Melancholy Faith???

It's been quite a while. What is up with me? What is up/down in me? The last couple of weeks, maybe a little less, I have just been in a stupid state of mind. I have been very introverted. I have been extremely, did I say EXTREMELY, moody. I have been sad. I have been pensive. I have been deep. Of course, I have acted shallow. As I fight my way back to a more user friendly, updated and improved being, words travel across the confines of my partially functioning brain. The word melancholy sits in my mind. So that's it? Often when I am driving, my conversations with God overcome the stereo and the traffic. (Good thing I am in His hands and that HE is the distraction instead of other things) My faith has become melancholy faith. It is there, but it is in a saddened, depressed refrain. How, Why is it so easy to slip into melancholy faith? I will try to decipher some of it as words form from somewhere inside. I am encouraged that in the last year we learned that Mother Teresa had moments of melancholy. I have not taken the opportunity to learn more, I just remember it being on the news that she had moments of darkness, extreme sadness, disappointments, poor self worth and constant questioning of her life experience. We start a new Bible study tonight at Mt Horeb. We will be doing Beth Moore's A Woman's Heart.......God's Dwelling Place. She asks that we make the following prayer a constant plea, especially over the ten weeks of fellowship. "Lord, open my mind that I might have understanding." I often think this has been a portion of my melancholy faith. I want understanding. I have always pursued it yet it eludes me much of the time. 2007 was an extremely rough year, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I guess it is common that as a year comes to a close we tend to relive and try to evaluate and pray for understanding. That is what I have been doing, basically finding myself in a trance as 2008 has turned the calendar page. Is my faith really still in place? Was it strong enough in 2007 or the years prior? Has it ever really been strong enough? How do we know? Lord, please give me understanding. I suppose I really need to ask Him to open my mind more. Take the cobwebs away. You know, you knock them down, throw them away, but in no time at all, there they come back again. I have had a lot of cobwebs overtaking my emotions this past year. Yet while driving this morning and praying for 'something' GOOD, Lord, please......... I flashed back to a little blonde haired girl on an early Sunday afternoon. I remember the little girl coming home from church, changing clothes and skipping outside while my mother likely was frying incredibly tasty chicken. (Often I would find myself sneaking inside the kitchen to 'snatch' a tiny morsel of fried chicken liver and try not to get caught in the act....) I would take off to my daddy's pond, yards away, yet visible from the kitchen door. I would run across the worn and well used dam into the sunshine speckled from the trees that stood guard nearby. I would marvel at the leaves, especially the star shaped gums, marvel at the shimmer of light across the rippling water, scurry to spy a turtle or a frog and tadpoles in the murky depths. The minnows would always make an appearance; all one had to do was pop a crumb of old bread at them. The little girl would stand there, then sit there, crouch there taking everything in to the greatest details. She would sing the hymns and congregational responses from the church services. Create in me a clean heart, Oh God..........Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below, praise Him above you Heavenly hosts, Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost...........Jesus loves the little children................. And then I've remembered and buried inside the darkness that sometimes was there with me. The darkness in many ways that came from childhood molestation that often happened there. That is all that needs saying for now. My praising and loving was taken advantage of. My faith and innocence was intruded upon. The cycle of melancholy beginning at an early age that I would not accept healing until approaching it this past year. It is a work in progress and I ask HIM for understanding. I ask for forgiveness for whatever faults I played in misguided affections. I ask for the returned freedom that the little girl be released to be who she was intended to be at that time.........happy, joyful, naive, and trusting in dreams. To be, and to remember a little girl with the huge praising and pure faith of a child.

What I desire is for that degree of first faith to return to me. I believe that unless we are truly a child, we lose objectivity in the miracle and trust in God's presence. It dulls with age and experiences, gets questioned by the influences of different surroundings and by other people around us. It is the faith that is born into us when He first thought of us; unique to each individual and just maybe it (that inborn, inherited faith of first breath) eludes us until the hour He calls us back to His open arms in the Heavenly realms.

And so the posting has gone long. But, it gives me new hope that in the first days of a brand new year, I can become 'new' again in a lot of ways if I accept and allow it to happen. The prayer I need from you is that I can look forward optimistically instead of lingering with hurt and guilt over things past. That a good harvest is coming after many longstanding trials for our family. That the time has come for sunshine to overtake shadows if I will let it light a new path to finding Annette, with blessings for all the Falls family, present and breathing.

Waiting and Wanting

Sunday, December 16, 2007

How long must we wait sometimes? I have been struggling with waiting...............for some time now. Sometimes, actually to be truthful, I often find many reasons to question the sincerity of my faith, but when I dig deep I know it remains. I know it has always been inside of me from the time I was a mere child. I've not shared but with very few that as a tiny little girl I would pray to the angels to give me wings so that I could visit Heaven and crawl upon my grandmother's lap. She died when I was too young to remember anything about her, other than I wanted to be with her so far away. There was like a hero aspect I placed upon my grandmother. This longing to return to her has never left and I believe one day she will be the one to greet me at the gates of Heaven, and I will know her fully. As a little girl I was told about Jesus and His birth at Christmas and that Mary was so loved by God that she was His chosen one. For many years in my immature mind, I envisioned being loved so much by God that I would be chosen. I also vividly remember being told and later reading the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. Oh, how I wanted to be so loved that I could have a coat like his. I know, it was silly. It was the innocence of a child without years of experience to learn different thought processes, more realistic comprehension. I remember praying desperately that God would suddenly make my daddy's leg like new. Sometimes I felt that us kids had done something to cause him so much pain and trouble with his leg. That was before I understood what WWII was and what it did to the soldiers who fought for us against great evil. I remember hoping that my cousin Ricky would one day be able to leave his wheelchair and walk like all the rest of us. Ricky had polio when he was little and it took from him his ability to use his legs. I read many a book about individuals with disabilities and I took it all into my heart. There were two books I remember especially about a girl named Karen who had cerebral palsy and what her family endured. How they hoped and prayed that she could get better if they did this and did that. She had black labs and they would love on her and encourage her and I believe they even helped her maintain a sitting position, assisting her from falling over. I would always gravitate towards kids in my school who were 'different' somehow, physically and or cognitively. I would lag behind and wait to hold doors open for them to enter a school building. I remember going out of my way to speak to others and perhaps to simply 'touch' another on an arm or a shoulder when I would be out and about and my radar would sense a different presence close by. However, this does not mean that I prayed for a special needs child. God saw fit to give me one, all the same. People say we such mamas are chosen; I have mixed feelings about that thought. As in the beautiful words of Mary's Song that is frequently heard for Christmas, I wonder like other moms in my shoes, " if a wiser one should have had my place?" Clay's huge focus the last several months has been the increasing desire to 'work' for his living. He dreams up job after job, fixates upon them and sees absolutely no limitations in his mind that he be able to work. He wrote to his aide recently, "I do not want to work at home. I want to go work at an office!" Last night and today it has been State Farm Insurance.............writing on the computer like a good neighbor, state farm is there. He asked yesterday for ties, three dress shirts and a coat (sports jacket) for his work clothes. So I try really hard to appease him in however manner I can create. In my heart, I cry because I do not have the power to provide him with the abilities he desperately needs to function in any capacity outside of our home environment. I tire because he continues to grow heavier, desiring greater independence and I just seem to grow weaker in meeting his needs by myself. For a very long time, I felt for sure my faith was too weak and inadequate because if it were strong enough, Clay would have overcome the most disabling of his physical abilities. My faith should have made him well............it hasn't. I now try really hard to comprehend that it does not mean I have little enough faith for changes. I try, some days more successfully than others, to accept that God made Clay this way for a specific purpose that we are yet to fully understand. I try to hold to belief that God works His will and that He will continue to provide our needs, especially concerning Clay. Tonight as he was dreaming about being an insurance guy, (his words), I told him that I dream about being something different too sometimes. That I ponder what I would be doing in a job outside of home. To wonder about success and the ability to assist with household costs and have something of my own earnings and discretionary freedoms. Sometimes I wonder if our marriage will bear fruits of positive changes and flexibility. Sometimes I wonder if Clay is the glue that has kept us from giving up on one another at times. As long as we have him I think God will always make inside of us responsible beings who cannot walk away because we grow tired and frustrated with the constant demands that have little to no resolutions at this time. How long yet before steps of resolution seem hopeful reality? And so I wait and I want. Sounds and seems awfully self centered now that I actually put physical words to the longing. I want to feel a greater sense of accomplishment from 49 years of living. I am curious about who I might have been, what I might have attempted, the difference in surviving the financial stresses that have all been upon Fred's stooping back. Please, I am not soliciting anything from you unless it would be prayers. I am merely trying to make peace in my heart with things that have weighed heavy upon me for this last year. Perhaps writing some of it down will help me master a different, more positive perspective. Prayerfully God will intervene in all our lives with greater peace, greater hope and understandings. I need greater patience for perseverance and stronger character. I need to understand that waiting and wanting can be very different from hoping and needing. I pray that His mercy and grace will rain upon each and everyone of us in ways that we cannot question His everlasting presence in our lives. I pray that the true meaning of Christmas spills from our very hearts and fills us with renewed hope and greater faith and witness to His glory. Love and hugs, Annette

Love, Joy and the Search for Peace

I am cheating with this one. Written and sent out as an email last week, but I can copy it and use it as a posting too, I suppose. Wishing you all Love, Joy and Fulfilling Peace....................Annette

Love, Joy and the Search for Peace

Thursday, December 6, 2007 @ 10:30 PM

The following was what God placed upon my heart exactly a year ago tonight........I have experienced great love and numerous joys in the passing year. It has also been perhaps the most difficult year of my entire life in various manners that some of you have prayed diligently with me and for me. Tonight our Bible study sisters shared a devotional centered around the concept of peace. I have missed peace much of this last year. I am not alone. Many if not all of you have struggled with your own issues of peace and what it includes in your daily life; in the walk of faith. I will ask God to give me the words He would like me to share in the coming days at this computer screen. I will send them on to cyberspace for those who feel lead to open up an email from an ordinary girl who often feels way more seasoned and beyond the sweetness and naive understandings of a mere girl. In a couple of weeks I will have journeyed 49 years as a child of God. Seven times seven. My prayer is that the next sequence of seven years (especially my rapidly approaching 50th year!) will look more favorably upon my family and all those I love, and yes, especially more favorably upon me......self compassion, not self pity, right? I am searching for a special peace that withstands all things. I find it sometimes. Sometimes, very joyfully, it sits for a considerable spell. Other times it is as fleeting and momentary as a snowflake on a sunny day. You know exactly what I am trying to write. We have all been there, restless and longing for more. So tonight as I get ready to turn in, I pray for peace. For you, for yours, for me, for mine, for our world. I love you all for the joy you bring to me, especially on those frequently cloudy days. Despite the SC drought, I seem to have had many a cloudy day............truthfully, I've experienced and sought to survive turbulence of grand magnitude the past 365 days.

PEACE......................may we all find our way together!

Merry Christmas with love, hugs, kisses and joy in this moment, Annette

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Annette's Joy

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Merry Christmas Everyone! I've not written for a couple of months and I am sure some of you have delighted in my quietness.........sometimes it becomes necessary to be still and be silent. To say that I have not missed writing and sharing would be false as I feel more 'authentic' when I sit at this screen and let fingers roam freely, not knowing, as now, what will result. Partly my silence has been self imposed for reasons I am not completely certain of, except that all of us have moments that we feel insecure in our words, our actions, and maybe even our motives, and if one, individually, can make a real difference in this life.

I have just returned from our Bible study Christmas gathering and what a difference this incredible assembly of sisters makes in my life. Sometimes I forget the significance when we are apart for a while, and then all it takes is another small segment of time to reconnect and refuel another spirit. Tonight we spoke of JOY. The joy of Jesus' birth and how the shepherds rejoiced. How joy is sometimes small and difficult to find or to comprehend, and at other times, joy is all apparent.

I have had many moments of sheer joy in the last several months....my parents' 60th wedding anniversary, Thanksgiving with my family clustered close around me in our home, sharing with and loving on the fellow residents of Lowman Home where my parents now reside, the beauty of leaves changing from one brilliant color to a different radiant hue, then watching them spiral from treetops and dance with the wind, the smell of wood smoke in the chilly evening air. I could give so many examples, each one special to me and some of the same examples special to you too. There have also been moments of sorrow...........(dare I ponder apathy?).....

the loss of friends to illnesses and accidents, the discouragement of world affairs and how we react to so much negative media, the repetitive efforts to sometimes live life one day at a time with the realities of finances, work, relationships, etc pulling relentlessly in our lives. It seems as if it is often easier to lose joy than to find it. It takes little effort to get lost and to give in to the 'ordinaries' of daily life.

I am so blessed that my spiritual sisters have helped me regain a renewed sense of true joy again. The true joy of this Christmas season. The affirmation of deeply rooted friendships. The quiet moments that are shared with others and that refuel faith when perhaps, segments of our faith have been displaced in some manner that becomes oblivious in our individual lives. I realized tonight, as we shared our love, devotion, and support for one another, that we all have these moments when responsibility and obligation seem to rob our blessing of God given joy. Our commonalities far exceed our differences. I hope in writing this I have sent a small portion of love and joy to you who think of me when I am missing in action. I thank you all for loving and praying for me, my family and my friends. May our coming days be filled with all those things that impart a deep sense of belonging and meaning in life. May we be blessed with grace, forgiveness, and hope................

I love you all! JOY to the World .............

with many hugs,

Annette