Friends

I often feel there is a ghost in the room when dating: the Ghost of Relationships Past. You know, the girl who broke his heart? He missed all the signs–the selfishness, the petty lies, the deep resentments, and prejudices–and gave her all of himself regardless. Now that the signs finally catapulted him to a place of recognition of who she really was, what she really was not capable of, and that indeed their relationship was doomed, he is adrift from his dreams for his life because they all included her. Her–not you. She looms over every exchange, every hope, every little moment where your heart cries out “God…he is so amazing.” He is amazing, and he is amazingly broken. He is broken beyond your repair. He must fix (i.e. heal) himself, which you want for him. You want it for him and in that small corner where you light a candle for him (birthday cake sized so as to not get your hopes up too much) you want it for your life as well; you want him for your life as well. In the meantime, strength requires that you do not get into a love triangle with the Ghost of Relationships Past. Strength to resist this love triangle is always easier said than done.

Being a young woman in my thirties, I know a thing or two about dating men who have tried to stuff their Ghosts in a closet. The funny thing about these Ghosts, they always escape the closet eventually. Slippery buggers! Their hazy smoke permeates moments. With one ex-boyfriend I was shocked to learn that he almost never reached an orgasm through sex. Without even realizing the severity of what I was asking I inquired, “What did your ex-girlfriends make of that?” He replied, “None of them cared. They were just happy to have me focus on them.” In one swift moment all his Ghosts began to swirl around us. What they did. What they did not do. The pattern of being with women for whom his needs were never a priority emerged, and I–the naive one–foolishly believed that by loving him and caring for his needs I would show him what real love was. I did. I did what they would not–could not–do.

He left me to go back to one of those Ghosts.

Is it not amazing how we feel so much more comfortable in the rut of horrible relationship patterns than we do in the uncharted territory of intimacy? Logic would dictate that if you put your hand on the hot stove and are burned, you learn to never put your hand on a stove that is hot again. I am learning–by looking at my own patterns in love–that logic rarely comes into play when we make decisions about whom we will be in a relationship with. This may seem an oxymoron–to make a “decision” about love when it certainly feels like it is not a choice but an emotional by-product of chemistry. However, we do choose. We have patterns where we are comfortable, and without even realizing it we go right for the person whom will fit our pattern. Of course the opposite is true too, we reject those who do not fit this pattern.

Our pattern seeking love-making leads the boy with the controlling alcoholic mother to the girl who will control him and be out of control themselves. Our pattern seeking love-making will lead the girl to the boy who will present one face to the world and have a private rage that leads him to sexual betrayal, just like her father from before–at least that was once my story. These patterns are just that–patterns–not destiny. They are emotional habits that have to be broken in order to be free from them. These habits relate not just to the type of people we feel drawn to, but also those “old tapes” we play in our head. The tapes that say we are not good at relationships. The tapes that say we are unworthy of love. The tapes that say all men are hateful and irresponsible jerks. The tapes that say women are needy bitches. So how do we make new ones? I believe new habits cannot be formed until we face ourselves–not in judgment but in the twin lights of insight (psychological understanding) and epiphany (spirit/love understanding). In addressing the places we attempted to get our root needs met through unhealthy patterns and broken emotional neediness, we open ourselves to allowing unconditional love to flow in us, towards our very own hearts, and then towards others. The old ways set aside through hard intentionality. New mantras of love for our minds to use even when our heart’s old longings for brokenness attempt to get us in trouble.

Building new patterns may seem utterly impossible when we first start out. Not only to us, but also to those who we call friend. A dear friend of mine is just beginning this journey himself to re-write his heart patterns, and in so doing excise the Ghost of Relationships Past. His circle keeps encouraging him to sleep around a bit as the way to expedite this exorcism. I find this to be the relationship equivalent of when a couple looses a baby through miscarriage or still birth and are told by “loving” folks that they are young and can have another baby–as if another baby will “fix” the terrible grief of losing their child. In general, moving on seems to be our modus operandi, but we never really do move on if our patterns are any indication. What my friend’s inner circle fails to realize is most assuredly he will end up dating someone exactly like his ex. He will become involved with someone who will not only leave him devastated but also further sunken into his own fears that he is indeed unlovable. This is the main problem with these terrible patterns informed by the Ghost of Relationships Past–they reaffirm our worst fears about ourselves, our lives, and the impossibility of our dreams coming true.

I have this image of the Ghost of Relationships Past as an elephant chasing you down in the forest. The first instinct–the pattern–is to run away from the elephant. Your gut tells you, “If you do not run, it will kill you.” Really? I cannot believe running is the only choice we have. I believe in healing. Sometimes the only healing available requires facing down the elephant, killing it, and then eating it. The elephant–the pain of the past–must become part of who you are. Take in the lessons, and let the shit go. Otherwise, we will just be destined to be chased by those elephants the rest of our lives–they travel in herds after all. For me, that is one pattern I cannot afford to live within.

I know a great deal about these patterns because I am daily working daily to re-write my own. (Eating my own elephant, so to speak.) Out of compassion, I want to be close to those who are hurting. I also know that a smart lovely boy in the throws of pain will never be healthy enough to deserve my love or truly love me back, even as my heart strings might want to pull me in that direction. I learned the hard way–the very hard way–that you cannot make up for the pain inflicted by the Ghost of Relationship Past. He has to heal himself before you can be with him. Just as you must heal your own heart before he can be with you. Healing allows for true intimacy, the goal of all relationships. And healing–sweet beautiful healing–has one of the most amazing gifts to give us when we embrace it. Healing gives us the gift of freeing those Ghosts once and for all so we are free to love fully present in this moment.

Bon appetit!

Have you ever met someone and just had magic from the very beginning? I do not mean sexual chemistry, although sometimes it does go hand-in-hand. I am referring to meeting a Soul Mate. Someone who makes your soul sing and your spirit dance. It may only be for a short time that your lives are intertwined. I am thinking here of a patient of mine–another Jacqueline–whom I loved so very deeply from the moment we met. I do not believe there is just one Soul Mate for your life–I believe there are many. The hope is to meet all of them.

I met one of mine recently. My new friend inspired an almost instant love in me–”agape love”, as my friend so aptly put it. My friend literally is standing in the wood with the two roads branching off in vastly different directions. I suspect, if they go down the road that seems the most negotiable, they will eventually loop back to where they are now. My own heart hurts to think of all the dreams shattered or suspended in their life at present. My friend is earnestly trying to find the way while grieving “the way it is not any longer.” Given all their gifts of being so very bright, interesting, full of creativity and kindness, and a genuinely soul-full person, there is no doubt in my mind this person will develop their own meaningful road map and find their way home again–find their way to love again.

We spoke at length about the need to be 100% within yourself and not looking for your missing piece or feeling that you lacked anything. Obi Wan (the greatest Hippie therapist of all time) calls this “accepting yourself and accepting that you deserve love.” Acceptance does not require perfection in yourself or even the expectation of perfection in another. He likened it to two hands grasping, instead of trying to make a hand with bits and pieces of two broken ones. I love that image. I could not help by wonder: What if you were left with just two thumbs and a pinkie? Not much good could come of this amalgamation. No, you need two whole hands to get the work of life accomplished. Sure, there maybe a scar here or there. Maybe your hand hurts from time-to-time, for the rains will surely come. But you are a hand, a whole hand, at the ready for its mate.

Shel Silverstein put it this way:

I have a prayer for my dear friend now as they seek to find wholeness and life anew. A prayer to help as the painful process of smoothing those edges begins. My prayer is:

Know that although my support is silent it sings endlessly in the quiet to you. I will sing out to the heavens and to the earth and to the ocean between us gentle prayers of hope for your life. I will mix into the currents a balm to tend to your wounds. I send on the wind a whisper, “You will make it. You will heal. You will be whole.” I will pray that the rain washes away your rage–leeching it away one drop at a time from your being. I will send people from near and far to your door seeking out your compassionate company. May they teach you just as you teach them. I will tell the birds here to pass it to their friends a message that your heart is broken so their insistent song will find you and stitch it back together not unlike Cinderella’s dress. May you be clothed with righteousness and fidelity towards all you hold dear and believe. May you know yourself in a way you never did before and find grace and opportunity in this new understanding. May you find peace.

Amen.

Food and I dance delicately with one another. I work hard to eat healthy, but I also know the times when the planet tilts swiftly beneath me and my emotions cry out for comfort food. My Deserted Island Menu of three items has remained steady throughout the years: broccoli, mac & cheese, and mint chip ice cream. I still eat broccoli almost everyday, but I limit the other two to the “rarely” column. Long gone are the days where cheese is the centerpiece and not a condiment. Now, eating mint chip makes me take a good long look at my emotions and what stress I seek to avoid. Yet, a girl’s gotta eat!

I work with someone who can (miraculously) eat egg whites and an apple for breakfast, a frozen piece of chicken with salsa and frozen brussel sprouts for lunch, and NEVER complain (she does heat the frozen parts). Not me. I can eat the same yummy food day-after-day, but it needs to be homemade. I prefer not to eat Chicken Catchatorie with a side dish of regret, so I work to limit fat, sugar, white flour, and eating out. However, I do leave room for small squares of dark chocolate or Whip ‘N Dip, where a girl can get Light Cream to satisfy the ice cream craving without a shred of guilt. Never being a big fan of meat really comes in handy when one wants to eat healthy. I used to be a vegetarian, and I am back to chicken as my only meat source again. I work out with a trainer these days–”Cupcake” (so named because he has replaced the cupcakes in my life)–so I REALLY do not want to eat something to undo the hard work I do whilst I pay him to torture me for two hours a week!

So, a girl’s gotta eat and gotta eat good and gotta eat good and healthy!

Fortunately, I love to cook. I love knowing I made something not only scrumptious but also good for me and those I feed. (You know who you are!) I love how food binds us together. Conversation flows more easily around a big bowl of chili. Love is folded into freshly baked bread. Illness is soothed. Fear is quieted. Connections made. I think this is why Jesus (and any good Jewish mother!) centered so much of his ministry around the table. You cannot break bread with an enemy without the enemy being transformed into a companion, if not friend. Family is created at the dining room table. Wounds healed.

Here are two of my own favourite recipes–one is my own, the other an adaptation–to make some truly yummy comfort food and food that is good for you:

Chicken Tortilla Soup

You are going to be a bit scared when first reading this, but once you make it you will see how simple it is. I promise. I felt the same way the first time I read Heidi’s site with the pizza dough recipe, but after doing it once I don’t even need to look at it again unless I need a reminder of portion size. That simple once you know it, but daunting the first read. Keep that in mind here too:

• 2 whole chicken breasts, boneless and skinless, split and cleaned up with no fat.
• 2 yellow onions
• 2 green peppers
• bunch of cilantro, trimming off lower half of the stem end, and then cutting the group in half, to reserve the top part for the soup itself
• fresh garlic cloves (Note: I like at least 10 in the soup, and another 6 or so for the chicken.)
• sea salt or kosher salt
• pepper corns
• 2 T oregano
• fresh ripe red tomatoes (Note: I use at least 3 large fresh tomatoes, but more depending on what is in season and looks good. You can make this with only fresh tomatoes, or you can use only canned. This is really a seasonal issue. I prefer Roma tomatoes, but they did not look spectacular at the store this last go around. Instead I used 3 beautiful garden tomatoes with 26 oz of organic strained tomatoes.)
• 26 - 52 oz chopped tomatoes, if needed
• 1-2 yellow, orange or red bell peppers
• 4-8 jalapeños, depending on preferred hotness
• 2 Serrano peppers
• 4 Cups of chicken stock (Note: I prefer Pacific Organic Chicken Broth to all other store bought brands, although I find using the chicken stock from the chicken will work great too.)
• 1 T cornstarch
• 2 limes

The Chicken: To make the most delicious chicken that shreds the moment you touch it and is succulent in this soup…or enchiladas, tacos, etc. you must endure a three hour process. That is the bad news. The good news? This is less than 15 minutes of prep and a 5 minute finish. (Good soup making and laundry go hand-in-hand.) I try and always do four whole breasts, (double the above amount) and freeze the other half at the end, without shredding.

1. Put the chicken in a large soup pot (the same one you will use later) with the lower half of the trimmed cilantro, one roughly chopped onion and one green pepper, smashed garlic cloves, the oregano, some sea salt and a good tablespoon of peppercorns.
2. Add enough water to cover with a half inch of water, and simmer over medium low heat for three hours. Add more water if needed.
3. Take out the chicken, to be shredded for the soup.
4. Strain liquid through a sieve lined with a coffee filter, which will keep out the oregano from the broth.
5. Reserve broth.

The Soup: This recipe started when I made some enchiladas in Chicago with fresh homemade salsa to accompany it. I had the left overs in my kitchen and thought about how much I love Tortilla Soup. In short, you make homemade salsa, but just puree it instead of the rough chop homemade salsa usually requires.

1. Place in two batches the tomatoes, peppers, garlic, onion and cilantro into the bowl of your food processor and puree. (Note: You will need to split the tomatoes over both batches because the water content in them helps keep the food processor working smoothly.)
2. Add to clean soup pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat.
3. Add shredded chicken and broth. Simmer until it turns a deep brownish red.
4. Add cornstarch to 1/4 C cool water, and put slurry into soup.
5. Finish with fresh lime juice and sea salt to taste.
6. Makes 8 servings

You may wonder where the tortillas are. I skip them in order to have the corn muffins below. My favourite store bought brand is FoodShouldTasteGood’s Multi-grain tortilla chip/cracker things. Simply perfect!
Here is the nutritional information, based on the above ingredients put into My Food Diary’s recipe builder:

Corn Muffins

If you love to cook, Heidi Swanson’s amazing site 101 Cookbooks is for you. Everything I try from her recipe trove proves perfect. The pizza dough IS the best, and how I found her site to begin with. I made the Cottage Cheese Muffins, from Rose Elliot, twice now with great success the second go-around by eliminating the salt. (The first batch were too salty given the saltiness of the sun-dried tomatoes.) I use almond flour (Bob’s Red Mill) in lieu of doing my own almonds, which give these muffins a texture not unlike a good corn muffin. Being Southern, I love a good sweet cornbread reminiscent of Jiffy. I thought I could adapt the Cottage Cheese Muffins to be yummy high protein, lower carb versions of my favourite corn muffins. The results were AMAZING!

• 1 C low fat cottage cheese
• 4 whole eggs, or equivalent egg substitute
• 2 T blue agave (in lieu of sugar for those diabetic, like me–can be found at Whole Foods)
• 1 T canola oil
• 1/2 C cornmeal
• 1/4 C soy flour
• 1/4 almond flour
• 1 t sea salt
• 1 t baking powder
• 1/4 t cayenne pepper (more if you like)
• 2 ears of fresh corn cut right off the ear and uncooked

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Line muffin tin with cupcake liners or spray with oil and dust with flour.
3. Whisk together all of the wet ingredients. (I find the whisking helps the cottage cheese to become incorporated.)
4. Then add the dry ingredients until fully incorporated. (You could stir the dry ingredients first, but I just go for it!)
5. Fold in the corn.
6. Fill cups and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. (I added a tablespoon of lower fat cheddar to the tops for the last half of the baking. Amazing!)
7. Makes 8 servings.

Here is the nutritional info if made with egg substitute:

Big. HUGE. Announcement:

It is official: I am in the Urban Dictionary for “Tribble Factor” from my post Tank Top Wearing Man Candy. I can die a happy woman now knowing my legacy will live on after me. No, not a child. No, not the work I do with those sick and in a crisis and their families. No, not for leading the world toward peace (every Beauty Queen’s deepest desire, of course it might have helped if I was actually a Beauty Queen). No, the thing that has guaranteed me imortality is getting this into the Urban Dictionary. See!

You can go out to my definition by clicking here, and be sure to give it a “Thumbs Up!”

We live in an age where we are supposed to be confident, have a positive self esteem, and know our gifts. We are also supposed to not be too confident, too braggadocios, or feel we are better than anyone else at something—even if we are. The Greeks were concerned with “hubris” or pride, but hubris always was more about causing harm to another than being realistic about one’s own abilities. If I say that I am good at something, is that done to shame or humiliate you? Even if I say I am better at something? For instance, I am very good at spacial relationships, color, and home design. I decorate my own space in a way that fits who I am. I do not expect anyone else to do it the same way. When consulted on someone else’s design project, I try to offer suggestions in keeping with their tastes…a kind of expert opinion. My opinion is not offered to belittle or threaten, only to guide and support.

We all need expertise. Seeking out an expert requires four things: 1) An acknowledgment that we do not possess the ability or knowledge to complete a process or project; 2) An understanding someone else does possess the ability or knowledge we lack; 3) A willingness to seek out someone else to help with this process or project; and 4) To place our trust in that person to provide the help needed so our main goal—completing the process or project—is met. A simple analogy would be seeking out a car mechanic to fix a broken automobile. But what about more complicated processes, like finding the right doctor when you have been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer? Do you just go to any oncologist? Probably not. At minimum, you seek the opinions of others to find out who specializes in treating the cancer you have. If at all possible, you will travel to where “the best” specialist practices. Why? Because we all understand that even within the realm of “expertise” there are “experts.”

However, sometimes we do not seek out expert help even when we need it most. Why? I think we are often afraid of our limitations, and admitting we need help in some manner means admitting there are areas we do not possess the power we want to have over our lives. I once dated a guy who refused mid-panic attack, to go to a doctor or seek out counseling. Why? The answer given was something along the lines of, “I just don’t do that.” This same guy would call Katmandu if it meant being put in-touch with an expert regarding something he was interested in and needed help with because this type of expert help did not seem like an affront to his masculinity or a threat to the ways he had always “done” his life. Therapy, on the other hand, did feel threatening. He was himself an expert at something, and he relished being able to teach that expertise to others. In fact, he was quite good at it. Yet he would not consider that the inner workings of his being needed some expert attention.

Pride going before the fall?

On the one hand, we have harmful hubris where we try to belittle someone for not being the same as us in some fundamental way we consider paramount to our sense of having a worthwhile existence. On the other hand, we allow our own sense of self-protection to get in the way of accepting the very help we need the most. Pride, self-confidence, hubris, need, problems, and just plain old stupidity make for an awful mess. I am left wondering how to make sense of myself—especially the things I am good at—without needing to add the caveats of the things I am bad at. For instance, “I am really good at understanding where a person is coming from when they describe a problem to me, but I am not good at parking my car straight!” These two things have nothing to do with one another, yet I find myself smooshing them up close when identifying the areas of my greatest strengths. Somehow—in the name of not being too prideful—we feel the social pressure to always add the caveat of “but.”

One night, Pixie and I were talking about relationships. She kept encouraging me that when it comes to being open and revealing myself as a part of intimacy, I did the “right thing” in past relationships. She also used her famous line of: “You are the prize. You deserve to be won.” In other words, Pixie loves me and thinks I am a great girl. I got caught up in our conversation and began to list my gifts and strengths. At one point, she laughed and said, “Yeah…those, and humble too.” I know she meant no harm whatsoever, but the point is clear from a social construct standpoint; you need to believe in yourself, but only to a point. After you reach that point, you enter the world of bragging and need to be brought back to “reality.”

Really?

I often am told that I am intimidating. I am good at a great deal of things. (This is where I would now normally enter all the other things I am not good at, but in an exercise of restraint I am resisting—painfully.) I feel like one of my greatest strengths is playing to people’s gifts. I try and focus on the good stuff. In areas I wish someone would “grow the fuck up,” if I see even one little improvement, I will bless it up and down as good. I figure that complimenting the goodness and ignoring the ickiness goes a long way. I know I receive this back from others too. So why then am I intimidating?

I think one reason is that I just go for the truth no matter what. I am willing to say the hard stuff—almost never to hurt and almost always to heal. I feel so much of my life was lived in a dungeon of fear and lies that I cannot imagine perpetuating those things in my here-and-now. My truth does include the areas where I have some growing edges, but on the whole I am very happy with the woman I am in the world. I am proud of my willingness to grow, change, accept help, invest in others, and care with a sense of radical welcome. I am a neat person, and I do not want to lord that over anyone, or deny my beauty at the altar of social graces.

One of my Clinical Pastoral Education supervisors told me she felt my greatest challenge was to accept being “extraordinary.” My current journey has brought me back to this challenge. In looking back at the extraordinary seven year-old within and the creativity and gumption she utilized to survive, I find myself embracing my own gifts in a new way. I am also working to resist the social urge to offer up disclaimers or stories of “imperfection.” Not because I seek to be perfect–I do not. I only want to fully accept the extraordinary woman within and let go of the fear of being great because it might bring further isolation.

Here is my favourite quote from Marianne Williamson:

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Here are my favourite things about me; humility not included:

• Kindness
• Compassion
• Understanding
• Creativity—both with colour and design and with problem solving
• Ability to forgive and forget
• Ability to change
• Ability to move on after great pain
• Scrappy
• A survivor
• Good cook
• Good listener
• Good story teller
• Will go out of my way for a friend
• Tenacious
• Smart—scary smart
• Ingenious
• Loving
• Generous, even when it hurts sometimes
• Not just focused on myself and what I want or what is convenient for me
• Quick learner
• Not afraid to get hurt—most of the time
• Patient
• Take the long view
• Have gumption
• Tell the truth
• Wicked funny, but not mean spirited
• Curious
• Open
• Liberal
• Willing to learn/be taught
• I get “it”
• Cool in my own book nerd way
• Pretty
• Emotionally honest
• I set goals and follow-through
• Willing to seek out help and take advice from others
• Trust my inner voice
• Athletic
• Able to walk out to the precipices of life with people
• Sexy
• A good and honest writer
• An excellent public speaker
• Able to meet people where they are
• An excellent hugger, but an even better kisser—among other things I am creative at
• Well read
• Stellar vocabulary
• Analytical
• Reasonable
• Logical
• Sweet
• Not afraid of sacrifice
• Willing to laugh at myself

What are yours?

This little piece is what I presented to my congregation March 30, 2008 for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Please check out the American Cancer Society and the Colon Cancer Alliance’s websites for additional information on this “Preventable. Treatable. Beatable.” disease.

Good morning.

The purpose of my coming before you today is threefold:
1. To help engage your imaginations about the ministry I am a part of on your behalf working with those who suspect they have or who do have Colorectal Cancer. I began in January after leaving my work as a hospice chaplain.
2. To talk to you about the importance of routine screenings for colorectal cancer, given March has been Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.
3. And thirdly, to keep my promise to Pastor Laurie to not talk about the poop too much! Of course numbers one and two are all about the poop!

You know, talking about the poop is what makes being in this church—and in our denomination—unique and special. We try to face our fears when it comes to the tough stuff. I grew up in churches where women were told to deny the call of God on their hears just because of their gender. Yet Congregationalist woman Antoinette Brown was ordained by her congregation in 1853. I stand before you today talking to you as a woman minister because of the witness of this congregation in my life these last 13 years of my membership. I am here because of our willingness to come and reason together about what the faithful life entails for our whole person, and because of our covenant together to support one another when the poop hits the fan!

And at some point, it always does.

My work puts me in contact with people from all over the country dealing with the messiness of life.  Some may call me with simple questions about screening, while others face terribly hard dilemmas about the efficacy of continuing treatment when the colorectal cancer is devouring their liver, their lungs, their body. I counsel people about where God is in their suffering. I hold their story as sacred, even as they struggle to understand how Cancer came to their door. I guide. I educate. I listen. And every single day I stand at the threshold of our failed medical system, and often out of compassion school people without insurance or means on ways to work the system to get screening or treatment. Even as I stand here today, I fear my message will strike a chord in someone who needs to be screened but cannot afford it. “Here, at Coral Gables Congregational Church?” you might ask. For at least six years of my membership here I was one of the millions of Americans living without health insurance. Did you know me then? “So, yes. Even here.”

When we are willing to talk about the poop, we are willing to acknowledge that it is not a problem someone else has “over there” that we might sweep in on our white horses and save them from, but instead we acknowledge that it is right here in our midst. Or as the bestselling children’s book by Taro Gomi points out, “Everyone poops.” And because of that, each one of us here is at risk of developing this terrible disease. That is the bad news, but the good news is that with routine screening—starting at the age of 45 if you are African American or age 50 for everyone else of normal risk—colon cancer can be found before it is—well, cancer. Getting your routine colonoscopy every ten years does not just tell you if you have cancer, but can actually be both preventative and curative if you have polyps or one of the early stages of this disease. Even though colorectal cancer grows slowly, getting it out early helps to ensure that it does not have any time to pierce the wall of the colon and spread, which is most often fatal.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer related deaths among men and women combined—only lung cancer beats it. Yet the only way we see a decrease in deaths is due to screenings. Why don’t people want to get screened? Fear. Dave Barry summarized this fear in a recent essay as, “You don’t want a doctor to stick a tube 17,000 feet up your butt.” And for him, it was only when his younger brother—who did not put off getting screened at 50 like he did—announced that he had colon cancer that Dave finally went to be screened. As Dave pointed out: What if his brother had put it off like he did?  Sadly, he most likely would have had a terminal version of the disease.

The beauty of our faith and our faith community is that we come together to grow to be whole people of God. Whole people. God is still speaking to us, my brothers and sisters, in our day and age with our advances in being able to help prevent this disease. The number one commandment in the Bible—said over 60 times in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures—is, “Do not fear.” So I tell you today the same thing, “Do not fear the poop! God will be with you!”

And I will be in Fellowship Hall after the service with brochures and to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you.

February 28th is my “Reverse Day!” Instead of celebrating the Anniversary of my 28th Birthday, as I have for the last eight years, I am just going to go back this year. So, I am now 35 and have some of my memory back too! I loved being 35, so I think it suits me well! Here are some fun things that I love in honor of my Reverse Day:

Let us begin our gift giving with buying the art work of Philip Brooker. Why? I love how his work is grounded in story and yet some how transcends words with its provocative nature and beauty. I also believe he will be a household name in a year–think of it as a very good investment. You can see his illustrations at www.anicecupoft.com, and be sure to watch the little movie he made starring them.

Doesn’t this photo Barry Lewis took of him just make you smile?

If you can stay seated and listen to TTC’s “Travailler Orgasmic Mix” you must be paralyzed! I am not sure I would have a clue what they are talking about even if my French was better, but DAMN I love this song!

Speaking of things to just out and out love…

I have a major girl crush on Tina Fey. Did you catch this?

Don’t be a hater–I still love me some Obama–but Tina is the SHIT!

I so lust for this bike:

Strong enough for a boy, but made for an ass kickin MTB WOMAN!

Check out hi+lomodern A VINTAGE MODERN DESIGN STORE for some amazing 20th Century artifacts. I love Vera napkins and am always tearing through garage sales and thrift stores looking for them. This poster they have of her work exemplifies the simplicity, bold use of color, and strong lines she is known for:

This ring rocks too:

I cannot tell you how many people have commented when I wore these earrings from Lord & Taylor:

(I gave my pair to a special friend–so Mom…looking for a cool gift for me?)

I love beautiful stationary, and my home town of Coral Gables is sporting one fab store to fall in-love with–Paper and Concept. They have modern, clean stationary, with totally funky touches. I am not one for too much frill or flowers, so I embrace the simplicity of what they selected. I bought these amazing stock fold-over cards and made my own custom seals. I have a yellow fetish at the moment, and the yellow seal I did is so cool I do not want to put it in the mail! If you get it, it is only because I trust your sense of style and know you will appreciate getting it from me! You have to go in person to have the Paper and Concept experience, but their site does give you some of the flavour.

And of course my old standby favourite neighbourhood bookshop–Books and Books.

This is a great place to buy some of my favourite books of all time:

A Wrinkle In Time

Bel Canto

The Time Traveler’s Wife

Here If You Need Me

Honey I Love

Blessing the Boats

And what Reverse Day would be complete without some classic music?

From the Beatles:

And from Queen:

My friend Pixie and I recently began a series of conversations about yummy older men we know. She takes her son to a sexy sixty-something therapist who projects confidence, knowledge and humor in such a way Pixie is more than a tad mesmerized. I have The Scoundrel, amongst others. We agree these men project a kind of allure younger men just do not possess; but why? What makes these men so interesting and intriguing to two thirty-something young women who normally date men YOUNGER than they are?

Now the simple answer might be: You girls have Father issues! I agree we need to consider this possibility, but for myself I reject this explanation. For one thing, spending $100,000 on therapy dealt with the vast majority of my issues. For another, I have been blessed by having a whole series of lovely men serve as mentors to my life in one way or another: Steve Gilchrist, Kirk Whiteside, Tommy Russell, Dennis Nason, Joe Holland, Joe Moran, Raymond Hargrove, Richard Congdon and Bill Koch…to name a few. These men filled the gaps the death of my father and the arrival of John created for me. At all the points in my growing up excellent role models of what it meant to be a man of integrity met me where I was and nurtured me. For me, I reject the idea of my attraction to an older man being equated to unfulfilled Father needs; Pixie will need to speak for herself!

I must admit how surprised I am to find older men so deeply attractive at this juncture of my life, for I have coveted younger men. Feeling I arrived at the Party of Life so late, I really felt owed a younger man with whom I could build the life I thought I might want with the “right person.” I wanted my chance at bat without the already told stories of ex-wives, children, or dreams broken. I wanted my own love story no one else ever had, and I felt I deserved it because of everything I went through to even get to the Party of Life at all. I can remember when I first started dating The Bean feeling like all the shit of the past was somehow more bearable because the path finally revealed a boy who was excited about who I was in the world and who did not seem intimidated by me or my gifts. Appearances were misleading in that regards, but it did fulfill a fantasy of a sort…for a time. In retrospect, I realize his presence also revealed a deep need in me–namely my desire to be with someone who is excited about who I am and what I bring to the world. I also want to feel that way about him.

I think part of why I never thought much about men older than me relates to my mother marrying someone 19 years her senior–twice! In fact, her current husband is her youngest one ever at just 16 years older. I saw a beautiful 39 year-old woman bury her husband, and Daddy being older played a role in his death. My half sisters had him into their twenties. I could not help but think if Mother had married someone younger I would not have lost my Dad at six. I just could never understand what she found so damn attractive in him when she was 32 and he was 51. I did not understand until Maria’s funeral.

At Maria’s funeral, her husband spoke. His eulogy marked her life and his own. He made the comment: “Forty years ago I can remember being a young man and wondering what my life would be–how it would turn out. Now most of life’s questions have been answered…” In that one moment, I got it. I understood how Daddy offered Mother a man who was not lost or searching to figure out who he was in the world. He offered her a man who possessed self assurance and was settled. He had already become. Mother, at 32, also had already become. She had her own money, a career to be proud of, position, clout, and most importantly, Mother knew exactly who she was.

Pixie and I have been dating all these boys who whine and moan about not knowing what they want to be when they finally grow up. When exactly that will be, we really do not know. I read that adolescence has been extended way past where Evolution would place it because of all of our modern luxuries, and I must say I believe this to be true. How many men do I meet who are in their late twenties or thirties who still have no idea who they are, what they want to contribute to the good of the world, or what passion lights their fire? I know plenty of men who have no idea where they stand on any number of issues–other than a cursory “yes” or “no”–and I know plenty of men more than willing to highlight all of the problems in others or in the world but never willing to do one damn thing about any of it or the shit in their own lives! These same men seem to always meet women not up to their standards, calling many of the women they meet “irrational, emotional, crazy bitches.” And–here is the real kicker–they would rather be with the “crazy bitch” who tells them exactly who they are than be with the woman who wants to know them and delight in their dreams for their life coming true!

I cannot help but wonder: Is it wrong to want to be with a man who does not call his friends a “pussy” when they do not “man-up” and do something the Boy-Code demands? Is it wrong to want to be with a man who wants to spend time cozying up to your pussy, but who also does not think you are just a piece of ass? Is is wrong to want to be with a man who can handle listening to your perspective without needing to call you a cunt behind your back when you are right and he is wrong? Is it wrong to want to be with a man who admires you and in whom you can be proud?

No.

But why does it seem these men only come in older packages these days?

I do believe there is such a thing as too old. The widower of a former patient who is in his eighties likes to tell me how he is in love with me and invites me to live in his home. Silly me, but I do not think it is real love. I think he just needs someone to empty his urinal! He keeps saying to me, “Age is only a number.” Yes; if you are an older man and win the Evolutionary Lottery and have a younger woman interested in you. But when she rejects you because you are too old, it is because age is the only number that counts. As I asked my friend Stepford, “Is there such a thing as too young for an older man?” Probably not. But there is such a thing as too old for us younger girls. Pixie and I will keep up the debate about the age threshold, and keep admiring those yummy older men we know. How could we not? They are self-assured sexy personified!

My Dear Faithful Reader,

We have come to the first anniversary of my blog. First of all, thank you so very much for the affirmation of reading my blog (some of you more than my own Mama!) and sharing with me the places my writing touched you and your story. I must say I am rather surprised by all of this! What started as a way to post photos of my then six week-old puppy Emma–who was still living with her Birth Mother at the time–transformed into something I never expected. I grieved the loss of a meaningful relationship. I worked through much of what it meant for me to work as a hospice chaplain. I highlighted the hilarities of my dating life. And, most importantly, I educated you on men in tank tops!

Given Top Ten Lists are so passe I say, “Nine is Fine!” Here are my favourite nine posts from this last year:

9. I Heart Atheists! This post is dedicated to my patient “Hank,” of whom I wrote. I am glad he is no longer struggling to breathe or to find love.

8. Posting My Big Secret This post received the most private email because people were worried about me. In many ways it was the hardest to write. I reveled an important secret, and in so doing found a way to tell my closest and dearest just how much despair (my definition of anti-hope) I felt following the break-up. This post continues to have meaning for me due to my continuing love of Post Secret, and because I hope by exposing my pain–even as a minister–others fearing the only way through is out might feel comforted.

7. I’m Coming Out: Jesus Know About My Vibrator The year’s most embarrassing and second funniest post. I still cringe when people ask me for my website address thinking about them reading this particular post. Of course this is exactly why it is on this list–I am a glutton for embarrassing myself on this blog with the bitter truth. For the record–and thankfully–I have had sex since I wrote this post! (Once.)

6. The Whispering God Where is God when bad things happen to good people? In part, this post contains my answer to this question and my own thinking about God’s intervention–and lack there of–in our lives.

5. 40 Reasons I Make A Great Girlfriend (and her evil twin 40 Reason I Will Drive You Crazy & Am Not Perfect) This was so much fun, and I met my friend in Austria through putting up the “Great Girlfriend” list on craigslist.

4. A Rose Garden Relationship I continue to think about what I wrote in this post. If there is such a thing as your own writing being a gift to you, it would be this post. I feel it helped me clarify what relationship values continue to remain important to me and also what I ultimately have to offer all of my relationships, including the one I have with myself.

3. You Play, You Pay This post about my prayer for my Aunt Charlyne to come to terms with her cancer and still remains at the forefront of my thinking about her. She finished her second round of chemo, and she will find out next week the results of her latest PET scan. She told us at Christmas she feels the cancer is spreading.  All my work with patients has taught me our bodies tell us the truth–even long before the tests and doctors do–so I cannot help but wonder if hers is telling her a truth now. I do not know what will happen with her body, but I know she will be surrounded by love regardless of the outcome. This is what matters most.

2. Tank Top Wearing Man Candy? The single funniest thing I have ever written! I cannot see a man in a tank top without thinking: “Baby, if you only knew how I felt about THAT!” If you love it too, please go out to Urban Dictionary and suggest “The Tribble Factor” for a word/definition.

1. The Mango Tree My homage to my father and the continuing bonds of love death cannot separate us from and how these bonds continue to inform our present and propel us into our future.

Here is to a wonderful Year Two!

The first time I can ever remember feeling that I loved someone just because they existed and because of who they were to me was when I was three and thought the preacher’s son was just soooo cute. He came to my fourth birthday party, and I knew it was love. The kind of love I practiced with my Barbie and Ken or between Snoopy and every other toy I possessed. He played the Toilet Paper Mummy Game with me, lurking quietly most of the time. In retrospect, the boy had to have hated being forced to go to some younger girl’s party. I was oblivious to this, and only thought he was soooo perfect to marry one day. I cried the day his father announced they were leaving the church. I only saw him one more time–on a visit back to Miami when I was in the eighth grade. I felt relieved that the love one feels at four can be gotten out of at 14! My first love–who never really knew I or my love existed–morphed into a jerk in a military school uniform! What was I thinking?

me at four

Falling in-love and wondering “What was I thinking?” seem to go hand-in-hand sometimes. We humans spend vast quantities of time, money and attention trying to sort out just why it is we fall in-love. Whole forests have given their lives for this exercise…with us waxing poetic, writing and re-writing love letters, and making music for some love who just has to know how we feel about them or feel about their departure from our lives. Whole blogs too! (But I am not naming any names here…gotta have some self-respect!) Yet we still seem at such a loss. Why is it after all these years we still don’t have a clue? Maybe it is because Evolution is such a slow and painstaking process? Or maybe we really do not want to know–it would ruin it for everyone!?

My friend Paulina Ballerina differs from me greatly when it comes to love. She believes that you fall in-love first, and then over time you may find the person worthy of your deep true love. She has been with her current beau for almost two years, and she readily admits she is “in-love” with him. She also says she could love him, but she does not–yet. After two years? I find her position amazing and a bit ludicrous as well. No wonder I am her opposite. I tend to love first, and then if I really love someone and trust them I may begin to allow myself the luxury of falling in-love as well. In my relationships of any sort, I love easily. I look to the good in those around me and value who they are right from the start. “Love” seems the only word fitting for what I see in them and cherish. Opening up my heart to fall in-love, well…that is a whole other matter. For me, falling in-love is a byproduct of trust and quite honestly I never have been in-love.

I find no small measure of shame mentioning this given my age–36–and general sense that I am in fact not the kind of girl boys like, let alone fall for. Dave The Porn Guy (don’t even get me started on how the minister knows the porn producer) put it to me this way: “Just cause a girl is a ten in the categories of personality, intelligence, generosity and success, does not mean she will find a man. She has to be at least a seven in the looks category to get a man of equal or greater value. So, if you are a one or a two in the looks category, and you are a ten in the other areas, you have three choices–1) Give up on finding a man who is your equal emotionally and intellectually. Those guys can get any girl they want because women do not put the same emphasis on looks and so even if they are butt ugly they can land an all-around 10; 2) Become a lesbian; or 3) Go for the loser who works at McDonald’s and who feels grateful to land any girl, even one smarter, who makes more money, and who has a better background than he does. He is a one and won’t balk at dating a one.”

So falling in-love has to do with being a one versus a ten, instead of being “the one?”

I do not agree with all of Dave The Porn Guy’s assessment of the situation–consider the source after all. The guy left his PhD program to make porn, find easy “hott” ass, and avoid depth at all costs. He also refuses to be with the woman he calls the “love of [his] life” out of what seems to amount to just old fashioned fear. However, Dave The Porn Guy did hit a nerve with me reminiscent of how I felt about myself when I was three and four. Even at that young age I felt embarrassed by my feelings. I also felt out-of-control. The little boy did not like me, and I had all these feelings for him. How could I feel something for someone and they not feel it back? These feelings left me vulnerable to ridicule and to others having power over me. How easily my little girl friends could shame me with a few teasing comments! Somehow I equated this vulnerability to my not being worthy of him–or anyone else for that matter–falling in-love with me. Listening to Dave The Porn Guy punch me in every soft underbelly spot of fear I have posses woke me up a bit. Maybe no one ever falls in-love with me because I walk around certain they never could?

No wonder I look for all the good in someone and have to trust them deeply before I can ever even ponder falling in-love with them…it is just too risky otherwise.

Just like any good Beauty Pageant Contestant, I want peace on Earth.

Here are some of my favourite readings and quotes about Peace:

From Peace Pilgrim:

This is the way of peace: overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.

Let There Be Peace On Earth

words by Jill Jackson and Sy Miller

Let there be peace on earth,
and let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on Earth,
the peace that was meant to be.
With God as our Father,
brothers all are we,
Let me walk with my brother,
in perfect harmony.
Let peace begin with me,
let this be the moment now.
With every step I take,
let this be my solemn vow,
To take each moment and live each moment
in peace, eternally.
Let there be Peace on Earth,
and let it begin with me.

Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it–always.

Peace Prayer

by St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred,Let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, Joy.

O Divine Master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

From His Holiness the Dali Lama:

I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one’s own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.

When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.

Howard Nemerov, the poet:

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.

The Buddha:

Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.

Jesus:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

I wrote the following piece for my company’s bi-annual Memorial Gathering to honor those who have died with our hospice. The theme for this season’s services is “The Light of Love.” The first section focuses on “The Light of Remembrance,” which inspires the piece.

In the summer of 1977 my father died. I remember the day as being rainy and very cold, but in reality it was a hot and humid Florida summer day. I guess my little girl mind was so overcome with grief that the only way to describe a day when you lose someone you desperately love is to think of it as being cold and dreary with dark clouds crying. That is the funny thing about remembering the past—we are always looking back at it through a particular lens. I saw that day through the lens of pain and loss for so long that the day itself became transformed to match the feelings.

I also look back and remember holding Daddy’s hand, as he and Mother would lift me up over the curb, swinging me back and forth. I remember seeing his arms outstretched to me, as I would scoot down the high slide at the park by his office. I remember the look on his face when he opened my door to find Kelly Grey and I sitting on the red carpet with the pink ceramic pig smashed into a million pieces.

Kelly lived just six houses from mine, and we were born exactly three weeks apart. We would walk the grass of our neighbour’s front lawns to get to one another’s homes safely. Our parents had taught us to do this, so we were full of four-year old confidence. Somehow we decided this particular day that she would come to my house, but we neglected to ask my napping Mother—out of kindness, of course. As we sat in my room, she asked me how much money was in the pig. We decided to count the money, but alas the pig did not have an opening on the bottom, and the small slot on top did not send the money back to us when we shook it. I offered to go and fetch my tiny hammer from the garage. Daddy bought it for me, so I could “help” him with his household “Honey-Do-Lists.” I marched out to the garage where he was working at his tool bench, took down the hammer, and replied to his inquiry about needing any help with a simple “no thanks.”

Daddy had not had a four-year old in the house in over sixteen years, so it took an extra moment for him to comprehend that there was no need for me to have the hammer that would be qualified as “good”—which also proved to be just enough time for Kelly and I to smash the pig to smithereens. So there we sat on the floor of my bedroom with one dead ceramic pig, one hammer, countless change, and one Daddy staring down at us saying, “What in the world!? Kelly, where did you come from? Does your Mother know she is here?” He had that look I knew as meaning I was in T.R.O.U.B.L.E. He also had the mischievous smirk around his eyes of appreciating my ingenuity. He would know…I got my ingenious and mischievous nature from him!

You may wonder how it is that I remember all these little details of my ever too brief six years with Daddy. The answer comes from my Mother, who never shied away from talking about him and from keeping the light of remembrance stoked within me. She would ask me, “Do you remember when we met Daddy for lunch?” or “Do you remember going on the boat and catching your first fish at the marina?” She kept the memories alive—she kept Daddy alive—even when it must have cut her heart to a million pieces to have to do so. I know she wanted to go to bed and never get up because her heart was so full of agony and loss. My Grandmother had to take her in hand and tell her to get up because I needed her. Being a widow herself, she also promised my mother that she would stop crying all the time—“eventually.”

I am sure Mother wanted to forget sometimes—to forget all the love, laughter, happiness, touch and connection she had with him—because the forgetting might make the pain less. Instead, she held onto my Grandmother’s promise that “eventually” the pain would lessen, “eventually” she would not be crying all the time, and “eventually” she would invest in her own life again. In holding onto that promise, she kept Daddy’s love alive for me by reinforcing all of my memories of him.

Now when we talk of Daddy, we light up with the remembering. He is ever close, ever dear, ever loved. When I drive her nuts by announcing just exactly how we will be going about accomplishing a particular task—step-by-painful-step where she is merely an extra pair of hands—she shakes her head and says, “Just like your father…you are just like your father.” When I tease her or say something terribly funny she says, “Just like your father.” In fact, it has become quite the joke between us. Mother will compliment me on something and I will with deadpan delivery tell her, “Well you know, I get that from Daddy.“ She just shakes her head and laughs! When we are with other people and they comment on how bright I am, we look at each other, giggle and chime together, “She gets that from her father!” We both know how much her love and care for me has shaped me, but in those little moments we bring forward into our lives right now the love, humor and intelligence of a man who has been dead over thirty years. We keep him alive within us, which makes him a real person to even those who never had the honor of meeting him.

Remembering the one you love who has died is a precious flame within you, but you may at times be afraid that it will burn you. I want to encourage you today that the light of remembrance can only illuminate your life and warm your soul. I know because eventually that is what the light of remembering my own lost loves has become.

My friend Pixie broke up with the guy she was seeing. She is in her early thirties and has two teenage boys, whereas he has no children and is in his late twenties. She knows who she is; he is still defining himself. She is in-touch with her body, mind, emotions and spirit. He knows his mind, but the rest of him has a way of getting away from him or being completely stuffed down or ignored. She opens up under stress and blooms into being her best self. When the trial or tribulation passes–as they always do–she feels the pride and the exhaustion. She knows she has it in her to weather whatever storms come her way. She is a survivor. She knows when she must retreat into a haven of love, friendship and rest. She knows that if she does not nurture her soul, no one else will. He…well, he sees stress as something to be avoided at all costs. He runs into a den of silence and retreats from the difficult emotions–in others and in himself.

After Paul, our friend and co-worker’s husband, was murdered Pixie turned to the guy she was dating. She was upset. Her heart broke for Teri, and she worked hard to support those of us in the epicenter of this nuclear holocaust of violence, loss, unanswerable questions, and grief. She sat with me the night he was killed at dinner, and drove me home after I swilled down two cocktails. I rarely drink, but the day deserved a drink to Paul’s memory and one to dull mine. She called me faithfully and sat beside me at the funeral. She held my loss as she held her own. She got angry at the way our company put my Social Worker and I through the wringer and then slapped us in the face with a “stay strong for the patients” without considering that we had nothing left to give. Spent, she needed to talk. She reached out to the guy, and he responded, “I don’t understand why Jacqueline and you are so upset?”

The dividing line was drawn, and he is now gone from her inner life.

I understand completely. When something terrible happens those of us in the epicenter of pain-especially those of us who are caregivers–we need the ones we are closest to in life to provide a safe shelter from the storm and fallout. We need the voices of Love and Friendship to say to us, “I am here for you, so you can be there for them.” We will repay the favor ten-fold. We will love you with undying affection and gratitude. Knowing that your arms will entwine our battered bodies and spirits gives us the courage to face the deepest darkness humanity wrecks upon one another. Your help so we can alight upon a resting place makes all the difference in the world. A quick “let me come and take you to dinner” matters more than all the money in the world.

Unfortunately, sometimes we get only silence. I think what happened with Pixie and her beau is worse though. The accusation is that if we were not upset–because somehow being upset about someone you know being murdered and how that devastates one you love deeply is irrational–then there would not be a reason to be upset. It seems so neat and tidy, but painful feelings are never clean. They are always messy and leave us discombobulated in their wake. As well they should! I do not want to live my life prepared for the worse-case scenario. I would never get out of bed! So, I will stumble, tremble, and fall down when the shit hits the fan. The reproach and silence that can come from even those we trust the most adds insult to injury. No wonder Pixie drew the line.

The person I was seeing at the time was very busy with his life, so I tried to not burden him with it all. I let him call me. Unfortunately, when he would call to check on me he would also talk A LOT about his “irrational and crazy” ex-wife. A dividing line was drawn the night before the funeral, and when he asked me if I would ever be seeing him again I had to tell him the truth–I would not.

And then there are those who just get what we need. When Paul died I wrote a pain-filled email to The Scoundrel, who was living in Paris at the time. He wrote back saying: “This is very very horrible. I love you and kiss you on the head…….I’m sorry………It’s just so horrible….Do you have a friend who can hold you? xxxxx”

So I told The Scoundrel the truth…there was no one to hold me. The feeling that overcame me when he wrote those words to me was “emptiness.” Somehow emptiness seems better than longing. Emptiness implies being open and ready to receive, just the right fit has not come yet to sit in that space with me. Longing is when the one you count on to sit beside you when you are beside yourself cannot or will not come. This is what happened with Pixie–she longed for him to be with her, but he fell to the other side of the dividing line.

My Team Secretary, Teri Beroldi-Rein, asked me to write up her feelings about her murdered husband. These words were read by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office Chaplain at his funeral on Teri’s behalf. During the service, I could not help but think how this lovely and lively man dedicated to public service deserved just such a send-off. Only he also deserved to have it come after he died an old man in his bed, not as a “reward” for being murdered. Utterly unbelievable!

The most moving part for me was the drive to the graveside and seeing all the people lined up on the side of the road with their hands over their hearts and heads bowed. Paul deserved their respect, and I am glad he received this honor. He may have died senselessly, but he also died doing what he loved–public service.

Photo Credit: ALBERT DIAZ/MIAMI HERALD STAFF

In honor of Deputy Paul Rein October 5, 1931 - November 7, 2007

Photo Credit: BSO ONLINE PHOTO

Here are her thoughts and my words:

I must admit it is hard to find words to describe what is in my heart about Paul. I know it, but words just don’t seem to be enough. How can I describe all those little moments of living with someone? A knee brushed at the dinner table with a quick smile, a brief phone call to say “I love you,” his hand holding mine…a million little things that wrote his name again and again on my heart. Our love is like that…so tiny it wiggled right into each and every cell of my being and so large that it overwhelmed me with a million kindnesses.

To say that Paul was a good man seems an insignificant way to describe the purity of his goodness that touched all he did and all he knew. I never could believe I found such a beautiful person to spend my life with after years raising my family alone. My family loved him the moment they met him, and they love him for the way he brought happiness and love to my life. But Paul was never just focused on his family: He reached out with that same goodness to friend, neighbor and stranger alike.

One day Paul and I walked through the grocery store and a young man approached us. He asked Paul if he remembered transporting him to court. Paul told him he did and asked, “Did you do what I told you to do?” The young man told him that he had in fact listened to Paul’s wise advice and cleaned up his act. He had a job and was doing well. You should have seen the look of pride on Paul’s face! His encouragement made a difference in that young man’s life. You should have seen the look of pride in my own face. What an honor to spend my life with the kind of man who would not just look at someone who made a mistake as a nobody, but as someone needing a little fatherly advice to get them back on the right path.

I did not just love my husband; I also admired him. His tenderness, wisdom and willingness to give his very best inspired me. Paul knew what it meant to work hard. He grew up poor, so life was always a struggle in his family. Yet he grew up to do the right thing and live his life with integrity and purpose…he and all of his buddies from the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Those guys remained friends these last 70 years. Unbelievable! “The German.” “Germs.” “The Weasel.” “Cooney.” “Mayor.” “Pucky.” “Jake the Snake.” These are just some of the nicknames the guys went by. Imagine my surprise when one of their wives called the house one day asking for “Pucky.” I had no idea who that was! Paul admitted that in fact he was “Pucky.” His father gave him the nickname when he was a small boy, and it stuck with the neighborhood boys. I felt like I finally crossed into his precious inner circle of friends when I found out about “Pucky!”

Paul never took the happiness we had together for granted or took for granted my devotion to him. He knew what a special love we have. Just the other day we were watching “Dancing With the Stars,” and he danced around the den asking me to dance. I see him there full of life, joy, playfulness and love. I see him in all the stories people tell me of his goodness towards them. I see him faithfully going with me different places, not wanting to miss a moment of being together. I see the light of pride in his eyes the night I converted to Judaism. And I see him every night when I would come home and he would say to me, “Here is my darling. Here is my sweetheart. How was your day?”

Paul is my darling. Paul is my sweetheart. I will miss him deeply all the days of my life.

Today is a horrible day. Today my dear sweet Patient Care Secretary lost her husband. Paul died tragically when the prisoner he was transporting overpowered him, struggled with him, shot him, and threw him out of the transport van. (Here is the link to the CNN story.) There are no words that make sense of this horror. I literally am shaken and grieved to my core. For my dear friend, for her family and his, for the future they planned that never will come to fruition, for my grieving team, for myself.

I have been with so many people as they were told of the death of their loved one, and I never had adrenaline overtake my body. However, as she was told my right leg quivered uncontrollably. I am so heartbroken that this did not go differently, but here we are and Paul is dead. I met him and thought he was a lovely and kind man. He came to my Open House just after my birthday in early March. I also knew him through her and all of the tender love stories she would tell. Theirs was a second love, yet it was a gift of unmeasurable joy for both of them.

The news is reporting that the young man who killed Paul had written over his heart “Break This Bitch.” Was that a warning? Did he think his heart could not be broken? Had it been broken so badly that he started down the road of drugs, robbery, and armed robbery that led him to commit a murder? No matter what pain he had been through in his life, it does not dismiss the pain he has caused because of the choices he has made. But yet again I am reminded that if we do not face our pain–not just face it but actually heal it– we set off a series of events that can not only lead to our own destruction, but to that of others as well.

I cannot help but wonder if his heart is broken now?

Last week I wrote two nominations for our Employee Appreciation Awards. One for my nurse Wendy, and one for my Secretary. Here is the one for her so that you might know her a tiny bit and think of her with prayers for comfort as she negotiates the terrible cyclone of sudden traumatic grief and loss:

Three Sets of Footprints

All of us have read the poem “Footprints” about the person who notices only one set of footprints in the sand during all of the most trying times in their life. Inquiring of God why this is, they learn that those were the very times when God carried them. How true for us all! Life cannot be done as an individual effort. Each day we rely on unseen hands to carry us through and make our lives possible. From farmers to the checkout person at the grocery store, cannery workers to those at the recycling center, and loggers to soft toilet paper manufacturers, from the President of our company to our Patient Care Secretaries, our lives are interdependent.

Here at our hospice we think in terms of our Teams, and for our team—Team 151—there is one person we literally cannot survive without…our Secretary TBR. Even our Team Manager agrees that we do fine when she is gone, but those days when T* is out of the office are painful. Our team holds our collective breath until she returns, for she truly carries us through and helps us to thrive out in the field. She is so faithful in the little things, and if she misses a tiny beat she will go off to make sure we have whatever we need, even when we could do if for ourselves. She delights in the giving! T* knows that love is in the details, and although it might seem strange to speak of love at work, it is the only word to describe the dedication and attention to detail she offers. T* always speaks with kindness and concern, offering up love freely to us and to the patients and families she serves with us.

She also will go above and beyond to help her co-workers. She does not want to see anyone fail, for she knows what it means to work hard to keep your head above water. She patiently teaches the new PCS’s coming through, while lending a hand to other teams whenever needed…and not just our sister team! If ever there was a team player—encompassing the whole of our office—it would be T*.

She also takes the time to care about the stories of the individual families we serve. You should of seen her delight and gracious embrace of one family as they celebrated their 70th Anniversary last Christmas. T* was able to be at their home for our little celebration, and she was so tender with this lovely and fragile couple. Seeing the joy in her own face at finally being able to meet them was priceless. She holds the needs of our patients and families close and ensures they have what they need, sight unseen almost 100% of the time. It is no wonder she often is mentioned in our “Thank You Notes” from our families.

Team 151 is a terribly busy home team. In October alone we had around twenty-five deaths, yet our census stays stable. Twenty-five new patients filling our roster just as the other twenty-five came off of it. Talk about paperwork! Yet T* not only keeps us straight (no wonder she usually arrives before seven each morning!), but she will take on the slack when another PCS is out or falling behind. How does she have the time? How does she have the stamina? And to think she does this with kindness, professionalism and intelligence! No wonder our Team Manager knows her place in regards to T*! No wonder we admire, cherish, and love her as we do!

T* embodies the love of God by carrying us physically as a team, but also by the love she extends to us as team members and to our patients and families. When we look back at our lives and our time here we will see three sets of footprints in the sand, and when we see those times with only two sets we will know it was T* who helped to carry us. Please help us in acknowledging her unquestioning fidelity to our corporate values by honoring her as she so justly deserves.

I often think of the themes in my life as acting like boomerangs. Something may happen to me–a great pain or loss–that sends out the very best of me scatted against the wind, but eventually they all return to their rightful home within me. This last year has been full of this kind of scattering, and if you have ever read my blog, you know what I am talking about. A year of more challenges and stress than my body, mind or spirit could handle, and a heart so broken I thought it was beyond repair for most of this year.

Now there is just something about a list that I dearly love. Lists organize my life! I have running lists for the things I need, the things I want to accomplish (like having more sex in the coming year–twice in 12 months is just not enough!!!), lists of places I want to experience, lists of problems I am facing, and, well, the list goes on and on and on… This blog has been full of some great lists:

• A list of my experiences right up to my blindsided break-up: Post-Mortem: My November
• A list of the reasons why I am a good girlfriend: 40 Reasons I Make a Good Girlfriend
• A list of all diseases, losses and freak-outs of the last year: The Stress Mess
• A list of why I don’t trust men in tank tops (and my personal favourite post): Tank Top Wearing Man Candy?
• Not to mention the list of all the men I loved before (go on and hum it, you know you want to): The Dating Game

So in honor of my little list making fetish, I offer up on my one-year anniversary since this unbelievable year began with my emergency root canal the following list of all my gratitude for what this last year gave me–in no particular order:

1. My Ordination. This day was full of more love than I could have ever imagined, and I have drawn deeply from those waters this year.
2. Surviving This Year! If you read “Posting My Big Secret” and “Shift Change” you know that this is an ACCOMPLISHMENT all by itself! Not only do I feel I survived, but I feel stronger, happier and more at peace with who I am than at any other point in my life.
3. EMMA! Gotta love Miss Puppy Girl. She is my joy. We have really fallen in love these last few months, especially after her mean cousin Morgan left! Morgan, my niece, is part of the Puppy Gestapo. Her departure turned on the “My Mommie is not a meanine.” light over Emma’s head. Plus, she is FINALLY growing up…a little bit. She still has to wear a leash in the house–all the better to catch her and take my stolen bra out of her mouth with!!

   

4. Paparazzo. I have said it before, and I will say it again: I do not know how I would have made it through without him. I tease him that he is always “pulling my pigtails,” i.e. driving me nuts just because he can. Yesterday morning while doing crunches on the living room floor, Emma bit my ponytail and pulled hard. The more I would go to stop her the more she would pull. I ended up in a pool of tears and laughter! No wonder the two of them love each other so much–they are cut from the same cloth!
5. Casa Derby. I lived for 2.5 years without my own belongings, so coming home in February filled my heart in ways I cannot even describe. I missed my Red Turkey Rug! I missed my books, music, bed, sofa and enough dishes to host a party for an army. How sweet it is to be home again. Moving home also brought new friends and neighbours. They met me mid Apocalypse and adopted me straight away. I needed the affirmation of new friends, and so I am grateful the latest incarnation of Casa Derby came with some.
6. My Mama and My Sista. These two continue to show me love, love, love, even when I am only full of fear and despair.
7. My Work and Team. I get unbelievable joy knowing I am doing the kind of work that crosses the religious divide and finds people right where they are and ministers to their hurting hearts in that place. My patients and their families are my teachers, and I value their lessons. Ministering to my atheist patient this year, and the work in general, has given me my inspiration as I apply to Vanderbilt’s PhD program. I also have a wonderful team to work with, but especially my manager, my social worker, my secretary, and my nurses Wendy and Lisa. They all make each day a worthy sacrifice. (Trust me! At what I make, the word “sacrifice” is perfect.)
8. My Bereavement Group. If I ever have a friend go through a crushing break-up, I will immediately buy them Alan Wolfelt’s book Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart . Working through this book with my group, and the group’s grieving processes in general, helped me to identify that what happened to me was just the normal grief one experiences when someone you love dies. I suddenly no longer felt so isolated in my grieving, and listening to them give voice to their mourning, gave me an opportunity to accept my own. Once I got that the person I knew and loved did in fact die–metaphorically and literally, in as much as that person was no longer real or real in my life–I could finally find the courage to accept the past as it was, accept the me that I truly am, and move on towards my own best future.
9. My Bike. My Bike. My Bike. I love my shitty bike, and I am accepting cash donations (through PayPal of course) towards my next ride. It may just be one of the crappiest bikes on the planet for someone to ride 50-70 miles a week on, but she keeps on going strong. I love waving to the guys mowing my golf course at 6:30 in the morning with their headlights shining out in the dark. I love riding with Emma! I just love riding her period. Giant, Specialized and Cannondale may get quite a bit of my internet window shopping, but she gets my attention day-in-and-day-out. I would have gained a TON of weight without the bike given my knee, so I am so appreciative to have this bike even if it is not all that good of one or all that cool. She does what she is supposed to do–for the most part–and I am grateful.
10. My Blogs. Writing has given voice to my despair and to my hope, both of whom are constant partners in my dance of life. The affirmation of my faithful readers and the new friends I have made as a result, gave wings to the fact that I did in fact have a meaningful future without the one I had loved. He and I began a conversation–an important one for me personally and one of importance for the world in which we live–and when it ended abruptly I feared the conversation died too. In working on this blog and Don’t Be A Christian (which will be more fully operational January 2008), I found new partners in that conversation, found I could do it on my own (dammit!!!!), and the impetus to be bold enough to go after a PhD. I was once sent an email from someone wondering if this blog was the beginning of something else because she could sense something brewing in me from my writing. The truth is the blog began as a way to show photos of my new puppy! What it has become astounds me, but I also know it has been central to my healing and to my reaffirmation that indeed my middle name is hope.

There are certain songs that have supported me too, but especially the words to two Bjork songs: The whole of “All is Full of Love.” I keep reminding myself that I am full of love to both give and receive, and although it may not come from the places I expected, it is always right there within me and for me. The other song is “It’s Not Up To You.” The lyrics are amazing. She sings, “I wake up and the day feels broken. I tilt my head. I’m trying to get an angle…if you wake up and the day feels broken, just lean into the crack…notice how it sparkles.” This has been a year of leaning into the crack, and much to my surprise it has sparkled in ways unimaginable last year. Me too. I still sparkle.

With gratitude for the 525,600 minutes of this last unbelievable year,

Rev. Jacqueline Hope Derby

Photo Credit: PAPARAZZO

I wrote this little ditty in honor of my Team Manager Mary Lou for “Bosses Day.” I feel she is the best boss I have ever had in my profession. I can count on her to back me up and kick my rear in gear when needed. This is a necessary and delicate balance! Since I am not writing as much at the moment, with the GRE looming and my Vandy application due in less than two months, I am posting this to keep you plugged into my blog and life. A poet, I am not, but this is heartfelt and that counts in a world of disconnect.

It’s a man’s world,
or so they say.
Where killing, lying, stealing
seem to be the only way.

Want to get ahead?
Want to win the race?
Be willing to trip your neighbour
to save a little face.

Lambs don’t lie down
with hungry lions at the gate.
Always on guard–
even the lambs seem to hate.

Get up in the morning,
try to find your bliss.
Work, give, and work some more.
Some things sure do seem amiss.

Unreal expectations–
the working woman’s plight.
She spends her days dreaming,
wanting them to take flight.

Is there a teacher?
A beacon or a guide?
Another woman walking tall
against the raging tide?

Mightier than a goddess,
an Amazon of grace.
Be careful not to cross her,
she’ll put you in your place.

Her hand will rock your cradle.
Her voice rocks your heart.
Listen to her sage words,
her wisdom to impart.

She is Mother, daughter
sister, friend.
When you are with her
you never have to pretend.

She will tend to you;
helping you to grow.
And sees your success
cheering, “Go! Go! Go!”

It may be a man’s world
but it is a woman’s strength
that nurtures the very best in us
and goes to any length.

So raise your voice,
your cup, your heart,
for it is honor
we have come to impart.

The time has come to celebrate
one trustworthy, steadfast, and true.
Let us praise our friend,
our boss, our own Mary Lou.

Studying for the GRE–the Graduate Record Exam–has created a crushing pain in my spirit. This pain envelops me and leaves me paralyzed at times. Why? Now I do like to call the GRE “The Graduate Retching Exam” because of all of the math, which I worked hard (okay, not that hard) to forget as promptly as it was no longer needed, but that is not why. The reasons why have much more to do with feeling I am putting my feet on a path that will take me away from a dream for my life…the dream to be married and have a baby. I feel I am choosing to give birth to ideas instead of a family, and I am afraid of the loneliness this path might bring.

I did not date for all of my teens and twenties. I never kissed anyone. I never felt anyone was even interested in me as a girl, let alone as a girlfriend. I got the message very early on that I was not in-fact, “girlfriend material.” Oh sure, I had guy friends. They love me! But I was never enough…not pretty enough, not thin enough, not cool enough, etc. Or I was too much. Too smart. Too opinionated. Too radical. Too fat. Too fucked up by my past. I kept getting the message that if I could just be, well, not me, then and only then would I deserve the love and respect of the men I liked or was involved with (after my thirtieth birthday).

Much of why I did not date for so long had to do with me and only me. I was just terrified of anyone coming near me. Terrified they would get close and see how fractured I was from being molested. I did not want anyone to see me naked. Shit! I hardly let anyone see any skin when I was fully clothed, always in long shirts buttoned way up even in the Miami summer. I felt so unsure of who I was as a woman. What did that even mean? I was asexual in many ways. I never looked at a guy and thought about sleeping with him, actually that still takes a lot of work on my part. Those feelings never come easily because even my fantasy life is cautionary. The one place where I could have a real mental free-for-all, and I judiciously practice safe sex with only emotionally well-known partners, who I actually do not know because I refuse to fantasize about people I know but am not dating! In other words, in order to get it up for an imaginary boyfriend I have to create a whole back story, emotions, etc. It is a whole hell of a lot of work!

Somehow I made it though that wilderness and found a way to be naked physically with The First, but I kept much of my true self to myself. I can see now that I only slept him because it was safe and controllable. Well, those and the fact that he would sleep with me. I was thirty-one after all and a virgin. I just wanted to have sex because I was afraid that if I did not at that point I never would. What a terrifying thought, but also a real one. I see that other than The Bean, everyone I ever got naked with had some element of safety to them. My biggest safety net being that if they were fucked up in some manner, then I felt it would be okay if I was a little too.

You get what you pay for; right?

After Plant Geek broke up with me because he “could not be attracted to someone like me” and just went out with me because “I was so healing,” I called Tammy Wayne to pour out my heart. I felt like I worked so hard through therapy, getting up at six in the morning to work out and drop some fucking weight, trying to accept my body, my heart, my mind, etc., and to actually trust and be naked with someone. I worked so hard, but no one was going to love me. I still was not good enough. I still was too much or not enough. I got all “dressed up” for the love party, and regardless got stuck against the wall with the other “flowers” nobody wanted. I came away from that conversation feeling like I poured it all out and maybe could just accept that it was not going to be my destiny to be loved in time to have a baby. Yes; it might happen, but it was unlikely.

Then I met The Bean and really trusted and loved someone for the first time in my whole life. I was thirty-five, and it finally happened to me. But only to me.

Here I am. I am thirty-six now, and I walked, crawled, dug, scratched, ran, swam and Tae Bo’d my way out of the hell of my first twenty-five years. I made it, but I still have never been loved by a man. I have never laid against someone in the dark and heard them whisper “I love you.” in my ear. Maybe the me that exists is not “girlfriend material?” I may be the “exception to the rule” girl, and as much as guys might want that in some ways, the truth is it scares the shit out of them. Scares me too sometimes, like right this very moment. I see what a fucking challenge I am! I take life seriously. I take my life very seriously. I am passionate to a fault. I insist on being me. I do not let myself get away with much, but I especially do not let my emotions go without investigation. Need proof? Here I am, up from bed, writing down all of my feelings on this topic well past my bedtime, with a stack of wadded up tissues on the desk from crying so hard as I write this.

I started this particular thread months ago and called it “Baby Blues.” I wanted to articulate a deep understanding about who I am fundamentally and my own acknowledgment of the price I might pay for being me. I am me. Just me. I only want to be me, but the message I get from most men I know or have known is: “Could you be a little less?” Often men tell me how “silly” I am. This “silliness” is usually over “thinking too much” or giving a rat’s ass about something they feel is a ridiculous waste of time. I often hear Madonna’s “What It Feels Like For A Girl” playing in my head during those moments of confrontation over my “silliness.”

Hurt that’s not supposed to show
And tears that fall when no one knows
When you’re trying hard to be your best
Could you be a little less

Do you know what it feels like for a girl
Do you know what it feels like in this world
What it feels like for a girl

Strong inside but you don’t know it
Good little girls they never show it
When you open up your mouth to speak
Could you be a little weak

I made it this far in my life because of my own inner strength. I made it because I believe in a Love greater than my own comprehension that weaves us all together. I made it because of all of the love from those in my life who never want me to be weak, or less, or other. In large part, I loved The Bean because he never called me silly or gave me the impression that I was not enough or too much. (Granted, he did feel this way and told me so after we split.)

My mother really valued what The Bean brought to my life because she understands how lonely and isolating being smart in my way has been for me. Sometimes I wonder if during my life she has felt ill equipped to help me with these feelings? I think her own pain at his leaving had a lot to do with feeling like finally there was someone in my life who not only got me, but also genuinely was excited to discover all my inner nooks and crannies. She sees me, but does not always get me. And it is the “getting me” part that is difficult to do and difficult to accept without wanting me to “be a little less.”

So when I think of my own “baby blues,” I realize I could get married and have a baby. If it was THE most important thing to me, I would allocate all of my resources to it. I would be willing to give up certain things that I consider paramount, like my career or calling. It would also require a willingness to dumb myself down in order to find someone who might consider me both girlfriend and wife material. I am not saying all men would require this, instead I offer that if marriage and a baby are the most important thing to me I would do anything to get them, even that.

Marriage and a family are not that important to me. I will not give up on who I am or what matters to me in order to have them. At thirty-six I must acknowledge the time reality of finding the right person to add to who and what my life is already about is not in my favor. And then there is Grad School. My mother is right when she tells me how she hears how lonely and isolated I am right now intellectually. She kicks me in the butt over the GRE because she knows I need what a graduate program can bring me, and what I have sorely longed for since The Bean left.

I will be the first to admit that I freaked out when Mr. Joy  told me that he did not see himself leaving South Florida or having a child. I freaked out because I feel like that desire of mine is just a small thread in my hands. I can feel the weight of the world and my own sense of calling pulling against that fragile thread. One day it might very well be fully un-spooled and gone forever. We parted ways given the heartbreak destiny we could see awaiting us, and I am still a little bit sad. The worst part was the wanting to stay in South Florida, not the baby part, in my final analysis. I do not want to give up the dreams I am in fact willing to do anything difficult or painstaking to achieve…not for anyone. I am only “Jacqueline Material” after all, and if Jacqueline finds herself a girlfriend, or wife, or mother, then great; but I must remain Jacqueline regardless of the roles and responsibilities of my life.

I would not want to be anyone less.

I just began dating Mr. Joy. He radiates happiness, hence the nickname. We got to talking about the one word we would use to describe one another from the night of our first date. My word for him was “happy;” he chose “fun” for me. Don’t you just love it when you meet someone and they radiate love and hope? I want to be like that, and even though in some ways I am what one person once called “ridiculously optimistic,” there are parts of me that deeply remember all the sadness and lack in my life thus far. I get up and keep trying not because of some silly ignorance at the truths of life, but out of sheer force will to not allow the shit of my life to win and weigh me down.

That shit has been a real pest this last year. I feel a wind blowing through my soul and lifting it up and out. This process is difficult; I have used it as a fuel to get to this place in my life. I use it at work to create Healing Bridges day-after-day. Yet I still trip on the old fears of abandonment, value and loss. Life has been offering me opportunities of late to let go of the past and my fears of the future and just live in the gift of the present. I feel like Mr. Joy is a part of that gift in the now for me. My Cousin Bopper believes life brings you what I need, and I need joy in my life. I already have it in my family, friends, in who I am, and in my sweet Emma.

In that spirit I offer you the following photographs of glee and bliss, also known as “Emma goes for a bike ride with her Mama.”

The dog trainer came out a week ago and hooked up a “Canine-Cruiser” to my bike. Emma is attached by a bungee chord. We are riding about 4 miles a day now. She loves it!

And her Mama loves how she comes home POOPED OUT!

My busy puppy has finally found her inner napper.

Can you feel the love?

Emma truly makes our home The Glee Club!

The “HBO” chair was my Granddaddy, Heber Burton Osborne’s. Emma loves it too!

All photographs were taken by our wonderful Paparazzo and his bazillion dollar new camera.

Do you know what “rumination” is? “It means obsessing about problems, about a loss, about any kind of a setback or ambiguity without moving past thought into the realm of action.” (link to article by Ellen McGrath) You know…when you mind spins out of control. My mind is constantly going, but when it spins I can feel the difference in my body. I feel the tilt of the Earth. My thoughts circular, so I just keep looping back to where I started. I get stuck. I feel trapped. Despair overwhelms me.

My recent Healing Touch workshop stopped all the rumination. Somehow–like a hand reaching out and grasping my spinning mind and heart–the healing took hold in me in those gentle moments of comfort and learning. I found silence. I found peace. I found love. I lay on the table, and the latch opened. The spring released. I felt hope again.

The hope seeping into my spirit feels like an in-breaking. A little crack in the wall of helplessness. A shift change. Not a 180 degree turnaround, but a five percent move. These last nine months of my life have been full of noise, and now the volume is finally turned down enough to think, pray and hope again. I feel it in my bones.

When I lay on the table during the different practice sessions, all I felt was love. I would clear my mind, focus on my breath, and love would come to me. I could feel the love towards myself especially. A forgiveness. A prayer of thanksgiving for who I am and the joy I know I bring to life. A gratitude too for all the love in my life. I kept thinking about how much love Paparazzo has given me this year, and how much I love him. He is so beautiful, funny and kind. I thought of my family and how my aunt’s cancer has given us the gift of closeness. We lost some measure of it when my Grandmother died. I thought of my friends and how they encircle me with tenderness and fidelity.

I also thought about work. I realized I am missing out on being creative, and the places where I feel like I can soar creatively speaking seem to also be the places where the system of corporate chaplaincy requires acquiescence. I thought of the love I have for my patients and their families. I told myself, “I forgive you for having such a shitty first year there.” I also realize I cannot serve my call to God and also serve a corporate mindset. I made a promise to myself to stop trying. I still am some days, but then I play a new mantra in my head: “Do what you think is best as a minister, for them and for yourself.” I feel more empowered and much much less angry. I am still working on the fear though.

I did not think of The Bean. Somehow I guess that is important. I recently went over the worst of what he could have or might have done–the cheating, the lying, the pretending–and imagined sitting there hearing a full confession. I said all the hurtful things I could say in my heart and realized they were only directed towards myself. All the feelings of failure were about my not being good enough, and I felt terribly uncomfortable speaking to myself that way. So, I imagined the conversation again, but this time I thought only of loving myself as I am right now. In that imaginary confession my response was understanding. Pity, even. None of it belonged to me any more. Maybe it never did…

I came away from the Healing Touch experience and reached out for some help. I must say I am rather proud of myself on that front! Not easy, but so necessary. I do not feel like I am in it alone, which is always a place of despair for me. In allowing my heart to feel the love of those who support me and believe in me, I decided it would be okay to tell some of them exactly where I am–even the messy parts about wanting and planning to die in January. I cannot even begin to tell you how hard saying those words was, but I did. I said them.

Little changes. My life looks much the same as it did prior to the workshop, but I feel the new trajectory that the five percent shift change brought about. I feel open to all sorts of new possibilities, and I am even going to apply for a PhD program in NashVegas. I may not end up there, but I want to keep the future open to go wherever Love leads. Ah….Love leading me…I guess that is what I got connected back to in those moments of quiet. I know it seems like there was a lot of thinking, but these thoughts all came to me like the smells wafting out from a kitchen. They perfumed the air of my mind.

Here is a favourite quote from the poet Rumi that sums up where my mind and spirit are working to rest right now:

Reason is powerless in the expression of Love. Love alone is capable of revealing the truth of Love and being a Lover. If you want to live, die in Love; die in Love if you want to remain alive.

It is funny…this post has been simmering in my mind this last week and reworked quite a few times. Normally, when I sit down to write I write passionately and furiously. Everything sort of pours out. Not this time. Not now. The change–the letting go–the settling–took the stinger out of it all.

For those of you who read my blog consistently, you will find elements of this sermon familiar. I used the story I wrote earlier in the summer to commemorate my father’s death as the jumping off place for a recent sermon. The text from the Hebrew Scriptures is Genesis 17:1-8, 17-22, the story of Abram and Sari being renamed and told of the coming birth of a child late into their barren years.

In the summer of 1977–the summer my Father died–a mango tree was planted in our back-yard. Dear friends of my family gave the tree to us shortly before they moved back home to India. The father finished his PhD at the University of Miami, so it was not too long after Daddy died that the tree was planted. Their six-year old daughter and I played and attended kindergarten together. I can remember jumping on the mattresses at her house; they sat on the floor, so her mother felt our safety was not endangered! Her home always smelled of warm spices. I can remember being jealous of the pretty red dot her mother painted so carefully on her forehead. I can remember the cool embrace of her mother and father, always so glad to see me come to play. Her parents’ car had rotten floorboards, so you had to hold up your feet. I loved watching the road go by, especially in the rain.

The tree commemorated my friendship with their daughter, my Mother’s addiction to mangoes ( I still have nightmares.), and Daddy’s life. I can remember the father digging the hole and planting the tree. A small tree, with stakes and ropes to keep it upright. The hole was too big, but my Mother felt it would help the tree to mulch around it, so it was never fully filled in to the top of the hole. And mulch we did! Year after year, the best of the table scraps, grass clippings, and refuse went under that tree. Even the dead bunnies from a prolific surprise by my rabbit Baron (who then became “Baroness”) went under this tree. The offerings to the gods never were as thoughtful or as sacred as what we offered our dear mango tree.

When we sold the house ten years later, we still had never tasted one mango off our blessed tree. She never bloomed. Not once.

We sold the house on 100th Street to a Greek Orthodox priest. He invited to his open house to see all the renovations he made to our old home. We walked through the house noting each change, including the central air conditioning we never had. My room was now an office. The interior garden taken out, paved and a big hot tub put in its place. The Buddhas and totems were gone. The little concrete pond where Kelly Grey and I poured a whole bottle of bubble bath before turning on the pump and filling the patio with bubbles, gone. A huge satellite dish could be seen looming in the back yard. So much change, yet so much the same. We noticed and took in all the ways “our home” had become “his house.” As we finished our tour, we walked through the master bedroom and bath, then the laundry room, which put us at the very back of the expansive indoor patio and overlooking the back-yard. Mother and I saw it at the same time. The mango tree laden with fruit.

Mother turned to me and said, “It is time to go.”

Our faithfulness to our little mango tree not too unlike Abram’s to God. Dutiful to a fault, yet the promises of fertility beyond the grasp of reality. Don’t you just love it that Abram hears this covenantal blessing from the Holy One and laughs? Can you see him? I can. I can in large part because I have been him. All of us come to that place where we feel “settled” and accept—in a sense—our lot in life. Things may not be the way we originally hoped, but things are what they are and we try to hold onto that little corner of the world we call our own.

We do not look to the sky to see promises like stars painting the eternal ceiling above us with abundance. We do not want to be renamed anything other than what we are right now in this very moment. We only want to stay the course, keep things the same. Maybe we might complain about how they used to be when they were better, because the past somehow seems better in the rear view mirror than the uncertain future ahead. We did not feel that way about it when it was our present reality—of course—but now the luxury of time has given us the gift of forgetting the bad parts and putting on a pedestal the good.

Abram understands this too. He cries out to God to just let Ismael—his illegitimate child with his wife’s slave—be “enough” of God’s blessing for him. Let us look at our text again:

Abraham fell face down; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”

Abram wanted to keep the status quo, and changing it—even in ways that brought forth more fruit, more complication, more change, more work, more legacy, more life—inspired great fear, trepidation and well, laughter.

One of my responsibilities in my job with hospice is to lead a bereavement group. Week-after-week I often hear the same stories repeated about the way a loved one died, the ways in which modern medicine failed, the ways in which other family and friends just do not help with all the hurt, the ways in which life will never be the same without the one who died, the ways death changed life and the anger at those changes. I hear these stories from the same people week-after-week, and my heart hurts for them because I see how stuck they are, and I long to offer some kind of healing balm that might validate their pain, but also inspire them to embrace this change and the fruit it might bring to their lives. That old mango tree in the yard of my childhood home keeps coming to mind.

See once upon a time, I dated Plant Geek. Plant Geek is getting a PhD in Horticulture from the University of Florida and works down in South Dade studying Mamey for his dissertation (of all things!). His adviser went to Costa Rica for six months in 2005. Plant Geek house sat and dog sat in his absence, and this was the time of our dating.

We walked around the yard, moving between all the various fruit trees and plants. What else would you expect from a horticulture professor specializing in tropical fruit?! When we came to one particular mango tree, Plant Geek started to pick some of them off for me and Mother. He always considered himself to be her “Dealer,” given she really is a Mango Junkie. And what a good Dealer! More varieties. More mangoes. Needless to say, Ms. Audrey loved how it worked out that I dated Plant Geek during mango season!

As we stood under the tree, so laden with fruit, I thought of our tree on 100th Street. I told Plant Geek the whole story of our mango tree–even the dead bunnies–and how it never blossomed or gave us fruit. I told him about finding her drooping with fruit just a year later. I wanted to know one thing: Why?

He told me the answer was simple. We had been too good to the tree. Trees need stress in-order to bloom and give off fruit. Reproduction, which is what the fruit is all about to the tree, comes about when the tree gets scared it might die and so it sends forth the fruit to ensure its survival in the next generation. In commercial growing, he told me, they actually use drought and flood to force stress their trees into better production. Our tree never experienced a single stressful moment until we sold the house to a man not quite as dedicated to her nurturing. She did the only thing possible. She freaked out! She brought forth fruit for her survival.

How often all of us get stuck thinking life should be about rocking along and keeping everything nice and even and happy. Oh to have an easy stress free life! What wouldn’t we give for that! And, how much we need safety, security, good food, water, and tender loving care to grow to be strong, healthy and happy. But the truth is that part of what inspires our imagination and makes it sparkle with possibility much like the stars in the darkest night sky, is stress. And like Abraham, we too shake our fits at God and want things to just stay the same and for our lot to be secure.

Unfortunately, life is not like that. I recently remarked to my bereavement group that given how I am younger than all of them, and I know “life is not fair,” I was sure they knew this too. “So,” I asked, “What did you do in the past to help deal with the ways in which life was unfair?” The room fell into an awkward silence, and when someone finally spoke it was to tell the same story from the week before about trying to keep some piece of their loved one “alive” in their home.

Now do not get me wrong, all of us need places where we can bemoan, mourn, and cry out in anger and anguish the terrible changes this unfair life brings to each of our doors. We all go through terrible emotional droughts, and for many in my group that is where they are and where they should be. I understand. When my father died thirty years ago his death ushered in a terrible drought in my life. From his death June 28th, 1977 until the one year anniversary, I saw more than some see in a lifetime. Daddy, Grammy, and my best friend from church all died. My sisters came to Mother and told her they never wanted to see us or have anything to do with us again. With them went their husbands, Aunt Clem and Grammy, before she died later in the Fall. Our dinner table went from nine to two in less than one month. Losing my family like that has proven to be the most powerful loss of my life.

But my life has not just been about those losses, just as Abraham and Sarah’s was not just about barrenness.

For now I seek to embrace the good covenant I have with God, one you have too. The covenant that no matter what happens God with be with us. The covenant that grace is enough and mercy plentiful. The covenant about loving God, my neighbour and myself. The covenant that focuses on forgiveness and inclusion at the dinner table of all God’s children, even when they are barren or stressed out!

I want to embrace with gratitude all the love wrapping itself around my life. I possess more love than I know what to do with from both friends and family. When I was ordained last fall, the most beautiful moment for me came during “The Laying On of Hands.” Being surrounded by all of these loved ones blessing me and my calling to walk beside all of God’s children surpassed any other moment of my life. That moment did not come easy. Years of study, poverty, questioning, giving up, trying again, waiting, wondering and working had to transpire before I found myself on my knees at the altar surrounded. I felt more love in that one moment than I had ever experienced in my life. I could feel the mango tree of my own life overflowing in fragrant fruit.

So, tell me friend, what about your own tree? Do you feel the stress of your life bringing forth new fruit and the abundances of creativity, friendship, compassion and love? Or do you just laugh when God wants to bring you out of your barrenness–even if it is painful and stressful–and pray for the status quo?

After writing my last post about my sexless love life and dating disasters, I felt inspired. I put up my list (basically–I did make some small edits) on Craigslist to try and dip back into the dating pool. I received many interesting responses, including quite a few lists from men of their own Top 40 Reasons to date them! Some of which were really beautiful. Although I did get a bit offended that this one guy thought I was too much of cow to date, but did use my list to create his own list and then posted it on CL to attract the skinnier girls. WTF? I am too ugly, but my list is too good to pass up copying? PLAHHHEEESE!

I also got quite a few men saying that not only was a the “perfect” girlfriend, I would also make the “perfect” wife, partner, etc. I found myself always writing back to them to let them know how un-perfect I really am. Too much pressure to live up to, in my estimation. I was also totally flattered. So, in the spirit of full disclosure and imperfection, I offer to you the following list…with many thanks to Janeane Garofalo for the perfect quotation to start off my own thinking about what it means to be imperfect me:

“Many people feel that mass acceptance and smooth socialization are desirable life paths for a young adult… Many people are often wrong… Don’t bother being nice. Being popular and well liked is not in your best interest. Let me be more clear; if you behave in a manner pleasing to most, then you are probably doing something wrong. The masses have never been arbiters of the sublime, and they often fail to recognize the truly great individual. Taking into account the public’s regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.”

- Janeane Garofalo

1. I do not want to think or be just like everyone else.
2. I hate the suburbs. Architecture should be interesting and diverse; it should surprise you. Most suburbs are based on the idea that everybody wants basically the same thing.
3. I prefer old to new. I would rather recover an old chair fifty times than buy a new one. And if I buy a new one, I want to make sure it is well made so my grandkids can recover it fifty times.
4. I do not want my children–if I ever have any–to fit in completely at school. I want them to have it tough. I want them to have to build emotional muscles and empathy, which only comes from the school of ridicule.
5. I will judge you based on what kind of car you drive. If you have a gas guzzling SUV in the city, I will look down on you. If you are a man in your forties with three hundred dollar shoes and an expensive haircut and drive a Cadillac convertible, I will think you are the scuzzy Sugar Daddy type. If you drive a Mini Cooper, I will think you have a clown fetish.
6. I hate the words “nice” and “fine.” They mean absolutely nothing. My acronym for “nice” is: Not Into Connecting Emotionally. And from the movie The Italian Job, fine stands for: Freaked-Out, Insecure, Needy and Emotional. Let’s use them in an exemplar sentence: Only really nice people ask you how you are doing and when you say “fine” are satisfied.
7. I will freak out about the emotional strain of working with patients who are gravely ill, dying or dead sometimes. I will be bouncing off the walls and need copious amounts of holding to settle down. Sex and sleep help too.
8. I cry when I am exhausted, feel like I cannot express my emotions, or feel overwhelmed by not meeting my own internal high marks for myself. You are not responsible for this, but I appreciate it when you do not make me feel like shit for crying. I cannot handle the pressure of whatever is making me cry and then the added pressure of trying not to cry because you do not want me to, with the bad feelings that you cannot allow me to cry and just be there for me, which lead to the subsequent feelings that you must not even care about me.
9. I hate moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer. I hate it if anyone else folds for me. I am a total weirdo about folding. I love. I need it. I gotta do it for myself.
10. I will talk and talk and talk when I feel lost, happy, excited, overwhelmed and/or needy. If I can just be quiet with you, know that I finally trust you enough to do so and love you deeply.
11. I am skittish about opening up my heart to you and begin to question how I can make it if you leave me and break my heart. Stick with me, and I will sort it out and stop holding on too tightly. This gets really bad between the fourth and fifth month, and finally gets better after the sixth. Can you last that long?
12. I will try and run away between the second and third month. See above.
13. I love giving head and might make you pass out from my ministrations. You will go nuts!
14. When I feel insecure I will pay for everything, even though I will never make more money than you do.
15. I will remember everything you say. This can be a really good thing, because if you say you love Cookies and Cream Ice Cream, I will not only remember but get your favourite kind for you as a surprise. If you say you will do something for me, I will remember when you do not. You will not be able to get away with anything.
16. I have integrity about everything I do. I even obey the rules at the dog park! You will not be able to get away with shit.
17. I will put my dog before you if she needs food, walking, etc.
18. I go to bed early and get up early. I hate waking up though, so I will hit the snooze just enough times to make you want to throw the clock right at me.
19. I will make you an amazing dinner and expect you to clean up the dishes. If you do not offer, I will resent you for thinking I should do everything for you. If you do offer and I say “no,” I mean it.
20. I am both super analytical and super emotive. I think logically about everything, including my feelings.
21. I ask tons of questions.
22. I will talk to anyone.
23. I will challenge you and all of your assumptions.
24. I will not allow you to criticize faith traditions from a strictly anti-fundamentalist standpoint. You will have to dig deeper than that.
25. I narrate my life through the lenses of loss, hope, despair, faith, logic, creativity and curiosity.
26. I will laugh until I cry, and cry until I laugh. You may feel like you are on a roller coaster!
27. I will be fatalistic sometimes and sit down (metaphorically) and not want to get back up.
28. I will get back up, and I will not allow you to not get back up too. If you try to hide the shit of your life and say it does not mean anything, I will force the issue as it pertains to us or your wellbeing. I will leave you if you refuse to help yourself grow the fuck up and deal.
29. I never get my car washed enough!
30. I will try and find an explanation for everything.
31. I will not allow you to make racist comments or jokes in my presence. I won’t let your family or friends do it either. If I think you do behind my back, I will leave you.
32. I will not like it when you refer to not doing something as being a “pussy.” The worst insult to most men is to call them a woman. I hate that.
33. If you tell me your definition of what it means to be a “real man in the world” but then you totally disregard that and act like a self indulgent boy, I will see your crap and call you on it.
34. I know how to use power tools.
35. I will want to do it on my own, even when I really need your help. I will hint at needing the help and hope you offer. Then I will say “No, I can do it on my own.” at least once before accepting your help.
36. I am on time, almost always. When I am running late, I am so late I will want to cancel.
37. My body will never be what it would have been if I had not gained 40 pounds in fourth grade, and learned to protect myself with food and fat. I keep working on this one.
38. I freak out about feeling the overwhelming weight of scarcity–of which there has been a lot in my life–but will still try to find ways to be generous in the middle of that. If you looked at my check book at any given moment, you may find that I spent my last $20 on you or doing something with you so you would not know just how bad it really is to be a poor chaplain. I walk around terrified about this much of the time.
39. I will explain when I do not have to because I will be afraid you will not love me for being human, needing things, or needing human kindness too.
40. I will analyze everything. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. I am working on letting go more and just being. This is hard for me, but I want to change so my life can have less anxiety over trying to figure everything out. I do not do well with emotional messiness, but I have plenty in my own spirit. I am sure that once I figure this out I will no longer need to analyze everything quite so much. (Irony intended!)

Can you handle Little Miss Imperfection?

So, I had to cut the latest date loose. Dear Lord! What is up with a guy being in his thirties and having “fish mouth” when it comes to kissing? (Think guppy or bottom feeder in the tank.) Ewwww. First, there was Woody Woodpecker with all the in and out, in and out of that jack hammer of a tongue, and now Fish Mouth! What is the dating world coming to?

I told Paparazzo–after properly grossing him out with a full on description of Fish Mouth–that I sometimes feel like I ended up on the Clearance Rack at a bookstore. All the best sellers have been scooped up. Some returned, mind you, but the best of the best were bought a long ass time ago. I somehow ended up next to: From Guy to Guru: Divorcees Do New Delhi and Accept Your Fetish: A Guide On How To Braid Your Nose Hair. Am I the rare first edition tucked under all the trashy novels and travel guides to Siberia? Or am I just sad story of yet another 30-something “great girl” who cannot find a good man gathering dust?

My thirties have been rough in the dating department. Let’s see: I spent the first 497 days a virgin. Not that good of a start, but also just the way my life unfolded. Thank God for day 498!! I loved three people these last five years, but only totally loved one of them. I have had sex with three people in my whole life, and made out naked with another 2.5. I realize I cannot put “2.5″ without some explanation…oh wait! Yes I can! This is my blog and I can do whatever I want! Let’s just say that only one of us was nakkid, which is why it does not really count all the way. I also have spent 61 of the last 76 months without sex at all! What is a girl to do? From a strictly statistical standpoint, these numbers do not bode well for my sexual future.

(Please do not post the statistical results of my sex-less future based on these numbers in the “Comments” section of this post. Give a girl a break. I will not be able to face myself in the mirror, let alone my destiny if I knew THE TRUTH. Ignorance is bliss after all.)

Now, let me just tell you: I make for a great girlfriend. In fact, I have been known to be the “exception to the rule” kind of girlfriend. I zig–in a very peaceful and understanding manner–when a guy thinks I will zag just because of my chromosomes. Need space to play video games naked? I understand. I need space to pluck my eyebrows, fold my sheets (I get too much pleasure from being able to fold a fitted sheet.), and blow fart kisses on Emma the Puppy’s belly. Not to mention, how can I talk about you behind your back if you are always around!?

I have a lot of compassion, creativity, humor, understanding, fun and intelligence to offer. And I cook too! I am never above helping–although I will resent you just a tiny bit if I Magic Erase your whole fucking house a couple of days before you break up with me–or too snitty to laugh at my own ridiculous behavior. I will even try and–brace yourself–change! Yes, that is right folks. I, Jacqueline Hope Derby, will change and grow the hell up if need be. I also practice forgiveness and unconditional love towards others and self.

And did I mention that I have only had sex 15 of the last 76 months? I am always down for making up for lost time.

How about those 40 reasons? Feel free to pass them along to any completely single, completely heterosexual man who reads books, eat vegetables, likes to go bike riding, enjoys witty whip smart women, and is willing to consider a woman who owes the price of a Ferrari to Duke Divinity School (oh and younger than 36–my age–is always encouraged). Here they are:

1. I think really fast.
2. I give Diana, Gladys and Roberta a run for their money in my car!
3. I own my share of sexy heels, but I am almost always in flats or sandals.
4. I will do the right thing even if it hurts to do it.
5. I can cook most anything I try, but I really should not bake.
6. I’ll laugh with you but not at you…okay, maybe at you sometimes.
7. I have a dog who can make a room warmer just by panting.
8. I can do puzzles, but I cannot park worth shit.
9. I color coordinate my bra and panties to what I am wearing.
10. I am honest and kind.
11. I would rather go for a walk or a bike ride than watch TV all the time.
12. I love to give massages.
13. I kiss like I mean it.
14. I am pretty much happy wherever I am.
15. I am weird and entertaining…at least that is what my friends say.
16. I once fed a boa constrictor a live chicken.
17. I over tip.
18. I like ice cream, but not too much ice cream. I will share.
19. I went back to finish my degree after flunking out the first go around, taking a 3.5 year break and changing majors–again! I also got my master’s from “The Harvard of the South.”
20. I know how to pop pop-corn on the stove.
21. I never sleep with homeless guys or idiots…call it my anti-fetish.
22. I dream of being a published writer.
23. I take imaginary vacations on the internet.
24. I love cooking for my friends and having dinner parties, but not a party girl at all.
25. I pump my own gas.
26. I like it rough and gentle…and gentle and rough…and then rough and gentle. I like it. I like it a lot.
27. I set goals and write them down. I make lists. I always put “have more sex” on both.
28. My mother says I am her favorite daughter. I am an only child.
29. I don’t chew with my mouth open…but I will laugh.
30. I am really good at listening, even though I love telling a good story.
31. I can order dinner without freaking out about needing to make a decision.
32. I am spiritual, not religious and super liberal. I am a minister.
33. I work stuff out over throwing temper tantrums.
34. I love good books, baths, and boys.
35. I rarely have too much to drink.
36. Everyone calls me “sweetheart.” I guess it is my vibe.
37. I like (this week) Damian Rice, Stevie Wonder, Sia and Bjork.
38. I never mind doing it myself, but I also will ask for help. I believe in Relationship Chi.
39. I love boy films over chick flicks.
40. I am game for anything.

I am trapped in the Rage Cage. I want to let go of all of my anger, but I just do not seem to be able to do this…yet. I feel my body, mind and soul overflowing with rage. Rage at The Bean for all the unanswered questions and betrayal. Rage at work for trying so hard, and rage because I leave feeling overwhelmed, overworked and angry. Rage at striving so diligently to heal the past because sometimes feel I got to the party too late…what is it all worth? Rage at not being paid a living wage. Rage at myself for feeling entitled even when I know better. Rage at Mother for putting even more pressure on me right when I need her to just swoop in and help me out, again. Rage at needing help at all; rage at needing help right now. Rage at my body for falling down before I could heal my heart.

I am trapped in the Rage Cage.

I will admit I once was an Oprah devotee. Certain moments stay with me. Maya Angelou saying, “You did then what you knew best to do. Now that you know better, do better.” A group of very angry lesbians talking about misogyny (an important topic that I agree with many of them on) and a woman in the audience asking, “If you hate men so much, why do you try so hard to look like them?” Damn! I just about died laughing, and to the credit of those amazing women, they did too. And then there was the time Andrew Vachss sat with Oprah for an hour talking about sexual abuse. Oprah’s public struggle to make sense of the sexual abuse in her past helped me to come out of the proverbial closet. I give her all credit for helping to debunk the stigma and for showing that women who have been raped can possess real strength and beauty.

She sat there heavily upon her chair speaking to him and not quite agreeing with him about the rage victims of sexual abuse carry with them. Andrew Vachss said, “Your anger is the weight you carry.”  She immediately understood and agreed.  Epiphany!

The light went on for me in that one sentence too.  Why am I here fifteen years later and still sorting this one out?

I had so much anger then. Anger at Daddy for dying, my sisters for leaving, my Mother for bringing John into our home, and anger at John for hurting me so profoundly my DNA altered. I write these things now and feel so little of the sting. No. The sting is not gone completely, but mostly now just makes me uncomfortable when the present reveals a place of vulnerability. So much of this anger has been released. As I spent the last few years working my ass off–literally–and saw the pounds slipping away one painful ounce at a time, I saw the anger melt and the Rage Cage lift.

I survived these last months in some part due to eating to lessen the blows to my shattered defenses. So much has happened to me this year that I find myself in a brand new Rage Cage. I keep sorting through all the reasons why I am so angry, and trying to figure out what I need to do to let go of this anger that is hurting me. I want to go back to the place where I feel free and strong, not where I eat to stuff down my rage at my circumstances and failed or flawed relationships. Now do not misunderstand, I believe anger is an important and healthy response…to begin with. I also know at some point we all must let go because the anger only destroys us like an insidious cancer. I can feel it eating away at my optimism, my spunk, my trust, and my openness.

Ultimately, I want my anger to morph into a fuel to empower me to love more, and love with a greater attention to detail. I realize this may seem strange, but “passion to love” is too similar to “passion to hate” for me to ignore anger’s power when it comes to love. Letting anger melt allows real love and intimacy to grow. I know, I have seen it happen in me before, but it seems to happen only when I let go of the past being any different. (Going back to my post on forgiveness.) Ultimately, I want it to empower me to forgive and practice grace and mercy towards myself and others. Practicing grace and mercy are key. Grace being the place where I extend unconditional favour, and mercy being the place where I extend unconditional abandonment of my expectations in the face of them not being met. I need both right now because I keep hearing myself saying–pleading really–both out loud and in my head, “I am just one person!”

As I rode my bike on Thrusday morning, I envisioned myself in the Rage Cage. I fell deep within its claustrophobic den out of all the anger I feel towards The Bean. Add to this the rage at myself for both hitting below the belt twice when he left and for not seeing it all coming down the pike, and my whole being felt oppressed. I see all the “trying” and all the ways I feel like I am failing, not just flailing about. I thought about what I needed and what I want, and I counted all the ways these go left unanswered. The bars just seemed to get stronger and press more tightly against my already ravaged body. I looked it over for a door, bars I might bend to wiggle through, a lock for a key or key for a lock…I just want a way out.

I do not possess the needed tools to just “poof” myself out of the Rage Cage. No fairy dust. No magic wand. I did, however, find rather unexpectedly a tear-filled conversation, with a small epiphany, helped alleviate my shrinking prison bars. My epiphany? Letting go of The Bean being wrong feels like letting go of my being wronged. Just admitting this all too human fact allowed grace and mercy to find me for a bit and for them to apply their tender balms of understanding and acceptance.

I cannot help wondering how much longer this will all take, but I also know that when I am no longer hurting to the point food makes it all feel better the Rage Cage will be lifting off of me.

I recently wrote about “Bastards and New Boyfriends.” Since then, I keep thinking about the last paragraph…about wanting someone who will hold me to the task of dealing with my life and letting go so I am really free to love without the shit of my life weighing me, and then us, down. I keep looking at what my niece Morgan calls “One horrible minute at the end of a relationship that caused you seven months of hell.” I keep trying to figure it all out, as if the past contains a secret I must decipher in order to be worthy of love in the future.

I want to let it all go, but I am still angry sometimes. Angry about how much more scared I am now than before I met The Bean. Angry at him for not treating me with respect when he left, and how that cuts at my self-esteem even when I do not want it to. Angry at myself for not being the “typical girl” about a lot of things. He always called me “an exception to the rule” because I do not act like what many guys expect from their girlfriend–I understand the need for alone time to play Half-Life every now and again–and I do not wig out easily. Should I have been demanding and dramatic and needy? “No.” And that answer leads me back to where I started: Content with who I am and how I act in the world. Glad not to be with “That Bastard,” and scared shitless I will carry Baggage a la The Bean, which will hurt my ability to give trust and my true “exception to the rule” heart to someone who will love and respect me.

Do I need to forgive him?

I spoke about this with my friend Harlot last weekend. I confessed to her that I lied to The Bean in April when I told him I forgave him. Bull……shit! He never even apologized. He only said, “Ditto.” to my apology and blessing for his life. I think of him as a total emotional coward, and I do not want to be that way. But how do you forgive someone who is not even sorry? Harlot’s take on forgiveness is that it falls into two categories: 1) Someone asks for it, and then it is up to you to accept and let go. You may not forgive them, but they did their part in the asking; or 2) You look back at the past and let go of it being any different than it was. You no longer replay every conversation, every moment, every move and try to figure out what you could do differently. You allow the past, even as horrible as it was, to stand. This is not a “get out of jail free card.” They are still responsible and accountable. You just let go of holding onto it and trying to shape the past into another form.

I think this idea of the nature of forgiveness is just brilliant.

I started off by saying, “I keep trying to figure it all out, as if the past contains a secret I must decipher in order to be worthy of love in the future. ” For this kind of forgiveness to come into my life, I must accept the past as it was. The Instant-Reply-Button has to be left alone. No more conversations with The Bean in my head. No more wondering why all of this happened. No more regretting the past. No more doubting myself and my ability to love. No more doubting my ability to pick the right person for my life. No more projecting his shit onto my own sense of worthiness. No more wishing it was different. Acceptance in my present of the truth of the past. It is just what happened, and I cannot change it anymore than I can change him.

I can, however, change myself and forgive the past for not being any different than it was.

Isn’t it funny how letting go of wanting the past to be different can be so hard? I mean, it already happened! I do not own or have access to a Time Machine. It’s not like I could–or would–go back. The acceptance still has not come easy. Why do we replay every moment when we know the outcome will be the same every time?

Charlie Peacock has a song called “Forgiveness.” I remember this one line…”The one thing we need more than to be understood or to be known is forgiveness.” How true it is.

I got tagged by Grace from 13 Graces for this little bit of fun, however, I am so new to the blogging world I know practically no one else who blogs! I got tagged “You’re It!” and now am sitting in the A/C enjoying a margarita and letting everyone else play on without me. Hope you enjoy these totally weird but true facts about me:

1. When I was a baby I screamed for a couple of months. It was so bad, my parents considered relocating me to the garage, per my pediatrician’s advice. He also said that “studies show these kids are really really smart.” Mother finds ways of working this into conversations as a way of saying, “My daughter has been brilliant since birth.” I always reply with: “Yes, Mother. I get that from Daddy!”
2. I had my mouth bitten badly by a German Shepard when I was 3. I still have the scars. My mother was getting mangoes, which she remains addicted to up until now. I have dreams where she is trying to get me to steal them for her. We are in full-on mango season now, so the nightmares shall commence shortly.
3. I went to private Christian school in Miami from 4th grade through 10th. Then I went to public again, but I dropped out my senior year. I ended up graduating the same day from High School that I moved into my dorm room at college.
4. When I was in late Elementary and Junior High, I volunteered at a wildlife rescue. I would catch chickens to feed to the boa. Gross, but fun.
5. I went to camp in NC most summers of my childhood. I would ride a small rodeo there each week, and do the Barrel Racing, Chug-A-Lug (usually hot Hawaiian Punch–yuck!), and the Hog Catch. My favourite was the Hog Catch-N-Wrestle where the pigs would be greased up with Vaseline and you would throw yourself in the mud to get them. My times were camp records!
6. I use a “u” in colour, favourite and neighbour in honor of my Grandfather from England. In fact, I love all things British, except some of the food!
7. I have perfect colour sense, much like some people have perfect pitch. I can remember colours like other people remember dialogue or music. I can also match colours perfectly. I was used as the “example of what to do correctly” while taking Colour Theory in college, but it was my Professor for Leonardo Da Vinci who told me it is called “perfect colour sense.” I am loosing some of the yellows as I get older or maybe because of not working with colour as much. I tend to second guess the yellows sometimes…but not always!
8. I cannot park my car worth shit. I have excellent spatial relationships outside of things. ..when I can see them from above. I would have made an amazing architect, but I suck at anything that requires me to use my body too. Parking, dancing, walking in a straight line, etc. I always end up crooked. Let me apologize now for bumping into any of you if we were to walk somewhere together.
9. I come from a matriarchy, and I love that. The women in my family are amazing and fun and a bit nuts. They also drive me batty sometimes with a ton of questions, but I also know they only ask because they are so interested in me and my life. They are my biggest cheerleaders.
10. I am a fan of the “third way.” I always think there is another way to look at something…not a compromise necessarily, but a third option. Example: I am not a fan of evangelicalism, but I do not think converting them to atheism is the only solution. I do think there is a way to reinterpret one’s faith and give up the certianty of a particular mindset while still finding a way to speak of faith without causing harm to self and others. I like to try and think of another way to get at something without just replacing the original idea with a mirror image, albeit a different one. In other words, don’t replace Fundy 2.1 with Atheism 2.1. What do you really have? You may still find Atheism 5.4 is your best expression of beliefs, but it is not just drop loaded as an “either/or” paradigm.

And for extra credit: I am moving my blog to my own site–still using Wordpress, but .org instead of .com–as of August 1st. Don’t worry, I will keep you posted on the move when it happens.

Until then BLOG ON!!!

In the summer of 1977–the summer Daddy died–a mango tree was planted in our back-yard. Dear friends of my family gave the tree to us shortly before they moved back home to India. The father finished his PhD at the University of Miami, so it was not too long after Daddy died that the tree was planted. Their six-year old daughter and I played and attended kindergarten together. I can remember jumping on the mattresses at her house. They sat on the floor, so her mother felt our safety was not endangered! Her home always smelled of warm spices. I can remember being jealous of the pretty red dot her mother painted so carefully on her forehead. I can remember the cool embrace of her mother and father, always so glad to see me come to play. Her parents’ car had rotten floorboards, so you had to hold up your feet. I loved watching the road go by, especially in the rain.

The tree commemorated my friendship with their daughter, Mother’s addiction to mangoes, and Daddy’s life. I can remember the father digging the hole and planting the tree. A small tree, with stakes and ropes to keep it upright. The hole was too big, but my Mother felt it would help the tree to mulch around it, so it was never fully filled in to the top of the hole. Year after year, the best of the table scraps, grass clippings, and refuse went under that tree. Even the dead bunnies from a prolific surprise by my rabbit Baron (who then became “Baroness”) went under this tree. The offerings to the gods never were as thoughtful or as sacred as what we offered our dear mango tree.

When we sold the house ten years later, we still had never tasted one mango off our blessed tree. She never bloomed. Not once.

We sold the house on 100th Street to a Greek Orthodox priest. He invited to his open house to see all the renovations he made to our old home. We walked through the house noting each change, including the central air conditioning we never had. My room was now an office. The interior garden taken out, paved and a big hot tub put in its place. The Buddhas and totems were gone. A huge satellite dish could be seen looming in the back yard. So much change, yet so much the same. We walked through the master bedroom and bath, then the laundry room, which put us at the very back of the patio and overlooking the back-yard. Mother and I saw it at the same time. The mango tree laden with fruit.

Mother turned to me and said, “It is time to go.”

Once upon a time, I dated Plant Geek. Plant Geek is getting a PhD in Horticulture from the University of Florida and works down in South Dade studying Mamey for his dissertation. His adviser went to Costa Rica for six months in 2005. Plant Geek house sat and dog sat in his absence, and this was the time of our dating.

We walked around the yard, moving between all the various fruit trees and plants. What else would you expect from a horticulture professor specializing in tropical fruit?! When we came to one particular mango tree, Plant Geek started to pick some of them off for me and Mother. He always considered himself to be her “Dealer,” given she really is a Mango Junkie. And what a good Dealer! More varieties. More mangoes. Needless to say, Ms. Audrey loved how it worked out that I dated Plant Geek during mango season!

As we stood under the tree, so laden with fruit, I thought of our tree on 100th Street. I told Plant Geek the whole story of our mango tree–even the dead bunnies–and how it never blossomed or gave us fruit. I told him about finding her drooping with fruit just a year later. I wanted to know one thing: Why?

He told me the answer was simple. We had been too good to the tree. Trees need stress in-order to bloom and give off fruit. Reproduction, which is what the fruit is all about to the tree, comes about when the tree gets scared it might die and so it sends forth the fruit to ensure its survival in the next generation. In commercial growing, he told me, they actually use drought and flood to force stress their trees into better production. Our tree never experienced a single stressful moment until we sold the house to a man not quite as dedicated to her nurturing. She did the only thing possible. She freaked out! She brought forth fruit for her survival.

Daddy died thirty years ago today, and his death ushered in a terrible drought in my life. From his death June 28th, 1977 until the one year anniversary, I saw more than some see in a lifetime. Daddy, Grammy, and my best friend from church all died. My sisters came to Mother and told her they never wanted to see us or have anything to do with us again. With them went their husbands, Aunt Clem and Grammy, before she died later in the Fall. Our dinner table went from nine to two in less than one month. I was molested for the first time the following spring when John asked me if he could marry my Mother. You might find this strange, but I do not think being molested was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Losing my family like that has proven to be the most powerful loss of my life.

I see six year-old girls and think about how innocent and little I was. Who of us can process so much loss at one time, let alone a six year-old? I still work at it. I get scared of losing those I love, and as a result, I get scared of loving too much. The place I see this the most is in my intimate relationships, and unfortunately, the only place to work on these fears is in an intimate relationship. I just cannot touch it otherwise. I do not know if I will ever find anyone who can love me through the adjustments…I thought I had, but I was wrong. I pray I do.

In the meantime, I embrace with gratitude all the love wrapping itself around my life. My Mother continues to be such a source of love, affirmation, help and friendship. She is one of my Soul Mates in life. My Sista is too. Who would I be without her? My own biological half-sisters left thirty years ago, but Sista has been in my life for the whole of it. Our blood may not be the same, but our hearts are one. She is my champion, best friend, mentor, and pain in my ass! Love truly is thicker than blood.

I have such amazing and lovely friends. My other soul mate is Tammy Wayne. I can always count on her to remember me, what I love, who I love, and celebrate my life. Paparazzo’s patience may have been pushed to the limits with all the grieving these last six months brought, but he never wavered in his love for me. Harlot never fails to call me. Paulina Ballerina always accepts me. Miss Douglas, Fundraiser, My Best Friend, the list goes on and on. I really do possess more love than I know what to do with from both friends and family. When I was ordained last fall, the most beautiful moment for me came during “The Laying On of Hands.” Being surrounded by all of these loved ones blessing me and my calling to walk beside all of God’s children surpassed any other moment of my life. I felt more love in that one moment than I had ever experienced in my life.

See. My mango tree is laden with fruit.

After a really funny conversation with Paparazzo last night, I thought I would share with you, my dear readers, my thoughts on the importance of a new boyfriend to help get over the last one. See, I am now in that place where I realize that although it is always possible that The Bean might gets scads of therapy, deal with emotional integrity towards himself and others, and actually apologize for all the cruelty towards me at the end of our relationship when he bailed and most likely had sex with his ex-girlfriend while I was at home praying he would finally be able to put her rejection behind him, I also realize it is highly unlikely. * I also think it is possible I might one day be a size 2, but only after being put away in the Internment Camps and starved for my beliefs…if I make it that long! I am built for a camp-fire roast, literally!

Being a realist–such as I am–I do not sit around and think The Bean will come back to me in any way shape or form. I also still miss him. I wish I never met him, and I miss him. As I said before, being smart and thinking about the things I do has been lonely in my life. The Bean has been the only person I ever met to really “get me” and want to talk about those things with me. I felt like my whole life opened up with him, and being so wrong about him left me devastated. Shit! Friends and family alike would come up to me and say, “He’s a keeper.” I did not know we would make it in the long term–he is an Atheist; me a real live Reverend–but I agreed with them from a character standpoint. I knew–just knew–in my heart that regardless of our love story, our friendship would be lifelong.

I was wrong.

So, I feel I finally have arrived in that place where I can see myself with someone else. I feel ready for New Boyfriend. I also know, there is nothing like New Boyfriend to help me get over the last lingering longing and thoughts about “That Bastard!” When I first started dating The Bean, I can remember thinking, “Oh. My. God. He is so wonderful. Thank you JESUS he is so amazing and different from Plant Geek!” I think the Number One Expectation we have in a new relationship comes from the place of our greatest pain with the last one; we want the new one to act as the total opposite of the old one in one key way. This proved true with The Bean. I never felt more beautiful or sexy than when I was with him. With Plant Geek, I never felt more ugly and undesirable.

Over time and while dating The Bean, I would think of Plant Geek and miss the fact I could cook for him and he would eat the vegetables off the plate without complaining or looking like he was about to throw-up. Never wanted to get back with him, but I could value certain aspects of him as he moved from “That Bastard” to “A Guy I Used to Date.” The Bean is still in the place of “That Bastard,” and only New Boyfriend can help move him along. Call it Relationship Physics. The only other force great enough to move a guy along in your heart–and not always–is for them to be arrested for a crime they committed. I think it is key for them to have actually done the offense, otherwise feelings of protection and defense for “That Bastard” will rise up and over take all the hard emotional work you did to get over him already. Nothing like a wrongfully accused ex-love to send a girl back to the Mint Chip, her therapist, and tissue box of tears while listening to “Stand By Your Man.” Now a good armed robbery, and the lingering feelings for “That Bastard” are gone!!!

I may have turned to Mint Chip Ice Cream to help me deal with “That Bastard” in the beginning, but I am now in a place of riding that shit off every morning at six on my Relationship Swag, aka my bike.  Now I am in a place where I choose New Boyfriend over the armed robbery. I do not get to have sex with the robbery scenario, but with the New Boyfriend…oh yeah…chicka bow wow.

I must take some responsibility for dating these bastards, otherwise I am destined to repeat the offense and be back here writing about it AGAIN in a year’s time. As entertaining as that may be for you, my poor heart needs more kindness than another round with an emotionally unhealthy guy. Of course the fact that neither of them were as emotionally healthy as I thought (or decided to perceive) is all on me. Plant Geek admitted he dated me because I was “so healing” given both of his parents are dead. The Bean admitted he dated me because of “being lonely.” My fault for dating both of them!

I realize I looked for men who had been through something because I have been through so much. I wanted it to be okay to have a complicated past. My niece, Morgan, lives with me right now. She said almost the same thing to me at the pool last night about her ex. She thought he “got her” because he had been through stuff. She said, “None of the guys in school are attractive to me because they have had it too easy.” Uh-oh. She too has been put through the wringer by her father, so she looks for the guy who won’t judge her for his actions. Just like me.

Maybe the right New Boyfriend is the one who will really think twice about all the shit I have been through, and the one who will really look at me hard to see how well I dealt with it, deal with it, and have a plan to deal with it, before offering his love to me. Someone who puts real value on emotional health and does not want to try to rescue me or teach me how to trust. Someone who expects me to do those things for myself. (See Red Flags on the Field of Love for more on this topic.)

And can he also read books, talk about real things, be kind, be funny, have a good job, want children, have beautiful thick thighs, AND eat vegetables?

Nahhh….that might be asking for too much…vegetables and funny???? What am I thinking!?

* One problem with dating is that I get asked “Why did you and The Bean break-up?” I still do not have a good answer for this, but given how badly saying “We were closer than ever, and forty-eight hours later his ex of fifteen months called and he left me.” has gone, I now have a new line. “It just did not work out because we are too different.” Every single one of these guys, plus some friends, tell me that he slept with her. The only explanation that fits. I actually asked The Bean the next night if he had slept with her. He said that he had not, but he also was pressed up against a wall (literally), looking at me with this look of horror, and telling me that he hoped I could remember who he really is because he could not. Not really understanding how all this happened makes answering the question bewildering as well. When I confronted him in the parking lot, he actually said, “At least it was not like I left you for greener pastures.” Uh-huh.

Again I find myself thinking about the nature of suffering and friendship because Paparazzo is on Percocet. He needs it. Fucked up ankles and broken bones require the good stuff. You can check out all of the pics on his blog, but here is my personal favourite:

I feel a bit nauseous looking at them, and then a bit guilty for thinking “cool.” He goes through all the gory details on his blog and at Free Ride South, but the long and short of it is doing something you have done a million times with success does not guarantee you won’t crash and burn at some point.

Frequent readers of my little blog know Paparazzo means the world to me. He is my best friend. I do not know how I would have made it through these last six months–in particular–without his sunshine in my life, let alone moved! Twice! I told everyone my move into a first floor flat was due to Miss Audrey’s knees, but really it was because Paparazzo would have K.I.L.L.E.D. me if he had to help haul my gorgeous green buffet down and up any more stairs, given it weighs around one million pounds. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to keep her friends!

You know, us girls tend to be much more expressive of how we feel in general, but also towards those we love. I always tell those in my life how much I love them and the neat things about them I just find to be the bomb-diggity. Take Paparazzo: He is brilliant, funny, annoying (in an endearing way), always on-time, kind, would help any friend or stranger, has an amazing eye, game (he did go with me to Jacksonville and back in one day just to see puppies for an hour), athletic, fair, a great employee and boss, a good listener, honest, and a treasure trove of worthwhile insight. I also think he is brave. When he first moved down to South Florida he knew basically no one, and time and again that boy has put himself out there to meet new people and make friends…let alone a love connection! In fact, we met because he saw Paulina Ballerina and me sitting at the bar of P.F. Chang’s (his own personal “Cheers”) and fought for the seat next to us. A grown-ass man drinking a Shirley Temple with his calamari caught our attention and the rest is history.*

So, dear reader, I love him. It broke my heart to see him laid up in the ER without any pain meds for two hours, so I did what any good chaplain would do. I became the sweetest pest around! “Hi. You’re Adam? I’m Jacqueline, Paparazzo’s friend. He needs some pain medicine.” To which Adam replied, “I am getting it right now.” And with honey dripping from my voice I said, “Goooood. It has been two hours, so I am glad you are on it!” Sharp look of: “Don’t let that fucking happen again Nurse Boy.” and the meds were delivered then, and later, promptly. Trust me. In these types of situations, I am at my best. Car repair, reconciling my checking account, and understanding the hearts and minds of men…not so much. Blood, guts, doctors, hospitals, drugs, interventions, craziness, and emotional break-downs…I’m your girl.

You know, as a Hospice Chaplain I get asked all sorts of questions about the nature of suffering. I cannot even begin to count the times I have been asked the whole, “But I was a good person; why is this happening to me?” question of the ages. I try to just sit with them over the pain of feeling abandoned by God or life. I know, from my own experiences, not much that I might think to say in the moment of touching such a profound sense of just how fragile and unfair life really is will help my patients and their loved ones. It never helps me. But, I do say to myself–in that small corner of my heart where I speak the brutal truth–”It is just your turn.”

Years ago I read a story in a women’s magazine about a woman who had a miscarriage. In times before, when her own friends had been through one, she would tell them things like: “It is going to be okay. You can have another one. This one was just not meant to be. God needed this baby.” As she lay in her hospital bed after her D & C following the loss of her baby, her friends poured through the door. One by one, they too offered empty words of support. Then one friend, a friend who had herself gone through the loss and pain of a miscarriage came to see her. Weeping the author pulled her friend to her and asked her, “Why did this happen to me?” Her friend replied, “It was your turn.”**

This story has been freeing to me in so many ways. Life is full of bad luck. We all stand in line waiting our turn at the window marked “Shit Happens.” Sometimes it is your turn. Sometimes it is mine. These last six months have been brutal for me. I still sometimes wonder how I will find my way towards life and love again. I do not want to be the one who has to get back up AGAIN and pick up the pieces. I do not want to be the one who hears the other person say, “Well, I treated you like shit, but I saw no need to apologize because I knew you could handle it.” I do not want to handle shit sometimes. Sometimes, I just want it to go the fuck away.

Yet when it was my turn, I got through in large part because I had wonderful friends and family who understood it was also my turn to receive extra measures of love and care. Paparazzo surely did. So, now it is his turn to be in Shitville, and my turn to stand beside him. I know it is hard to be on the receiving end–we all value giving over receiving–but the ebb and flow of friendship and life and love require give and take. Those who only take are users; those who only give, martyrs. True friends do a bit of both.

And have no fear. One day, I will again be at the front of the “Shit Happens” line and hear the teller say, “Next!” I know Paparazzo will be there for me then, even if he will claim that his old ankle injury will not allow him to haul my gorgeous green buffet anywhere!

*In reality, it was cranberry juice and vodka, but it sure did look like a Shirley Temple!

**Mad props to the original author of the article. I cannot remember the magazine, let alone the woman who wrote it. If you know, let me know.

These last few weeks the roller coaster I found myself whipping around on lacked any thrill or fun. My emotions all over the place–think Jackson Pollock–and the chocolate consumption has been at an all-time high. Hormones, regrets, dead people, poverty–take your pick–all had me feeling the crunch. I kept wondering to myself, “When will I get to the last of it?”

I can remember being in therapy at twenty-one and thinking, “all the pain of the abuse of my childhood will be worth it if my going through this helps it to happen less from now on in the world.” Then I realized by listening to other survivors’ stories, just how naive my thinking was. Total devastation at the time. I could find no line in the sand to draw…no bearing it so others would not have to…no end in sight. I found myself only one of many.

This realization touched off another more important understanding in me. I questioned my therapist, “I will never be over this, will I?” She told me, “No. And yes. Yes, right now you will find a way through towards life and wholeness. Yes, you can learn healthy ways of coping. Yes, you can get to a place where you are not terrified all of the time. You will also grow up and circumstances will change. One day you will no longer be afraid of someone touching you here (taking my hands and placing them in my crotch), but you will want them to touch you. You cannot face every piece of this at once, and life will bring the other pieces to you. As it does, you will have to look at them and deal with them, but you cannot prepare now for having a seven-year-old daughter and seeing yourself at that age. Just make a deal with yourself now that when those moments come, you will get the help you need. Don’t be afraid Jacqueline of needing to look at all of this again and again. Each time will be hard for its own reasons, but your emotional muscles to deal with what is coming up will be stronger too.”

I can remember after a good $100k of therapy (one three-week hospitalization helped propel the figure), my mother asked me when would I be”done.” Done? Damn! I was livid. I screamed back at her, “How the hell does a person who was molested almost every day for five years–and who had to try and commit suicide for it to stop–ever get DONE with dealing with that shit?!?” At the time, I sat in the mire and filth of my life. I owned it. I needed it. I wore my Girl Scout Survivor Badge with the neon lettering of MOLESTED emblazoned upon it. I held my head up high as I went to the Rape Support Group.

Over time, gentle imperceptible shifts occurred. I took off my badge. I stopped going to the group. I no longer needed to think about everything in my past in order to know life existed for me in my future. I did not find the last of it, but I found “the last of it for right now.” The shifts came again and again, and my therapist from the past was right. When something big reared its ugly head, if I got the help I needed I found my way. When John died. When I did my Advanced Bereavement Facilitator certification. When I decided to drop the walls of weight. When I found myself deeply loving The Bean and opening up all these magical rooms in my spirit I thought did not exist for me because of the molestation.

And then there is now; this terrifying place where I struggle to trust myself in the wake of The Bean’s shit. I get that he is not trustworthy, but I still cannot understand how I got him so wrong sometimes. This makes me question my ability to judge who is trustworthy in my life and to trust those I already love. I took a big hit to my own compass. I read the tea leaves wrong. I put emphasis where there was none out of my own desire to believe not only in love, but in love for me.

I have three personal holy days: my birthday, June 6th and June 28th. June 6th is holy because on that day my parents married in 1970, I was conceived–also in 1970–and my niece, The Older One, was born. I first connected with The Bean on June 6th last year, meeting him face-to-face the next day. Meeting him on my holy day gave our meeting greater import, I must admit. Fate. Destiny. Whatever. Not on that day, of course, but in the days, weeks and months to come. When I looked out five months later at my ordination and saw him there in the church–knowing in my heart what courage and love for me it took for him to be there–I felt like he was my “reward” for all the shit that ever happened in my life. He took on the role of being my “line in the sand.” My life before him somehow making sense because (at the time, of course) having him in my life connected so many dots, filled so many places of emptiness.

Now, I feel I must explain the emptiness. I need to protect my honor! My life has be characterized by a particular loneliness due to seeing the world in a particular way, being “scary smart,”and willing to question anything or anyone–including authority–right from the womb. No one “gets me” and usually people fall into one of two categories: 1) They love me as I am, but do not understand me; or 2) They feel the need to put me down for being who I am. With The Bean, I thought I found someone who not only cared about me but who also actually understood me and where I was coming from. I felt trusted for all of the ways I am such a complete “weirdo”–leaned into in those places instead of pulled away from.

Fast forward to this last Saturday. I stood in my living room crying my eyes out to Bubbie. As I cried, Bubbie gave me a big ol’ hug and said, “It is okay, you are just crying out the last of it now. It has been almost six months. It is the right time.”

I did not realize until Sunday night, while talking to Paparazzo, that the tears had his name on them, not The Bean’s.

See, Paparazzo does the Ft. Lauderdale Street Ride on Wednesdays. So does The Bean. When Paparazzo and I talked on Friday about all the ways the Ride fell apart with break-downs last week, his bike included, he mentioned how The Bean gave him a fucking bolt. Just a bolt mind you, and I had a world class melt down. I did posses enough presence of mind to get off the phone as quickly as possible on Friday. But the next day when I got a bit of shit for not being that into the sublime invite to maybe go to the movies, I lost it. Figuring out why proved hard. Why did Paparazzo mentioning The Bean make me flush with burning panic?

The tears with Bubbie were over losing my cool and falling apart (again! fuck!) with Paparazzo on the receiving end. I felt threatened. That horrible insecure place where my sick fantasy (or is it a nightmare?) saw The Bean and Paparazzo sitting around having one Mojito and one girly fruity drink with an umbrella (you get to decide who drinks what) and laughing about what a total nut-job I am. Maybe they would even talk about how I never seem to get over the whole being molested thing and the subsequent abandonment fears and how ugly I am and not that funny or cute or…or…or…?

I love Paparazzo. No friend has ever been more true to me–even if he is a total G.U.Y. and keeps his cards so close–or been more game to make me play even when I wanted to lie down and curl up in a ball. I just cannot bear the thought of losing him too.

The last of it had nothing to do with losing The Bean. He is long gone, which is good. The last of it–for now of course–had to do with being scared shitless that the losing won’t stop and finding my way back towards trusting my heart again. The same heart that knows without a doubt Paparazzo would never speak ill of me to The Bean.

There are all sorts of things I never think about any longer. Pain healed, forgiven, let go of, and forgotten. I would tell you about them, but I just do not remember. I do, however, know all about pain getting into those deep sacred places I rarely show anyone or even admit to possessing because they are so vulnerable to both love and loss. The Bean and his loss are in there, but so is all the love I have in me for Paparazzo.

Last week I gave my Hospice Team the Holmes Rahe Stress Scale as a quiz of sorts. Basically, if you score over 300 points you are in danger of being totally stressed out and having health problems. The scale gives a point value to major life events experienced over the last year. Now, you may need to assign a close value to something not exactly put in their terms. For instance, I gave myself a “60″ for my break-up with The Bean. I made this number up given you get 63 for the death of a close family member, and he is still alive to others, but pretty much dead to me (seemed only fitting). Feel free to go out and score yourself, but for fun (trust me–you are going to feel SO good about your life), let’s look at why I scored a whooping 862:

Breaking-up with The Bean: 60

Personal Injury or Illness: 159 (53 x Lyme Disease, Mono, & the Chicken Pox)

Change in the Health of a Family Member: 44 (Aunt Charlyne’s Cancer)

Sexual Difficulties: 39 (I am 36, was a virgin until 31, and keep dating men whose emotional issues impact their libido. In other words, I have not had nearly enough sex.)

Gain a New Family Member: 39 (God love Emma, but a new puppy is w.o.r.k.)

Change in Financial State: 76 (Went from poor to making it back to poor again with my recent move and new puppy.)

Change in Frequency of Arguments: 35 (I feel M.A.D. about the “business” of chaplaincy at work and get all feisty about it all the time.)

Change in Responsibilities at Work: 29 (I should get more given my new job changes our requirements all the time.) 58 (One time for the bull-shit requirement to spend 60% of my week in direct alive patient care, with another 20% minimum working on bereavement. I am not listening to anyone after awhile with over 30 hours required per week, plus four hours of Team Meeting, and driving around over an hour a day, and making appointments, and having to work from home but go to the office to chase paperwork in triplicate, and…well, that is why I gave myself the other 29 points. Constant failure.)

Outstanding Personal Achievement: 56 (Once for being approved for Ordination, and once for the Ordination itself.)

Change in Living Conditions: 50 (Lived with Parental Elements, lived with Biker Girl, living on my own–THANK YOU JESUS!)

Revision of Personal Habits: 24 (I have lost, gained, lost, gained, and now am losing the same fucking 10 pounds.)

Trouble with Boss: 23 (I just know I will be fired any day now for being out of compliance at work–see above–and dread seeing the Supervisors as a result. I just cannot physically keep up, let alone emotionally, so I decided to give myself these points too.)

Change in Working Hours of Conditions: 20 (Wow! What changes!)

Change in Residence: 40 (Moved twice in six months this last year.)

Change in Recreation: 19 (Got back on a bike after 20 years and loved it!)

Change in Church Activities: 19 (The move north has taken me further away from church.)

Minor Loan: 17 (Refinanced with the Bank of Mom.)

Change in Sleeping Habits: 16 (Back to waking up to go see dead people in the middle of the night.)

Change in Eating Habits: 45 (see above personal habits)

Minor Law Violation: 11 (I bumped into a car parked illegally behind mine, but the damage to my insurance has been worse than the $804 in damages to his car.)

Christmas: 12 (Although, I did not celebrate it this year. I just worked and cried my eyes out missing The Bean.)

So, in summary, it is amazing that I am not dead. Plus, they did not factor in being shot at or having to call 911 on your roommate’s ex while he beat some guy at the house. Maybe we should just round my score up to an even 1000? And to think my score would have been under 100 prior to August 2006. In other words, all these life changes happened in the last nine months! Yet here I am, still funny and everything! (At least I think so.)

Yesterday I attended the death of a patient whom I really cared deeply for. Now there is no code at work to put down for when you just feel sad some days because people you care about and care for always die. Shit! This is Hospice after-all. I see how I need time to mourn all these deaths so I can go on to the next ones. So, yesterday I mourned a bit for the patient who died in the morning and for two others I really loved who died last week. I know part of what makes me good at what I do centers on letting people in my heart. I would not have it any other way, but I also must let them back out a bit when they die.

Funny…I did not intend to write any of this aspect, but now seeing it in black and white I realize how much I needed to say I do not work unscathed.

What I started to say was that the family of the woman who died commented to me about what a peace and glow I seem to project. Now yesterday I KNOW “glowing” did not get checked off in my beauty regime. I woke up late, felt like shit, had paperwork from the day before, and found myself with wet hair, no make-up, and still in my pjs when I received the call to attend the death. I walked out of the house within 10 minutes. The dog taken out, clothed, in my right mind, with blow-dried bangs (only) and make-up, but I looked less than my best! And I still glowed? How can that be?

I really do believe the reason I walk upright–even though these last months required some major lie down and cry time–centers on my attitude towards the shit of my life. Yes, I currently may be a stressed out mess in some respects, but I choose to be a funny, sarcastic, horny, wicked, kind one at that. I know recently I have been bitching about not wanting to always have to be resilient, but maybe there is just no other way to be in this life. Otherwise, I might end up with the shit of my life–much of which I have no fucking control over–weighing me down completely. Stubbornness possess gifts too. I try to focus on those elements I feel powerful over, and my reactions always are within my control. Do I get all Snappy Bitch sometimes? Hell yeah! Can I almost always be talked off my limb? Yes. Mostly, I know Love never leaves me and will always be stronger than death. (See Song of Solomon 8:6-7)

I look back at all of this and think to myself: “Damn girl! I am so fucking proud of you!”

If you do not read Post Secret every week, you are missing out. I always laugh and cry. I find someone I can relate to deeply. Sometimes it just scares me shitless…

I told Fundraiser when he called me for my birthday in February what mine would have been…

I did not tell him about wanting to kill myself. I kept promising myself I would go for my final swim in the Keys when I could no longer tolerate the pain. I did not want Fundraiser to know just how bad it had been. In fact, I got Emma to try and stay alive. I almost didn’t get her. In the end, I figured I was due some unconditional love just about then. If I had not gotten her, I am not sure I would have made it this time.

I tried to commit suicide in sixth grade. Thirty-six aspirin one afternoon at school. God only knows why I did not die. I also had a pretty good plan when I was 17 and in Jamaica on Choir Tour with church. The Jamaica trip served as a turning point in my life. I finally went to get help for all the buried shit from my childhood. I told the truth for the first time. I said, “John touched me.” I told my mom the day I got back from Jamaica. And I worked and worked and worked. I used to believe I worked it through enough to never want to do it again. I am smarter than that now. I know how once you try it trying it again is not all that difficult. But I would not try; I would succeed.

Working as a “Mental Health Professional” of a kind means I know what happens if anyone finds out about your plan. You get locked up. I do not want to be locked up, so I keep the times I feel utter despair to myself. I think of despair as “negative hope.” Given how I see hope as having an imagination things will change, or how they might change, despair looks like things not changing at all. Of course, I do think of suicide as hopeful because it means things can change once and for all. My lifetime of suffering (not the only stories–I know) will come to an end. No more rejection. No more heartache. No more isolation. No more loneliness. No more fear. No more struggling. No more panic.

I see now how I wrapped myself in the warm comfort of ending it all after The Bean left and extinguished my star from his sky. The irony? I do not know how I would have made it through those really awful nights, days, minutes, seconds without its tender embrace.

I do not live in this same space now. How do I know? I am talking about it. I speak the truth of my secrets…posting them even. Plus, I no longer protect or censure what I say about The Bean. I did in the past under the heading of “just in case he comes back.” Now I feel I can say whatever I damn well please!

Want to know another secret? I still find joy in being me and in my life. I am just ridiculously optimistic like that even if it is hard-won.

I stood outside of my first apartment in Durham, North Carolina a few weeks into 2000 talking to Ms. Audrey and walking Gretchie. I asked my Mom, “What is it called when it is raining cats and dogs, but it is snowing?”

“It is called a blizzard,” she informed me.

“No. No. They are only calling for another three to five inches to the two we have on the ground.”

I awoke to 24 inches the next morning, in non-prepared mid-South! I can still remember walking Gretchen the next morning and she was buried up to her neck in pure white snow under a blazing blue sky. We were officially buried in, and would not get out for days. A lone voice above us called out, “That is too funny! Ginger is buried in the snow!”

The voice belonged to an upstairs neighbour, with whom I had a mutual friend but did not know very well. That was about to change forever, because from that moment on Handy became one of my best friends in the whole world. She saw my Inner Sex Goddess way before I ever did, she made me laugh like no one else, taught me to drink Margaritas, and got me into more trouble than I feel comfortable sharing–even now!

We both grew up in South Florida, and found all sorts of connections even though Ft. Lauderdale and Miami really are worlds apart. (Something I really appreciate now that I live in Broward.) We found connections in our common struggle to deal with our hearts and not satisfy our needs with food. We found a fellow sojourner in the delicate dance of life. We found understanding and a bit of boot-to-ass-kicking as well. We ate at Chuck E. Cheese and shopped at the sex store! Soul mates of a sort.

The years have pulled us up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Our friendship has ebbed and flowed like the tides, but our love and belief in the other remains steady regardless. The silver chord of love binds us throughout all these changes, even when it has not been easy…even when one or both of us wondered if it would break.

We have never been mean to one another. We just retreat back into our own worlds, busyness, and pain sometimes. You can call me and get the low-down in the conversation. Handy always puts a happy face on things unless you are in front of her and she dishes it out. She needs a warm up, and I need the cool down. When we lived in the same place, the rituals of friendship came easily. When we live apart, I never really know how to reach past the miles and get her to open up unless she needs to really talk to me. I feel bad when I talk and she does not. I love there to be balance in my relationships…ebb and flow of the energy.

But she can call me any time. One word and I am there, and I know that she would do the same for me. The word came the week before last and it said it all, “tumor.” They found a lump in her breast. An operation, a biopsy, a week, and she has breast cancer. Stage One. They caught it early. Best possible kind, if you must get it at all.

Fuck that noise! My dear friend has breast cancer. I hurt in my body for her. My aunt has cancer Handy has cancer, who else? Am I next? It could happen to me too. They buried the six year old from it. The poison is everywhere. None of us are immune, and yet I am not afraid.

I know what will come, will come. I will not hasten it, nor will I pretend that it cannot happen to me. I will savour my life and my relationships. I will strengthen the silver chord of friendship as I can, so that it might bind me to those I love, and them to me, so that when life pulls on it those I love will know I am only a phone call away.

Handy is a part of “Back of the Pack Walkers,” a group whom raises money for Avon’s Breast Cancer Walks. She joined this group long before she found out that she had cancer. If you would like to donate to them click here.

In honor of this being “Social Workers Week” or something like that, I want to honor the Social Workers I know and love:

First let me honor the LCSW in North Carolina that I started seeing just before my thirtieth birthday. I began working at UNC Hospitals doing paid on-calls, and I felt I needed someone to help me process my work. I also wanted to look at why I pushed sex away and the boys it comes with.  I can see myself clearly at that time, so confident in my inner strength and so fragile when it came to my outer self.  I wore my shirts buttoned all the way up, save the top button.  (A big change from college 10 years before when the top button would have also been snagged.)  Hair done, make-up in place, but always on the outside shielded by body fat and clothes.  They did not, however, protect my core from longing.

I remember sitting there in her office listening to her ask me why I had come to see her, taking a big gulp of air and blurting out, “I am about to be a thirty year-old virgin, and I do not want to stay that way forever!” She really helped me to process how I thought of my body, how I saw myself as a whole person, and to embrace the sexual woman within. I asked myself some rather hard questions with her, and she supported me in finding answers from within my own ethic and sense of my spiritual commitments. With her help, I embraced my abilities as a chaplain, my femininity, my desires for my life, and my dreams for my future.  I also had sex for the first time and began a really important walk out of the walls surrounding me and towards my own inner vision of myself in the world.  Finally, outside and inside began to merge.

Then there is my friend Darling.  She works in a similar setting to my own now, but she has also been around the Social Worker block helping troubled kids and families. What an amazing woman she is! She lives for the thrill of working hard to help people. God forbid she get bored on the job–or in life for that matter!  That woman loves the go-go-go pace and has the heart to keep at it. She gets it, and not just about those she helps (including her friends) but also her clients. I trust her radar, even if she did think that The Bean would be back. Everybody is wrong sometimes…I won’t hold it against her! Mostly, what I love about her is that she knows herself and her own places of weakness, pain, growth and strength. She can articulate the ways she has had to grow up, and she never puts you down for needing to grow up too. She will kick your sorry rump if need be, but not so much that you doubt yourself or her friendship.  If I need a practical and hilarious take on my life, I turn to Darling.  I call her my “Relationship Sponsor,” from my fictional group Relationships Anonymous.  She really needs to start this up for real because we are all so screwed up in the head about relationships it seems.

Lastly, I want to honor my Team Social Worker. She too just gets it…I think it is a requirement for Social Workers! She sees that there are those we can really help and is not afraid to step into the fray and do what needs to be done. She is practical and diplomatic. She can roll her eyes with the best of them. She is dedicated and works very hard. She will move her schedule around to help get things facilitated and will stand up to a family or patient in such a way that they might even from time to time thank her. She is smart and kind, which is sometimes a hard balance to keep. She really cares about the staff on our team, and I know that love and care is something one cannot buy with a paycheck.  I know how blessed I am to have her to be both a colleague and a mentor.

Mostly, these woman demonstrate something really important to all of us…they deeply understand and live by the knowledge that life is a process. There are no quick fixes, cause if there were they would be using them to make their tough jobs easier! No. They willingly walk beside people with both practical and emotional problems and provide comfort to them as the pain of the process unfolds. Change is terribly hard. Transformation from worm to butterfly requires shedding all that was past in order to unfurl into what is possible. These three women never look at anyone in the pain of the cocoon of change and judge that or demean that process.

So here is to them and to all of the other Social Workers out there leaning over our cocoons and whispering into our ears and hearts, “Change little butterfly, change.”  I honor you.