It's unfortunate, but I'm not apologizing

Where have I been? Well, it's been a draining semester of a myriad of events, many of them difficult. Because many of these events have been...well, difficult, I have hesitated to blog about them. Some have been too vulnerable while others have been about sensitive information that no online forum would be anonymous enough to divulge. But overall, I have been going from one emotionally draining event from another, and none of them are of my own making.

I do ask for prayers and thoughts and a $20 prayer gift, for which I will send you a prayer rug that I have blessed. (Just kidding..seeing if you were awake). But, I was serious about the prayers and thoughts.

I am not trying to be secretive, neither am I wanting to seek out the pity of others. However, I do think if I list all of these events, I may just feel sorry for myself.

My mentor, friend, and professor who is in his mid 40's had a stroke on Sunday afternoon. A severe one. Then there was emergency brain surgery for the swelling. And all of the people coming to see him, and the him being asleep, and me finally finally getting to see him today (which was so hard but such a blessing). This man has been a dear friend, supervisor, and mentor, and I am heartbroken for him right now and how hard it is for him to be dependent and the unknown nature of his recovery for him, and for his wife and son whom I also know and love. For four years I have been his teaching assistant, his "right hand" (his description). He is my "second dad" and I feel so bad for leaving in a week to go to Europe, for leaving in 7 weeks to move hundreds of miles away at a time when he really does need an extra hand, because his left side is paralyzed (but improving).

He is still himself, joking, talking, although more slowly and interspersed with naps. My heart breaks. I make myself get up early so that I get some time alone with him before the crowds come to visit him, so he can tell me the things that he wants me to know. The Wednesday before his stroke, we had a "goodbye" lunch, where tears were shed and how much we have meant to each other was spoken, where we said out loud what we had seen and experienced over 4 years of working, laughing, doing therapy, and learning together. I am so thankful for those 2 hours now, and for the hours I know we're going to have in the future. But for now, my heart breaks.

And, our department chair is in the same hospital, with artery issues and likely facing surgery in the coming week, as well. He is intensely private, but kind and gentle. So, although I by no means am as close to him, the intense upset to our department and my community is overwhelming.

All of this follows on the heels of the internship process and saying goodbye to everything that has been our life these past 5 years. My grandmother being seriously ill and near death (but she's recovering very well now, praise God!). A closest friend having some hard stuff, and then being very hurtful to the point I had to step away in a time when I should be clinging to her. The departure of a professor under dubious circumstance of which I was informed and that put me in a weird between faculty and students and friends/colleagues/coworkers/supervisors situation. A close professor having breast cancer, and the increased load this placed on the aforementioned prof. Excruciatingly painful end of the year, saying goodbye issues compounded by the painful things I was dealing with regarding the friend I mentioned before. Difficult situations with my practicum site and with a clinical training personnel that have resulted in my having to use my voice to speak up and give hard feedback to superiors (but that has been received well and that I have been supported in). And finally, sending my husband off to Europe this morning for work, to see him again in 9 days when we will meet in Brussels.

Glimmers of hope...

It has been a bleak and difficult time lately. I have more to do than humanly possible. There are classes that frustrate and leave me unfulfilled. Difficult and hurtful crappy situations permeate the lives of others whom I love. There are work relationships that make even simple tasks difficult. Clients have crises, push boundaries, or are doing good work that is still hard. My Granny is very very ill (she was in ICU on Monday until Tuesday morning) and in the hospital, while my parents, aunts, and uncles rally around her to combat her illness, unkind and neglectful hospital staff members, and their own struggles with the same brutal stomach flu. I am far away and feel helpless to support all of them.

My mother's church has the rumblings of discontent, some of it directed at her. In 10 days, my husband and I find out the fate of where we will be living next year, and then will have to face the losses associated with wherever we live. Marriage is rewarding but hard, and requires more work than not right now. I struggle with feelings of anxiety and depression amidst and seemingly endless winter that is more brutal and snow filled than I care to deal with.

But today, today was good. I am encouraged by how my family comes together during a time of crisis. How sacrificial and loving they all can be for the sake of a single member or the overall family. That my husband surprised me not only with a dozen roses, but with a card listing 100 reasons why he loves me, real reasons that one could only know after nearly 8 years together. Reasons that are idiosyncratic, intimate, and truthful. For friends who support and listen and laugh and love me, and let me do the same for them. Mentors and supervisors who invest in me and make time for supporting me amidst hard and difficult times. For making progress on dissertation and coming closer to closing a big chapter of my life in a way that feels rewarding and complete.

I am thankful for God, whose grace permeates even the darkest of places and the driest of deserts, and who knows of all types of suffering and sits well with me in it. A God who repeatedly welcomes me back, despite my continual betrayals and affairs. In this season of Lent, I am called to repentance and long long long for the joy of redemption and resurrection.

Raise Your Hand If You're Sure...

In graduate school, there are many people, processes, and paperwork that are irritating and annoying. But few things raise my ire as much as the grad school hand raiser. The hand raiser is ALWAYS a woman. While everyone else seems to have learned that we're all adults, the hand raiser seems to need the validation of someone calling on her in order to deign to grace us with her thoughts. The hand raiser raises her hand as if she's holding her place in line to speak.

"What is so annoying?" you ask. "Is the hand raiser not simply being polite?"

No, the hand raiser is being a passive aggressive manipulator who wields power in the worst of ways. The hand raiser demands to be acknowledged by others, as if everyone else in the room isn't also holding in a thought that could be shared. The hand raiser is declaring to the whole class, "Instead of listening to whomever is speaking, I'm sitting here holding my thought and pondering it instead."

The hand raiser is waiting for everyone to pause and invite her to speak. Worse than the hand raiser, is the professor who calls on her. "Oh wait, Steve. Jenny has her hand raised." Nevermind that Steve is the introvert who speaks in class exactly twice a year, Jenny has her hand raised.

Being in psychology, I often wonder if the hand raiser raises her hand to speak at family functions. If in therapy sessions, she raises her hand while her clients pour out their pain, because she's waiting to be recognized. Hand raisers are at the same time arrogant and insecure. It's a passive power move hidden behind a demeanor of propriety that is actually an insidious form of obsequiousness. (Google it!)

I once was in an Advanced Psychodynamic Therapy class where we confronted the hand raiser. She didn't stop. When she raised her hand on the last day of class, during our termination session, I pointed it out. She didn't like that, and we all just talked over her until she gave in and said whatever the hell she had to say. I find that the greatest victory of my graduate career. Forget about the clients who have made great strides under my care, or my own personal journey of growth. An entire year later, I find so much more satisfaction in that moment where the hand raiser was conquered.

Well, except the hand raiser is in class with me once again, raising that damn hand. The hand raiser isn't so bad, but in class I just want to slowly break each of her fingers. But, if I did that people would probably feel more sorry for her deformed claw of a hand and professors would call on her more. Then it would be, "I'm sorry Steve, but Jenny has her misshapen handicapped claw raised." Grrr.

So, to the hand raisers of the world. Stop. It. We aren't five and neither are you. And if you start waving that thing in the air, I'm going to break it off.

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.

Yesterday, while out on a walk, hubby and I walked by a house and heard the smoke alarm going off. We stood for a couple of minutes, as the alarm continued to go off. The windows were all open on a cool day, but no one appeared to be home. There didn't seem to be any smoke or flames. Living in the anonymity of the suburbs, we didn't know any of the neighbors, so we noted the address walked 3 blocks back home to get one of our cell phones and call 911.

But we felt all funny and weird about it. We walked back to the scene, but didn't stick around. A fire truck came, neighbors came out of the wood work and started calling the home owners, someone procured a garage door opener and let in the firemen. Soon after the firemen dispersed from the home.

What struck me was this drastic shift that has occurred in me the past 5 years that we've lived here. My rural upbringing that engendered community concern with out fear of embarrassment or shame about our concern has waned drastically. I actually had a crazy moment of thinking that the fire department might be suspicious of us as strangers just calling in something out of the ordinary. I hope that this part of me is one that isn't too hard to reclaim when I leave suburbia. I also want to challenge myself to continue to feel less weirdness about getting to know my neighbors and to feel a sense of communal ownership and concern.

Why The Internet is Communal, but Rarely a Community.

I am currently in the process of helping the professor with whom I work with his book that will be published in October of 2008. This quote on community really struck me...

Years ago, I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, “Life Together.” It influenced me deeply in my thoughts about what the Church can, and can’t, be.[i] Bonhoeffer points out that true Christian community is nothing like the fantasies and illusions we have of a wonderful, welcoming family. It is like that, sometimes, of course. But community is really more like a crucible. We have to live in close proximity with people that we really don’t like. Or, if we did like them in the beginning, we will discover many annoying qualities as well. The crucible of a community heats us up and holds us in so that we can’t get away. In the process, it refines us, bringing the impurities to the surface where they can be skimmed away.

Communities are necessary for spiritual purification. Even the desert fathers and mothers, many of whom lived as hermits in caves, settled in proximity to each other and created the first model for the communal life of monasteries. On our own we too easily avoid noticing where our sharp edges are. When we live in close proximity to others we are constantly bumping up against each other with those unfinished edges. It is much more difficult to hide. As the Proverbs remind us, “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”[ii] (Proverbs 27:17, TNIV ). Any who are serious about confronting their own signature sins, then, should seek to be part of a community where this kind of sharpening can take place.

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[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: Harper, 1954).
[ii] Proverbs 27:17, TNIV