A Tale of Faith

One of the things that I'm facing this deployment is to find some resolution with my quest for faith. But it's a thing that I've hidden so long, and pushed so aside, that I find it hard to even write about. Still. I'll try.


As a little girl, I believed in everything. I believed in God, I believed in Santa Claus, I believes in angels and demons and the existence of fairies and trolls and secret worlds. I believed that everything was possible. It's a very frightening and confusing way to live... but magical too.


Somewhere between birth and high school I figured some things out. I figured out that people are mostly mean, that boys are the worst of them all, and the only way to feel loved is to love Jesus. And even that was tricky sometimes when you were mostly thinking about the cute boy who was holding your hand and wondering if the sweat is yours or his. Still, In High School - or at least the first two years of it, I had the most amazing spiritual community. With youth choir on Sundays and youth group on Wednesdays and Thursdays there was no way to not love Jesus with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength. Even if there was a lot of desperate praying for boys.
Halfway through High school I moved. I went to a Catholic School where I learned an important lesson about youth - youth will always rebel. Suddenly I saw my bible study sit-ins at the public school in a whole new reality. My Super-Christian friends were rebelling against the establishment in the same way that my atheist classmates now did in Catholic School. Quietly I picked the 'Jesus Freak' patches off my backpack and slid my faith under the rug. I started listening to mainstream music, and though I never did fit in, sometimes I got close.


By the time I graduated High School I was so confused, I didn't know who to believe. Enter ... the darkness. Darkness disguised as love. Oh, I was seduced by this dark brooding young man. You would think that as a former Super-Christian I would recognize that love which is not patient or kind, that love which is boastful and rude, love which draws you away from family and friends.. love that destroys the self and isolates ... you would think I would see that as not being love at all.. I did not.


Until I did. Or tried to. Because at some point in my life, after failing more times than ever thought possible, I decided enough was enough and I would turn back to God, and Christ, and let go of everything in this world I had been holding on to. I broke up with the darkness, I called off all of my future plans. I took one suitcase, and a heart full of hope, and I stepped off of the cliff and into God's arms.


I should be more clear - I committed myself to a year of missionary work. I was ready to turn my life around. So I went to this missionary training ... as an alternate. Maybe you can imagine what happened. I couldn't at the time. No one dropped out. After weeks of training, no one dropped out, and there was no room at the inn for me.
I felt that I had given everything I could to God and he didn't want it. I felt God drop me like a rock.





So. I stopped. Or I tried to stop, but like a persistent ex-lover, God is hard to keep away. Still, I started doing my best to ignore him. I stopped going to church, I stopped listening to Christian music. And though at first I gave myself back to the darkness, eventually I let go of that too.


Here is where it gets confusing. Because in a tale of Faith, this part of my life should be the darkest and hardest. But in the tale of my life, this part becomes beautiful. Having left the darkness, and forsaken the light, I found myself completely lost, totally empty, and completely afraid. I did not even feel like a person. And then, I met Jason. And then, I met another Jason. And then I met many other guy friends. I learned so many things from these men. Men who made me laugh and cry, men who drew me in and turned me away. Men who hurt me and helped me, men who I helped and hurt.
So that by the time I met Tag. By the time I met my husband... I was a real person. A patched together and somewhat out of control person, but a real full person. Someone who was living, and not just existing. Someone willful and exciting. The kind of person a guy could fall in love with. And poor Tag, poor angry closed off, damaged Tag. I stuck around until he did.


Enter God. Because Tag started to remind me of who I was. Underneath all of the wildness and heartache and hiding, Tag reminded me that I was a little girl who believed everything was possible. And as our relationship grew, we realized that we were being transformed. All my fears and doubts were going away, all my guilt and shame. And Tag was no longer angry all the time, and his heart did not ache so. And we started to realize that something greater than chance had brought us together. And Tag declared that greatness to be God. And Tag decided he wanted to live for Jesus and that he wanted to follow God, and I laughed because a man I never viewed as religious was suddenly a way better Christian than I was. I had all of the knowledge and none of the heart.


We decided to dedicate our marriage to the Lord, we agreed to have a Christian home. And our wedding was so blessed and beautiful, and our honeymoon was incredible. And upon returning from the honeymoon I received a revelation.
I had asked God, all those years ago, to help me. I said, "God, I want to give everything up, I want to live for you, but I cannot do it on my own." So, God made me an alternate where there had never been an alternate before. God said, "Here is some training, so you will know how to live your life for me." He didn't drop me on my sorry behind - He gave me training!!
Realizing this, it made me laugh. How blind and selfish I had been. I looked back on the life I'd lived from that moment on and I thanked God for having watched over me despite all of my foolishness. Because for all the bad choices I made... nothing really bad ever happened. Believe me it was really really close sometimes, but I was never hurt physically. Sex was never against my will. And when I think of the situations I put myself in, with men not listed above, this is truly incredible.


So. There you have it. My tale of faith. This is my foundation to build from. I had a different point to make, but without writing this post first I found myself unable to make it. And this post turned out much longer than expected.

The Down and The Up

My rat died today.


I suppose it wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't spent my entire morning driving all around town in search of a companion rat for him, but I did.
I drove all over town thinking about this pathetic little creature, and how to make his life a little brighter, and when I came home he was dead.


I cried.
Interestingly, when Tag was here and a rat died I didn't cry. Maybe it was because I still had one left to love, or maybe it was because I didn't have to be the one to bury it. Or maybe it was because when Tag is gone and an animal dies, the whole thing seems more pathetic.


I hadn't cried at all this deployment until that moment.
And it was as if I felt my whole body shutting down.
What little wind I had left in my sails was gone and I felt heavy and slack.


Lucky for me I had gone to church this morning, before my pet store adventures, and I had spoken with the pastor's wife and I had told her that I was going to attend the small group tonight.
Believe me, after the rat had died the last thing I wanted to do was go to a small group, but I had told her I would go, and so I went.
They prayed for me at the small group. That this deployment would be a time of growth like I'd never known before.
The most amazing thing was, that after the meeting ended, four separate women came up and gave me their phone numbers. They offered to go shopping with me. To eat dinner with me. One woman even offered to come over and watch TV with me.


And so tonight I am not hopeless. Tonight I have hope.

4 Cups of Coffee

One thing that makes me happy during deployments is my itty bitty Mr. Coffee.
We have a 12 cup coffee maker that regularly brews 8 to 10 cups of coffee, mostly for Tag who is a coffee monster. But the 4 cup coffee maker is just for me.
It makes me happy to have just the right amount of coffee filling up the tiny little glass carafe. There is no room for more. Who I am is just enough for this coffee pot.


It's meaningful, I suppose, because for the most part I feel insufficient. If you were to ask my honest opinion of myself I would tell you that I am weak. I am lazy. I give up too easily. And you might not believe me, if you're used to seeing me constantly on the go. I am very responsive to those around me.


But in a deployment I am left all alone. With no one about to press me I am inclined to just fall in a heap. I have known myself to stop eating. I have known myself to stop showering. I have known myself to stop caring about life at all. The year I had no employment was the worst of all. I was alone in such a vast expanse of time with no beginning or end.


And you might think that it is something that comes gradually, something that compounds itself over time, but I feel it in me right now. It is as if I am being stretched like a rubber band. Constantly fighting against the pull to give up. So I must tell myself "Now you will take a shower."


Am I starting to sound crazy?
The point is that I need to look at my life as I do the coffee pot. I need to realize that though there is less (strength/will/motivation) inside of me than there might be in others, that it is enough. I have enough. I am enough.
My life is not bigger than I can manage.


I am enough.

First Steps

I am starting this blog at the beginning of a deployment. At the beginning of a new year. At the beginning of my marriage.
I am starting this blog at the start of a new phase in my existence, or as Oprah would say - the next chapter of my life.


Life is about change.
Life is constantly changing, but in my life the changes just seem more abrupt.
One day Tag is here, and we are drinking coffee and listening to music and fighting over the hot water in the shower, and the next day there's no coffee and it's quiet and the water never gets cold too soon.


This is not my first deployment. In the four years we have lived in this house Tag has deployed every year. For five months, for six months, for three. Each deployment was different, each deployment was the same.
Each deployment I set myself some goals. Some I met and some I failed, but the point is in the trying.


I named this blog after a children's book called "Little One Step." I read it in 30 seconds in a discount store while shopping with my mother last November, and it changed my life forever.


I should have bought it.


In the book by Simon James, you meet a trio of ducklings who must cross a field in order to return to their mother. The smallest duck is tired. She can't go on. Her brother suggests she just take one more step, and then another, and then another. By focusing on taking just one step at a time, our little duck is soon reunited with his mother.


I started saying this to myself when the path ahead seemed impossible.
When I was weighted down with 100+ pounds of scuba gear and I had to walk 40 feet into the water I said "One step. One step."
When I was climbing to the top of yet another Mayan ruin with stairs half the size of my body I said "One step. One step."
And today when faced with another half-year alone I looked at my life and said, "One Step."
Today I took a shower. Today I ate two full meals. Today I cleaned up the kitchen. Today I started a blog to keep myself encouraged.


So here we are.


I don't quite know how I'll fill this blog, and I can't promise it will always be very insightful, but I hope you'll join me for the journey. That way I won't feel so alone.