Archive for the The Journey Category

This morning I decided that when I grow up, I want to be a pelican. Maybe it’s all the cartoons I watched as a child that show the brave and mighty pelican scooping up water and dumping it on people that annoy them. Maybe I love pelicans because when I see one I know the ocean is not far away. In case you weren’t aware, pelicans are not indigenous to Missouri. They migrate through here, but they don’t tend to hang around. Either way, pelicans are awesome, and somewhat ridiculous.

I am well acquainted with the ridiculous. I hate to wear makeup. I love Brussels sprouts. I collected cicada shells as a child and hid them so no one would steal them from me. I adore toads because they are cute. If that’s not enough to convince the reader that I embrace the ridiculous, this just might… I gave CPR to a dead squirrel on Sunday after it died in our live trap, when just a few weeks ago I swore a blood oath against the squirrels—to maim and murder every one—because they are tomato thieves.

Margaret Ridiculous Wolfinbarger. That’s me! So when I found myself sobbing in the back yard this weekend after someone I loved hurt me, my first instinct was not to forgive them. Actually, I wanted to punch them in the stomach and stomp on their head. Instead, I stood in the dirt—in the midst of my rock-strewn yard—and wailed like a baby. Yes, the men putting a roof on the house two doors down stopped their banal chatter. Yes, my children huddled around me and tried to comfort me and yes, I decided to forgive the emotional terrorist who chose to torment me.

Emotional pain is agonizing. Ask anyone who’s been through a painful divorce or lost a loved one. Even as we try to heal, excruciating reminders prick us relentlessly. A song. A television program. The smell of a specific after-shave. They induce us to ask questions we never considered before, like, how can people be so mean? Why does evil exist? Is there a god? If so, why would he allow such horror? Is he cruel? Is he uncaring? And finally, will the pain ever go away? I have asked these questions and more. Many times have I raged at the earth and sky when the pain was unbearable, and—after much consideration—I have come to the conclusion that forbearance, forgiveness, and pressing forward are the best responses.

Forgive someone who took the life of my child? That’s ridiculous! Forgive my cheating spouse? Absurd! Forgive the relative who took my innocence? Margaret, you must be out of your mind! Maybe. I’ve never claimed to be completely sane. But I will explain how I came to this conclusion.

Several years ago a dear friend caused me great emotional turmoil by walking away from our friendship. To this day I don’t understand the logic behind it. I only know that the rift was irrevocable. The relationship was forever torn asunder, though I tried desperately to reconcile it. The psalmist, King David experienced something similar. He said, “Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me.” (Psalm 41:9) This was a friend who knew my innermost secrets, with whom I had shared joys beyond measure and great sorrow, someone I thought would love me forever. One day, they simply didn’t love me anymore. It was excruciating and I didn’t understand it. Each day as I drove to work I would cry. Then I would cry on the drive home. Thoughts of this person consumed me and I could not handle the grief. So I took my grief to the only one I knew who could, Jesus. I know. It’s 2015 and I sound like a wacky eighteenth century fundamentalist parroting some religious rhetoric. But until one has experienced the devastation of betrayal by the person they love most in the world, don’t expect anything I say here to make sense. Pain isn’t supposed to make sense. It just hurts. And I needed someone to heal it.

I began to adjust to my new reality but the ache didn’t diminish. I began to realize that I needed to forgive this person. But even forgiving them didn’t stop the hurt. In fact, for a while it seemed to hurt more. Forgiveness meant peeling away the calluses and exposing the deepest of wounds in my heart. Each day I would lay my heart in front of my savior and pray for Him to heal it. I learned that healing is sometimes messy business. For me, it meant addressing wrongs that I had done and wrongs that had been done to me. It meant letting go of grudges I felt were justified, and clinging to the hope that one day reconciliation would come, but without putting my life on hold in the meantime. It also meant preparing my heart for the moment my friend would return so that I could offer grace instead of a slap in the face. All the while I kept asking Jesus to heal my heart, and measure by measure, He did.

If forgiveness is a radical idea in our culture, grace is a complete mystery. The elderly couple who stood in line before me today were frustrated when their gift card wouldn’t work. It was obvious they were on a budget and didn’t have the money to pay for their food without it. They apologized to me for making me wait. I smiled and said I wasn’t in a hurry. After they left the cashier expressed his confusion over my behavior. I explained to him that so often we rush through life and in our carelessness, we wound people with our haste. I said, “Think about when someone honks at you for an inadvertent traffic incident. It can ruin your whole day.” He nodded and stared at me in amazement. In response I said, “Why propagate frustration and meanness when we can extend grace?”

Living with a tender heart sometimes feels ridiculous. The arrows people aim in my direction hurt terribly when they hit their mark. Forgiving those who persecute me can be very challenging. For that reason, many people in this world build emotional walls and develop calluses to protect themselves. It just makes sense. Except that when we build walls and calluses, we miss out on the joy that comes from loving and being loved, from wounding and finding forgiveness, from noticing the pain of the people around us and offering comfort.

Sunday morning I woke up and grabbed my roller-skates. I drove to the park, laced up and took off. It wasn’t long before people were chuckling at me. It’s not very often people see a woman with white roller-derby skates zooming around. I could see it in their eyes. “She looks ridiculous!” I smiled and laughed with them. Sometimes being ridiculous is great fun. And great fun is not a far step from providing joy. That’s why I want to be a pelican when I grow up. Yes, pelicans can carry water and dump it on the heads of people who annoy them, but they can also use their mighty beak to sprinkle grace onto the dry and barren hearts of this world.

I lost my car twice yesterday, and gave thanks to the maker of the clicker that allows me to honk the horn when I’m close. Both times I couldn’t help but flush with embarrassment. What sane person forgets where they park, not just once, but twice? It’s not like I was parking somewhere foreign, like the airport or a shopping mall.

The first time I got lost in the parking garage at work. The second was in a very small grocery store lot. I felt as if everyone was looking at me as I approached the wrong car, turned in circles several times, and then resorted to the clicker again. Obviously my brain wasn’t functioning correctly.

After I found my car the second time, my eldest son gave me a stern lecture over the phone about how I never listen to him. I had dared to ask if he was coming home for dinner which resulted in a, “Mom, I told you I’m at Grandma’s house! Don’t you remember?” I just had to sigh and tell him the truth; no. My brain has been in idle for several days and won’t click into gear. Such is the drudgery of depression, that sickening darkness that swamps my body in a thick haze while I slowly suffocate.

For the past week I have been moving forward one painful step at a time, each task deliberate, if moderately unsteady. I do the things I know I need to do whether I feel like it or not. I continue to eat healthy meals, exercise and sleep… and cry while I wait for it to end.

I have been making conscious decisions to do what I know to be right rather than seek comfort in empty frills. Yesterday this culminated in reading scripture over and over. I could barely understand what I was reading, until I came across a few sentences that reminded me of the comfort I have found there before. “So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away.” I had memorized this some time ago, and as I read the words they penetrated the scar tissue over my heart and massaged the weak muscle beneath. In that moment I felt the blood flow again to that numb and half-dead part of me and I remembered the grace given to me countless times before. Let me be clear, I did not feel better. But God reminded me that his promises to me ring clear. His words have a power that mystifies me.

This morning I made an impromptu decision to ride my bicycle. I had planned something different but I felt a calling to go into the outside world and breathe in the cool air. I had an idea that maybe there was something I needed to see and experience that would not be found on my usual routine. I pushed through the numbness and into the colorless world, seeking out beauty in the darkness with my headlamp. 5:00am is a very dark time indeed. And this is what I found…

I found a sunrise that splashed color across the horizon in layers of color that were not unlike a sky-wide rainbow that became more brilliant with each second until the sun crested. On the side of the road I happened across the most beautiful red fox I have ever seen.

He trotted beside me for a few seconds with this regal plume of a tail and I was transfixed with him as he slipped into the brush. I wandered into the wetlands and discovered a big blue heron who seemed not at all anxious to be so close. He lifted his head and pushed into the air with a graceful sweep of his wings that fills me with a sense of rapture even now as I write this. The sun was barely up as I pushed along the bike trail and saw two little heads moving through the water with a distinct wake behind them. Otters! Their whiskers were heavy with water as they paddled furiously to escape the alien creature who was encroaching on their territory.

And then I saw it, the most curious bird I have ever seen. It stood in the water, black and tall, and I was so filled with wonder that I stopped my bike to stare. He saw me too—entirely too close for comfort—and he peered at me through the reeds, obviously trying to decide if I was threat enough to make him abandon his breakfast table. His silhouette reminds me of the grace that is given when we choose to follow the spirits leading. We wonder if we should stay or go, run or walk, lie down and die or push forward into the unknown. Creation provides a canvass for my questions, and while I don’t always find the answers I seek, I find comfort in knowing it is never unsafe to ask.

I don’t have my depression figured out. Sometimes I can guess at triggers, other times it creeps up and whacks me over the head while all I can do is nurse the bruise. Today I found real relief and I am so grateful to God. His comfort is real and enigmatic and I never take it for granted.

II Corinthians 4:16-18 “So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but things that are unseen are eternal.”

Yesterday was a particularly difficult day. I woke to the lethargy of depression and all my plans clunked like an overheated jalopy. I climbed out of bed and onto the couch where I stayed until my children imploded. They like to do that when mom is incapacitated. Still, I felt like life was speeding by without me while I nursed my worn out body with sobs of despair. The stress of the week had finally caught up with me and I was the bear with its foot caught in a particularly grisly trap. All my striving was met with, “I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!” Big sigh. “I want to, but I just can’t!”

So I began to bake. Baking is my soothing exercise. It’s what I do when all else fails. Bake and cry. I probably sound pathetic to you at this moment. Sorry about that. It’s just life, and I’m walking through it the same as everyone else. For every good day there must be a down day. I’ve come to expect them–even embrace them–as the tide of life I’m swimming in. So I made homemade bread(whole wheat) and pizza dough(also whole wheat) for dinner. Then I went to the store and bought a big basket full of food. When baking doesn’t cut it, buying food does! But I probably didn’t buy what you think I bought. More on that in a minute.

When I was living an unhealthy lifestyle, a sure fire pick-me-up was fast food and sweets. A typical bad day might have looked like 1000 calories of toaster strudels(they are so tasty you can’t eat just 2), followed by lunch at White Castle with a giant chocolate shake, a bag of Nestle Caramel Treasures and Papa John’s pizza for dinner. And cookies. Yes, there would have been at least 12 cookies before bed. Just typing those sentences makes me feel gross. After consuming the equivalent of ten zillion calories, I would cry myself to sleep and wonder why my life was so horrible. I honestly didn’t understand the affect all that sugar had on my body nor how to break myself from that dreadful cycle.

So many people go on a diet, lose weight and then regain it. The hope of smaller pants or a pretty dress drive them to mercilessly restrict calories until they reach their desired goal. Then they celebrate, much to the disdain of the new pants. Those trendy jeans are hardly broken in when the seams began to stretch and moan. They seem to cry, “Why? Why did you do this to me? You have no self-control! Why didn’t you just leave me at the store? It’s not fair!” Or maybe that’s just my pants that talk back at me. I am so guilty of carefully folding my “brand-new-too-small” clothing into a tub that is carefully stored in the basement as my “lovelies” wait for me to lose those dreaded 10 pounds. If I am wise I take the time to remind myself why I went on this journey in the first place. Living an “out-of-control” lifestyle stinks. As in, stinky goat cheese, stinks!

Living a healthy lifestyle is not just about losing weight. To begin the journey the right way, one must ask oneself why they wish to change. The reason must be important enough to go through the personal sacrifice that is necessary to achieve our goals. That reason must also sustain us through the trials and discomforts of life. Otherwise, we will return to bad habits with gusto and lose all the ground we gained. My reason was a desperate desire to learn discipline. I felt so out of control, spinning like a top over the same ruts and crashing, only to spin and crash again. When I am having a bad day, I am tempted to return to those old habits. But I always come back to that moment that is burned on my brain–that moment when I stood in front of my closet and nothing fit, and all I could do was stand there and cry. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was two-hundred and something pounds and I couldn’t go to church because the only pants I had were too small and I was too humiliated to squeeze into them. When I am tempted to give up and eat gasp–White Castle–I just take a little jog down memory road. Then, most importantly, I pray for strength to keep walking the path to better health.

Facing any addiction calls for a very serious shift in mentality. Food is too important to me to approach it with anything less than a 100% attitude adjustment. I knew when I began my journey that I couldn’t just go on a diet. I also assumed failure was stalking me at every turn. This made me extremely vigilant. When someone asked me the other day if I have a “cheat day” I responded with an emphatic, “No!” I’m not looking for opportunities to cheat. I made a commitment to live a healthier lifestyle. Commitments are promises that are meant to be kept. Imagine if I stood up to state my vows to my spouse and said, “I love you, but I can’t wait for my cheat day.” He might re-think his choice of spouse. Everyone makes mistakes now and again. But do I plan my mistakes? Um, no.

I walked into the grocery store yesterday(Aldi is my affordable, fresh produce center of choice) with all my healthy habits intact. So even though I felt terrible, years of practicing discipline helped me to make good choices rather than emotionally induced choices. I know by practicing discipline that putting fresh vegetables and fruit into my body makes it feel better. Also, I forced myself to exercise in the afternoon. I didn’t choose something grueling, just some light movement to get the blood flowing to my brain. I didn’t feel fantastic afterwards, but I felt more human than I did when I began.

Why do I choose to live a healthy lifestyle? Because I’m never going back to the way I was. I’m not talking about size or weight. I’m talking about the desperation that came from living an emotionally and physically unhinged life. The way I look at it is this, every day I have the opportunity to face my flaws and beat the hell out of them. Will they wallop me sometimes in return? Sure. But by God’s grace I’m going to wallop them right back.