same time I really appreciated that they took the time to invite me on site and talk with me and stuff – they really didn’t have to do that, and this can be a busy time of year. With this clash of feelings, there was a dissonance, because I felt like God had also given me peace. I was angry, but I was also grateful, and I was also almost feeling like separated from the situation, like I was watching it from the sidelines…sure, we could call that dissociation, but this didn’t just feel like I was separated from my emotions, it really felt like it was God putting everything in place for me to experience the gift of his peace. I can’t explain how I just know that is what was happening, but I just know.

 

And so yeah, I worked that evening and the next one and then 12 hour shifts over the weekend and trying to go to part of church before work…and my time was very filled…

 

…and I feel like I could go into a totally unrelated post about how dysregulated my body has felt recently and how strange it is for the girl who will eat you out a house at home to skip dinner and refuse food and also go to what was supposed to be a work out class and to walk 5 miles in wet weather in flip flops…and how that is how my body grieves yet emotionally I felt okay…but I feel like it is time to wrap up this post and figure things out later and that is what I am going to do.

I’m Running on Yesterday’s Fumes

(More Than I Am – Christa Wells)

 

Sometimes I do not know what I believe.

 

It seems like God either doesn’t care or doesn’t have power if he keeps letting me be crushed.

 

But then it’s like I can at least kinda sorta see God’s hand in getting me through it.

 

And I’m like so is God there and doing something and somehow got distracted and forgot about me for awhile or is God not really doing any of this and it is just my church background letting me “see” him doing anything at all?

 

My manager is great and wants to support me. I’ve had two meeting with him in the past month. The first was after lunch on phase I match day. I don’t really know if somehow someone found out that there is a lot more going on than just disappointment, but the director of pharmacy took me out into the hall maybe a week later to ask if I was okay. And then last week I had another meeting with my manager. Supposedly it was just a normal one-on-one that the website says every employee is supposed to have on a regular basis and sometimes happens but sometimes doesn’t, but in any case my supposed one on one he really skipped pretty much every single question on the one-on-one form and just kept talking about God and stuff. Like I mentioned before, he also gave me a word for part of how I am feeling: anger. It was really frustrating hearing someone at work talking about God when I am so frustrated with God. I am way too polite to be like I don’t care because I don’t know if I even believe in God anymore and I don’t really trust him right now to have good plans or make things work out. But y’know, as much as I kinda felt annoyed, I think it was probably good for me to hear those things.

 

A week and a half ago I was dreaming about how I could use up the money I’ve set aside for vision and dental expenses before I lose it by getting a residency and leaving my job. Now I am totally overwhelmed with the fact that I was due for a dentist appointment a little over a month ago and cancelled it because I just couldn’t deal with it right then…and now I gotta pick a dental office and make an appointment, because I live almost 2 hours from the dentist I have been using plus their idea of an emergency is waiting a couple months, so trying to schedule a non-emergency appointment would be a struggle to get anything closer than 6 months from now which is way further out than I know is appropriate. Part of me also doesn’t care. It is on my to do list for the weekend…but so are plenty of other things that chances are I won’t manage. I try really hard, but there is a definite limit to what I can accomplish…especially when just getting up and getting dressed and making it through the day is still using everything I have.

 

 

I am so exhausted. Yesterday I was thinking maybe today I would be ready to try eating breakfast (not just a piece of candy at work or something but actually eating at home or on the way). Yeah, that didn’t happen. When you get your butt out of bed 20 minutes before you need to leave for work you definitely don’t have time to push yourself to do anything but that which must be done…if it were an actual good day no matter how late I got up there would have been something for breakfast, but in survival mode there is no energy to both push getting a breakfast ready and eating it and getting to work on time.

 

The thing is, if I can stay busy and distracted I can do reasonably well, so when I am in the routine of going about my day at work, as long as it doesn’t get too slow, I can become absorbed in work and do fine, but as soon as I lose that distraction I am not doing well. As a result, you can probably imagine that winding down for bed and the morning when I get up can be some of the hardest parts of the day with the most tears. It has kind of been a blessing having morning shifts this week so that I can get up and getting into the rush to shower get dressed get lunch packed and get out the door can keep my mind occupied enough to not struggle so much. But that doesn’t fix the evening. I am still having crying breakthrough interrupting my game of bejeweled. I am still trying sometimes less than successfully to stay up late enough to not end up crying once I have nothing but the radio and sleep to take my mind away from the pain. And if I don’t stay up late enough and end up crying obvi that keeps me up instead. So either way I am staying up at least an hour late and sometimes later every night and yeah, I am “sleeping” in at least an hour every morning if not more, but emotions are exhausting. And my body has never done well with making up sleep in the morning. And there is no guarantee I won’t be awake in the middle of the night. It was pretty normal for a long time for me to wake up in the middle of the night thirsty, drink most of my water bottle then go back to sleep. Part of that I think changed when I got into more crazy shift work with this job, but now I wake up but can’t stand the idea of putting water in my mouth not to mention feel way too exhausted to reach over and actually pick up the water bottle. The one night I tried, I ended up with water all over my pillow because I poured it kind of in my mouth but more like next to my mouth because I wasn’t ready to put anything in my mouth…and then I left it open and next to me which obvi isn’t the smartest decision.

 

So yeah, all that to say that just the emotion itself is exhausting, but there is definitely a sleep debt component to the exhaustion as well.

 

The internet says I should exercise 30 minutes every day and that would make me feel better. I really want to know how the internet supposes that I am supposed to find the energy for that. Or the time. If I finally can find the motivation to do something, it is going to be something important like cleaning the kitchen counters or putting away some clean dishes out of the dishwasher and eventually replacing them with the dirties from the sink and my lunch box. Or maybe buying some fruit since I am now completely out if you don’t count packets of jelly. And like really? I am getting enough calories now that I could justify exercise if I wanted to do it, but Sunday I made it a grand total of 1.5 miles on my bike…which took nowhere near 30 minutes, and I was totally wiped out.

 

Yesterday one of my coworkers texted me and I really miss her and my other coworkers and my job there and I am frustrated that I can’t work there anymore and I am angry that the girl I informally mentored got a position there and I didn’t even get an interview this year and that is all I wanted for like ever and it feels like I will never get to ever do anything even kind of close to my dreams. I just want to be happy. Maybe that is why I lean towards going back to school at a Christian school. The people in the advertisements all look so happy and I want that. I think more than I want to be a pediatric critical care pharmacist I want to be happy. I’d do almost anything to feel good. I wish I didn’t care so much about other people so I could just go to forever home. I’m so done with this life. I am not a quitter, but I wish I was.

 

Today one of my former coworkers friended me on facebook. I miss her so much. She gave me hope two years ago…as it turns out the hope ended up letting me crash some more but it was a little bit of hope that I did desperately need at the time. She made me smile. She is a pharmacist, but she got a second job as a swim instructor. I used to be a swim instructor. It was the best thing ever. Well, parts of it were. I LOVED working with kids, but working with parents was a nightmare. My first day a parent yelled at me that their kid was going to learn nothing because he didn’t cry. So yeah. I mean, there definitely were some really amazing parents, but even with them I struggled because socially I was not yet anywhere as close to as skilled then as I am now, and anyone who knows me knows that even now I am working really hard to come across as almost good enough to pass as normal in casual conversation so in situations in which other people have to work hard I am in way over my head…the only other problem I had with that job (besides the issue of the fact that their solution to hiring a bunch of people to fill a few harder to fill shifts and then those people also wanting the highly sought after shifts was to give people 30-45 minute shifts each) was that once in a while they would try to get me to teach diving challenge. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work because I only know the dives required to pass the American Red Cross swim lessons which are both completely stupid dives and are not what the diving class was supposed to be doing. Additionally, the pools I worked for had some policies that made it unsafe for me to both follow the rules AND dive. See, they forbid both wearing glasses and wearing goggles when diving. I would like to know what idiot came up with that rule. I have little to no vision without my glasses or prescription goggles. I can’t safely walk to the end of the diving board to even just jump off. The one time I couldn’t get out of that on a training day I was the one sitting down and using my hands to guide myself forward. Diving from the side you don’t need a lot of space so as long as no one is at your feet no problem, but if I was going to jump or dive from the board the other issue is that I had no way of knowing if I was about to jump on top of someone and considering that during lesson time the pool was jam packed with people, there was no way it was ever going to be safe for me to go off the board while following the rules. I love jumping and diving off the board, so if no one was looking or a manager who cared more about safety than the rules was working that day I’d go ahead and do what I needed/wanted to do so I could teach all the aspects of my classes as long as I didn’t end up with a diver challenge class. Only two times did they ever try to put me in charge of a diving class. Both times by the end of the first class I was no longer in charge and both times I felt really frustrated because I was very upfront about what I liked teaching best and what I was completely unable to teach and was told it was totally fine if I couldn’t teach diving – I could do just swimming – and then suddenly there’d be a class with my name on it and they’d be annoyed when I said I couldn’t do that class and make me at least gather the students and start the class…and I had no business starting that class. Kids would ask what dives are we learning today and I’d be like I have no idea. They’d tell me what usually happened in diving classes and I’d have them do that while trying to get someone’s attention to take over for me.

Some Things Are Too Heavy For Even Friends to Lift

(Unbroken – Stephanie Pauline and Joe Uveges)

Ever have that moment where you start thinking something and within minutes you feel like super guilty for having those thoughts? And then that is followed by thinking about how people say it is okay to feel and express negative emotion, but then it seems like there is still an expectation that every thing will be silver-lined. Yeah, so that happened at church today.

It seemed like people kept talking about all the awesome things God was doing in their lives. And I was frustrated. Why does it seem like God gives everyone else all sorts of awesome things but I feel left out? It hurts. I’m tired of hearing everyone’s awesome story while I still am waiting and hurting. I am scared. What if this still isn’t my year? What if I fail to match again? These stories are supposed to be hopeful, but instead it feels like alone. It feels like I’m left out again. I am used to being left out by people, but it hurts more to feel left out by God.

So yeah, with just a few days left until match day, this is what is going through my mind. It is scary. The tension is so real. I so desperately want to finally match. I don’t know where to go from here if I don’t match. I really really want it. But I am so afraid of not matching. I’ve received that fail to match email so many times already. It is hard to believe it will ever be different…and I don’t know where to go from here.

LOL, but the lesson today at church was: we want to trust ourselves but God wants trust and says if you trust I will provide.

Music is my happy place.

Today’s Play List:

No Fight Left – JJ Heller (There is no fight left, on the inside, but maybe that’s where I’m supposed to be. I’m giving up trying, I’m giving it all to you. There is no place I could go that you don’t already know.)

11^th Hour – Esterday (Time means nothing to the Lord of all time. He knows what to do and when to do it. So if God says wait then wait with faith that he’ll come to your rescue at the moment it’s best to…when we have problems, we want them worked out now or later on this week if not sooner. But we should not sweat if he’s not answered yet, ‘cause the very last minute isn’t late when God is in it…1 o’clock 2 o’clock nothing you can do o’clock. 3 o’clock 4 o’clock wait a little more o’clock. 5 6 7 it could be 11:59 and he’s still got time. He’s got the might, he’s got the power, God can work in the eleventh hour.)

The song in like the middle of the Donut Man Resurrection Celebration (This is my body broken for you. This is my blood poured out for you. Do this and remember…)

Take the Bullets Away – We As Human (I’ve got my finger on the trigger, one bullet in the gun. Now I’m spinning the revolver, hoping this might be the one. I tried to find religion, to see what I’d become. I was ruined by the world, but I blamed it on the son. Am I worthless? Am I filthy? Am I too far gone for a remedy? Can you help me ‘cause I’m dying to be so much more than a memory?)

Let’s Go – Debra Lynn La Lima (What would it be like to not give in to our fear of something bad? It’s tough to fight the fear when we’re feeling scared. We could go past the scary part and try to not give in. We could wait for the fear to get lost, then we would win. Let’s go!…We could fight our fears even though we’re scared they’ll come true. After a while it get’s easier and easier to do. Maybe one day we’ll tell all our scary thoughts good bye. It won’t be that hard to do. All we’ve got to do is try….and when we have some doubt think about how nice it would be to not have so many scary thoughts and to live so fearlessly. Let’s go!)

Build a Barn – Stephanie Pauline and Joe Uveges (I remember as a little girl thinkin’ that was sweet wishin’ I lived then within a small town’s reach. Then last night I got an evite from a friend of a friend. Mom of three who’s pregnant needed help to make the rent. Facebook said her man was givin’ it his all holdin’ down a job and kids while she’s in the hospital. And there I saw it streamin’ across the bare computer was a song of gifts and prayers just like an old church choir…friends are friends in each and every age…it’s good to know some things will never change.)

Unbroken – Stephanie Pauline and Joe Uveges (Forty-seven boxes taped and placed in piles; Changed out the locks; Three small trucks in the drive. Jenny worked the yard sale. Joe tuned up my car. I might drive a million miles but I know who my friends are. ‘Cause when life get’s shipped from here to there. You might crack a mirror you might bust a chair, but with every new front door you open, love arrives unbroken. Four of us took the sofa that won’t make the trip. Some things are too heavy for even friends to lift. We emptied out the pantry, wiped the rings left in the dust. Shots of pop in Dixie cups, here’s to us.)

Love and Laundry – Point of Grace (Here I go again it’s another messy morning. Walk around the clothes that are coverin’ the floor…then put on my mascara while I’m drivin’ down the road. I thought I could do it all, turns out I was crazy. Man I need an iphone and a cleaning lady…it might take a miracle to get myself together. I wish that there were more than 24 hours in a day. I haven’t found it yet, but there’s gotta be a way. I keep prayin’ that I can get everything done if we hold on and still have time for love and a load of laundry. I sure’d like to relax layin’ in a bubble bath, but then I’d have to clean the tub and really who’s got time for that? There goes my daydream, I’m just wishful thinkin’. Oh shoot, I’m running late; I’ve got to make it to a meeting.)

Toy Soldier – Stephanie Pauline (And it may be true I’m more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ, but I don’t feel like a conqueror tonight. So can I rest on your shoulder? Will you carry me home? You feel so far away; please don’t leave me here alone. And tonight if it’s okay with you, can I put down my armor and just be a daughter to you?…There’s no sense in anything if there’s no sense of you…This warfare waged has wore me thin. There’s shrapnel underneath my skin. My sword is stained, my hands are red, you know my thoughts before they’re said.)

Almost Seventeen – Stephanie Pauline (It looked just like any other day. The sky was blue and the clouds were grey, and I was almost seventeen, sitting at my folks piano. And I raged like a hurricane. I buckled like a house of cards. I crumbled like the tower of babel. I couldn’t stop my bleeding heart. I tried so hard you know what I mean to make some sense of this crazy scene. But I was like an ocean abound. I was bound to break…maybe I’ve failed and let them all down, but I’d rather be real not another clown. Painting on a smile like it covers our need? No thank you, I’d rather bleed.)

Breathin’ To Death – LeCrae (Help me Lord before there’s no time left. It’s like I’m tired of life. Lord I’m wrong, why I can’t get right. And when it’s dark why I can’t get light?…Please come get me…Lord I’m sleepin’ with death. Man I’m cheatin’ with death. Am I deaf? It’s like I don’t hear ya’. I say that I’m a Christian but it’s like I don’t fear ya’…I’m drinking out a broken cistern that could never hold water and I’m gonna get burned…Lord I deserve to burn. Help me Lord before there’s no time left. I ain’t livin’ I’m just breathin’ to death. I’m just breathin’ to death…I’m feelin’ schizophrenic. Maybe I ain’t saved, ‘cause I gotta get high just to black out all the pain. Seen death. Seen hurt. Seen a whole lot of things. Instead of runnin’ from it I’m runnin’ away from change. It’s like I’m outside in the ice-cold weather. The rain’s comin’ down. I keep gettin’ wetter…But I can’t get it through my head. You were stabbed you were murdered and for me is why you bled but I spit on your bloody face as if I never cared. And Lord, how dare I compare my pain. Your father turned his back and you were left to hang. I don’t know how you did it. Yeah, I can’t explain, how can you love the sinner who’s desecrated your name?)