Sorry I haven’t posted yet this week! I am in Hudson, Wisconsin, writing my life away!
I. Love. Vacation.
writing retreat!
2
Tag Archives: real life
summer camp
It’s going to be a strange summer for me, folks, and now that June is here, it is starting to hit me!
Get this: I have spent time at Pine Haven Christian Assembly every summer since 1990, but I will not be there this summer.
Yeah. Weird.
I grew up going to PHCA , starting the summer before fourth grade. It took me under a week to acknowledge that this sacred patch of land in northern Minnesota was my new favorite place in the world. I attended every year, including the year after high school graduation, and I could not have loved this camp any more than I did. When I went off to college, I gave a speech on Pine Haven in my communications class. I even wrote a sonnet (the only sonnet I have every written) about the cabin I always stayed in.
After my freshman year of college, I returned to Pine Haven, this time as a volunteer counselor, which was even BETTER than being a camper! I met some of my very best friends at this camp (Eir, Ashley, Whitney, Dora) and have dragged other friends (Megs, Desiree) along with me to counsel. Years of experiences and inside jokes at that delightful campground have knit our stories together.
This weekend, two of our camp friends got married, and I attended the wedding, held in Rochester, MN. The ceremony and reception were like a giant camp reunion, and I LOVED IT. It was so good for my heart to be surrounded by these people I love. What an incredible thing to share so many memories and experiences with a group of people.
B’Dewayne McGirr Experiment, the Mavericks, the Killa Killas … so many great teams, so many great leaders, so many great friends. I have watched people meet at this camp, fall in love, get married. I have watched best friends ally themselves, friends who would be connected for years. We can’t escape each other. I wouldn’t want to.
I will miss you guys this summer. Lots.
survival
I made it through last week! PRAISE THE LORD!!!
There are all sorts of changes going on at my workplace, but I’m through the worst of it for now (I think/hope!). I felt as if God were taking my hand every morning and walking me through each day without letting go. So lovely.
No one wishes for hard times to come, but I find that when they do …
* I am driven into my Bible
* I cling to God more savagely
* I am forced to reevaluate my life and choices
… and it usually ends up working out for my best.
I am so grateful for a God who stays and sustains me, for the wisdom of Scripture, family, and friends, and for incredible new opportunities! It’s not a perfect analogy, but this week, I kept thinking of the story of Joseph– how his own brothers sold him into slavery, how he was wrongly accused of rape and sent to prison, and yet rose to power in Egypt. I love when later he says to his brothers, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”
Amen and amen, yes?
the future has arrived
Shhh, don’t tell … I am actually writing this blog on Sunday, May 20th, and scheduling it to post on Saturday, May 26th. I usually write all my posts for the week over the weekend, since I rarely have time to blog during the work week. It’s interesting how sometimes I will write a post nearly a week ahead of time, but something will happen in real-time to line up with what I blogged about days ahead of time that was only posted on that day. Weird.
So, here’s the deal: I am anticipating that this upcoming week of work is going to be terribly difficult for me. But who knows what will happen? By the time you all read this post, the work week I am so nervous about will actually be OVER. It will be fun to read this post on the day it is posted and see if my predictions for the week were true.
I am reading The Time Traveler’s Wife right now, by Audrey Niffenegger, so this whole wonky idea of predictions and foreknowledge and skipping over a large chunk of time actually doesn’t seem so strange to me. It’s the world I’ve been living in.
That said, here is my message to my future self, my self who is six days older than the self this is writing this post:
Hello Jackie. You made it. You survived the week, and now you can enjoy your long holiday weekend. You probably don’t have any more answers to your problems than you did at the time of writing this– but then again, maybe you do! I can’t guess what will happen in the next six days, except that I do believe that you will make it to next weekend, that God will hold you in the palm of His hand this upcoming/past week, and that He will work all things out for the good of you who loves Him. Love from yourself from last weekend.
a fixer
I am a fixer. If someone comes to me with a problem, my first inclination is to FIX IT. I have to force myself to sit back and just LISTEN because my head is already ahead to solutions.
I hate leaving things un-fixed. I want to solve all issues NOW, to dive headfirst into creating a solution until that solution is in place. I hate to have things hanging over me. (Some of this is very strongly connected with the obsessive-compulsive part of me.)
But not everything can be fixed immediately. Sometimes there are issues that we need to sit with before solving. We grow simply from the patience we have to exert as we WAIT for all the ducks to line up in a row. And sometimes there are so many ducks, and they all seem to be on crack, and to get them to line up is a long, tedious process.
I want to be able to do steps 1-26 in one hour. But sometimes the person you need to connect with for step 1 is out of the office till Tuesday, and steps 2-4 can’t be done till after that, which pushes back steps 5-10 because they can only be done on weekends, and you can’t do the final step until you have a haircut and your stylist is booked a month out, etc. I HATE THAT.
That’s all I’m going to say about this, except for that this fixer is struggling with and learning patience this week.
Are you a fixer?
Meet Ashley
What would I do without this girl? I find myself thinking that question over and over again throughout the week. She is one of my go-to friends, an absolute delight, so funny, so friendly, so loving, and she teaches me so much!
Ashley and I had a rocky start, back in 2001 (oh gosh, Ash, has it really been over a decade?!). At that time, she was a spunky, sassy high school student, and I was the camp counselor who could not say anything right. We were pretty wary of one another for about six months, but when January 2002 rolled around, the new year brought with it a new friendship that I would come to treasure as one of my favorites.
After six months of non-friendly aquaintanceship, Ashley and I were forced to spend some time together at a church retreat. Although neither of us wanted to do so on the front end, by the end of the weekend, we were okay enough to exchange email addresses.
Remember, this is 2002. Exchanged email addresses can only mean one thing: MSN Messenger!
We ended up chatting quite a bit– especially about boys– and forging this strange online friendship that we kind of marveled at, considering our rough beginnings. By that next summer, we were fast friends, but our friendship was entirelyonline … until we met up again at camp.
I remember I was nervous about how it would go. Would we clash in person again? Would it turn out that we would just butt heads when we found ourselves in a real room together?
But we got along great this time around … and ever since! Over the years, I have been blessed to watch Ashley graduate from high school, go to Bible college, fall in love with my friend Tim, graduate from college, marry Tim, buy a house, and move to the Twin Cities. Now we see each other almost weekly, just the way I like it.
Eleven years is such a long span of time … Ashley went from being this sassy-mouthed punk teenager I was afraid of to being one of my very best friends, one of my favorite people! She is everything I want in a friend: kind, unselfish, honest, brave, COMMITTED, hilarious, loving, a good listener, and godly.
I love you, Ashley … see you in an hour for taquitos at Eir’s!
which view?
The last couple days have not been easy for me. I have some big decisions ahead of me that are causing me HUGE stress, and I’d appreciate your prayers. I am looking for wisdom– actually BEGGING God for wisdom, for direction.
When you look at this picture, what do you see? Some people see an old woman, wrinkles around her eyes, wart on her nose, looking kind but maybe a little sad. Some people see a young lady with a strong jawline and a necklace, looking into the distance.
I am trying to remember during this time of great upheaval in my life (I hope to share more details soon) that this scary, scary time might actually be a huge blessing, a time of positive change. I am hoping that even though today my life looks like an old lady, soon I will look back on these days and realize they were young, vibrant, fresh, and beautiful. It’s all perspective.
Still, I’d appreciate your prayers. I feel heartsick and sad and lonely and distracted. Very shaken and hurt and disappointed in myself and upset and humiliated.
Please, God, use this time to accomplish Your plans for me.
Pure-O Compulsions
Media usually presents obsessive-compulsives with very obvious compulsions: hand-washing is a favorite but also extreme organization and hoarding, as well as checking and counting. But not all compulsions are so easy to see.
In fact, some compulsions are so difficult to recognize that it lead to a misnomer– Pure Obsessional OCD. The name Pure-O leads some to believe that this type of OCD can essentially drop the “C” from its acronym. But that would be a mistake.
Pure-O’s still have compulsions– they are just harder for the public to notice. They include mental rituations like repetition, avoidance, and seeking reassurance.
For example:
I would have an intrusive, blasphemous thought– which would cause me to question my salvation. I would repeat a particular prayer over and over in my head to ward off this thought, and I would ask everyone if they thought I was going to go to hell (sometimes this would be active– “Do you think I’m going to hell?”– and sometimes passive, as in “I’m scared I’m going to go to hell” and waiting for that person to reassure me … “Why would you think that?! No way!”). I would also avoid certain things (Matthew 12 and Mark 3, for example, or movies with profanity, which would trigger my blasphemous thoughts).
Sometimes it was hard to really focus on a conversation I was having because there was another entire conversation happening in my head at the same time. It’s like listening to two tracks at once.
I wrote a poem to demonstrate it:
So … yeah. There are compulsions you would never know are there, except for the strange look in my eyes, the odd shake of my head as if I were erasing something dark and secret.
brokenness
After we watched the Blue Like Jazz screening, my former writing professor Judy and I went to the St. Clair Broiler for some late-night breakfast and conversation.
A few things you should know about Judy: she is brilliant, a gifted writer and teacher, and she loves Jesus very much and connects with him in lovely and unique ways like Taizé and lectio divina.
One thing she said to me over pancakes and French toast was this: “Some people hold their brokenness at arm’s length. Some people embrace their brokenness. And some people celebrate their brokenness.”
That’s what I want to do– celebrate my brokenness. I am not ashamed of my obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Lord’s power is perfected in my weakness. His grace is sufficient.
“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9b).
How about you?
the very worst thing
There were days when my OCD would tear my worldview out from under me. Things that I had thought were solid things to stand on (GOD-IS-GOOD, I-AM-SAVED, IT’S-OK-TO-MEET-NEW-PEOPLE, HUMANS-ARE-REALLY-HUMANS, etc.) turned into vapor beneath me, and there I was, seeming to free-fall forever.
A real, only slightly altered conversation with a former roommate:
Fanny Fakename (frustrated): I can’t believe this! I can’t believe this!
Jackie: What? What happened?
Fanny (in anguish): I just found out that my tennis retreat is the same weekend as this political rally I wanted to attend!
Jackie: Oh.
Fanny: The same weekend! This is terrible. What am I going to do? This is the worst thing that has EVER happened to me!
Jackie: thinking harm thoughts even though that is not her regular type of OCD 😉
One thing that OCD has engendered in me is perspective.
Right now, I am trying to lose weight, and it’s been a tough battle for me, but tonight I was praying aloud in my shower and what slipped out of my mouth was, “Thank you, God, that this is not an OCD thing. I can handle this. OCD was the very worst thing.”
Perspective. Love it.
What is the very worst thing that has ever happened to you? What it OCD-related? Have you been envious of friends and family when their very worst thing seemed tamer than yours?
JACKIE LEA SOMMERS 