Star Date: Thursday, Oct 21
Lest anyone over-romanticize the previous entry regarding Thurday Night, here’s the really skinny on the lead-up to that lovely evening.
• Drop elder child at school. Take younger child to birthday party of 4-year-old buddy from Missional Cooperative. (In Edmonds…45 minute trip)
• Drive home the wrong way. Turn around to pick up younger child’s kitty cat ears at birthday house. Search house for kitty cat ears. Find kitty cat ears in car. Call friend on cell phone while driving. (Always a bad idea.) Confirm Turkfest plans with ELIGIBLE BACHELOR professor/dad. (Yes, he is “looking” … adopted daughter is adorable.) Return younger child to babysitter. (An hour and a half late.)
• Feel grateful that new pals/ThPMers Mel and Jen are making soup this week!
• Get phone call from Mel. She’s locked out of Jen’s apartment building and can’t figure out how to ring Jen.
• Make Sudan memorial and prep materials to “practice the practice” of Compassion. (petitions, fund jar, intercession candles.)
• Get second call from Mel. Find out her sister (28 weeks preggers) is headed to the hospital b/c amnio fluid is too low. Pray.
• Continue artsy process after babysitter leaves and elder child returns from school. End up strapping both children into car seats to drive to paint store for spray paint to disguise shoebox. Work obsessively on project while kids whine until I turn into a screaming banshee. Stop. Pay attention to kids. (Sidenote: Wonder what construction workers in backyard think of such yelling…being as one of them is husband to one of my mentors.)
• Folks arrive to ThPM. Many people are MIA. (Remember when people used to tell me if they weren’t coming?) Feel schizophrenic b/c I am simultaneously sad folks aren’t there, and delighted with lovely folks who are there. Think “even though I didn’t have to cook, this was an awful lot of work for a little group of already-Christians.” Simultaneously think “I love what I do.” Def. Schizo. (Check out all my insecurities!)
• ThPM (see previous entry.) P.S. Ian (age 3) drums our sung dinner prayer on the floor of the living room b/c he doesn’t like to hold still or sing. Later, jazzed and overly tired, he spins on his tush in the middle of the dinning room and tells me about fire trucks. Love that kid.
I’d like to meet Ian. He sounds like my kind of guy.
I’m completely familiar with the schizophrenia that you mention. Especially in regards to being sad missing the folks who aren’t there, and happy for hte people who are. One day I think my gang is going to shoot me.
I know they’re going to, if I say, “I’m thinking a lot about what church is” one more time
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Ummmm………I honestly mean no offense, but as a mental health professional, it really hurts to see the word “schizophrenia” tossed around so easily.
I think what you are getting at is a feeling of ambivalence, but you compare that to an illness that is agonizing for those who live with it every day. Ambivalence is not a pathological condition, schizophrenia is.
I guess my mother-bear instincts kick in when I think of clients and their families and I want to advocate on their behalf. Movies and tv still depict schizophrenics as having the same condition as those with multiple personality disorders (totally inaccurate). Schizophrenia is not about being of two minds or about being “split” — it’s about living every day and not trusting your own reality.
Sharon,
Hi. Welcome to the blog. I don’t know how long you’ve been reading. If you’re new to the blog you may not realize that I refer to feeling schizophrenic fairly regularly. It’s a term I’ve intentionally adopted as a writing technique. I’ve been wondering if someone would object to it, and as a mental health professional, I can understand why you would.
I too have had extensive exposure to people who are mentally ill and who suffer from schizophrenia. I’ve worked with the homeless population in a number of settings and there is quite a bit of schizophrenia there. Also, the church I’ve been a part of for the past 15 years has often been 10% or more indigent, and we’ve walked with people through undiagnosed and untreated schizophrenia. So I don’t use the term lightly or without knowledge.
What I’m trying to describe here is not amibvalence. I truly feel like much of the time I can’t really trust my reality…or perhaps more precisely, I can’t really ascertain what my reality is. Am I a person living in true and consistent community? Or am I just so diabolically insecure that I’ve shaped my whole life around holding a little group together so that I feel like I have friends? Do I believe in a God who is present and who pours out a spirit which heals and changes life? Or am I just participating in some sort of grand self-deception which helps me get through my days? Most of the time I live in the most positive of two possible realites. But sometimes I slip into the others. And while I recognize this is not a clinical condition, it does feel like something significantly more than ambivalence. It has action and force to it, and it feels largely beyond my control. It’s not every day…but I do often question what I can call my own reality.
I’m sorry if I’ve caused you offense. May God Bless you and the souls you serve.
R
Thanks Rachelle — I appreciate your clarity and candor. I have been enjoying your blog for a short while and really appreciating the ministry of your community. It appeals my own spiritual journey (sometimes more appropriately referred to as “the long and bumpy road to God”) and the struggles/joys that happen along the way.
You do important stuff here — thanks!!
And thank you for clarifying your use of the term schizophrenia. I get it now.
Sharon