Mindspace

Chinese Speech competition

i've been agonizing about the Chinese Speech Competition for months. Part of it is the stress of feeling alone in being the one coaching the kids, writing the speeches and motivating them.  Most of it, is feeling conflicted between the values  a "tiger mom" of which i was raised and the child-centered values i was instilled with as a therapist. Balancing both has been excruciating. At the back of all my child-development theories, is the nagging thought of how much more accomplished my children would be if i had been harsher and pushier with them.
How much success am i depriving them of by letting their wills and desires lead.
I hired a tutor, i practiced deep breathing, i brought it up in Al-anon, i prayed and agonized and practiced Step 1 ( we admit we are powerless ) as Daddy seemingly sabotaged all my efforts by taking them on ski-trips, and planning parties while they were being tutored and of course taking us all to Singapore a week before the competition.
My heart broke, my daughter complained i broke my promise that last year was going to be her last year. My son had no idea why this was so important.
Somewhere in the middle of drop-down, pull-out fights -- we reached a breakthrough. A miracle happened: the kids figured out something they wanted. For Nally, it was Mindcraft, this video game that let her build things. For Aidan, it was time on the iphone. The kids would wake up, demand to say their speeches and then proceed to get what they wanted. One run through, 15 minutes on the computer. It worked like a charm.
Systematic desensitization. i was floored and thrilled, that it no longer was me pit against their angst and their will. It was them begging me to do the speech 3-4 times a day because it was a means to an end.
By the end, they were pros, and they were doing it for mama and yeye, and everyone in Singapore. They made so much progress from last year i was so incredibly pleased i didn't care what they won.
All of what i wanted happened:
- they got over their fear of speaking
- they ran through their speeches as a means to an end.
- they could say it in front of strangers, and mama and gong gong and aunties they've never met.
- i wrote a speech that leveraged Aidan's physical humor
- i wrote a speech the leveraged Nally's sentimentality
- Aidan overcame his stage fright
- Nally was a wet noodle and pulled together and focussed at the end. 
- i got to honor my desires to be a playful, fun mother instead of tyrant coach.

They were confident, and natural and projected so much focus and animation. i told them they were winners already.In Phuket, we even played a game where i would be their hands and act out all their actions for them while they gave their speeches. They thought it was hysterical, they couldn't stop laughing. They begged to do it again and again.

Best of all, we all remained good friends at the end and we actually had fun with it.They were amazing.

Today, they both won honorable mention, which since there weren't any second or third prize in their category was pretty darn good in my book. A part of me feels the familiar hand of God keeping me humble. He had already given me what i wanted -- a relationship-preserved coaching relationship, the kids were ecstatic they won anything, they demonstrated such great sportsmanship being so happy for their friends.
The best part was Aidan saying " I want to do it AGAIN! " and them sleeping elated because they won an award.
For me, i kept telling them how proud i was of them, and to God, how grateful i am to be an altogether different mother during this process.

Taken Care of ( Pt 2 )

Part two of a journey about career that i specifically determined not to plan. i figured, i've micromanaged 3 degrees and 3 career paths -- graphic designer, user-interface designer, user interaction designer and at the end usability engineer. i was determined to "not know" this one as a therapist.
So when i joined Christian Counseling Center San Jose, i was ashamed to tell them that i knew very little about them. i didn't know they were the largest of the Christian Counseling branches in the area. i didn't know that it would one of the few non-profit settings that paid ( albeit 40% ). i didn't know that it provide some of the best training on setting up a private practice, everything from managing monthly deposits, calculating credit card deductions to creating office space.
i certainly didn't envision finishing my 3000 hours with a full practice, a growingly robust client base and a client base that was self-referring. It takes no less than 3 years to build a practice. And while my colleagues work at agencies that pay health insurance and salaries, when they leave, they leave with no clients; while my clients follow me. 
I had joined Christian Counseling Center, wary about being represented by a Christian organization; embarrassed that ours was the table that got passed by the most at Santa Clara job fair. Yet today, i couldn't imagine not being able to run into fellow believers in the lunch room and vent and ask for prayer. 
It was also the perfect complement to Process Therapy Institute, which provided me the best spiritual and clinical foundation any therapist could have. I couldn't be more hand-held than to have my supervisor in my ear for a whole year, or having my colleague watch me work behind a mirror. There, i learnt to receive the most gentle, loving feedback in the most raw and exposed setting and survive with grace and strength. It was healing i needed to bring closure to the years at RISD when my design professors ripped my work to shreds. It was a180 degrees different from me crying in the bathroom, wiping my tears and coming out professional. 
As a client and a therapist, i cried and wept and worked out my fears of working with couples, working with men, working with affairs. 
My supervisor lovingly deflected a year-long projection i had of him as a critical, didactic male. i will never forget the day the projection broke, it was a rite of passage. i learnt never to take my projections seriously again.
But Process Therapy Institute also connected me to St Lawrence elementary and middle school -- a Catholic school i grew to love and appreciate. I loved the community, the sprit, i loved the people and the masses and of course the year-long, uninterrupted space of working with children who couldn't be taken away from me by their paying parents. It was there i learn to relax into the space of play therapy and trust the process. It was there i got to see year long work bear fruit, or see non-directive play manifest itself in better classroom behavior or kindness towards peers. 
I will never forget the day this sullen, monosyllabic boy who basically acted like i wasn't in the room just "wake up" one day after 7 months and inquired about my vacation. Today he chatters non-stop about horse riding and has ambitions on being "student of the month".
But recently i feel God's hand continue to move on my behalf. Just as i give St Lawrence my notice, just as i prepare to move out of my Process Therapy Institute family, i realize i still need them.
i was all ready to start my Palo Alto practice until i realized I can't rent in Palo Alto until i am licensed. And once more i see God's provision as Process Therapy Institute's Palo Alto connection enables me to continue to be supervised as i wait for my hours to get endorsed.
In April, my Palo Alto office opens and i have 2 clients lined up for the slots. I hope to work there in place of the school come July.
It's been a journey of 7 years, seeming wandering, a day at a time, determined to enjoy the process for process sake. Enjoying each bite this time, no more delayed gratification.
Yet i see a God who takes such meticulous care of me, more than i could have ever done for myself. Could i have done it ? Possibly. Am i capable ? Absolutely. But as my therapist and i have been saying lately -- it's so much nicer to be taken care of .

But of Course

Had a beautiful Sabbath. I've had a bunch of weekends retreats and training so i haven't been in church in a while.
It's sad but church has always been an individual experience for me. i feel free-est when i have no one i know next to me. So today when Nally said she wanted to visit her best friend's church and Aidan wanted to go to ALCF, i was too thrilled to take him.
Our new Pastor was fabulous. He is grounded, humble and just such an eloquent and elegant preacher.
Today we went back to the basics of the Lord's Prayer and rekindled in me the age-old intercessory calling i had as a teenager.
Back then, I used to wake up in the morning, listening to my mother's 5am prayer sessions on the phone and do quiet time. i used to pray for 2 hours straight with a girlfriend after school. It was on my knees that i took God for at word when He said " You will seek me and find me if you search for me with all your Heart ". He found me. i found him. And i never forget my favorite book Joyce Huggett's Listening to God that gave me my first visions of what it was like to listen to God's heart when i prayed.
Today, listening to Pastor rekindled some of that. All through the years, i've gotten smarter, more wordy, more intellectual, more theoretical but at the end of the day -- you simply go on your knees and pray. You pray in the age old language of Holy Spirit tongues in a language you don't understand.  You simply shut up and pray.
Ironically, God's been putting it on my heart lately as I pray in the car on the way to work. He said He has had enough hearing about me worry and analyze my husband. He said "This is how you pray". He said every morning, instead of worrying about him, analyzing him, taking his inventory, instead of putting together his treatment plan, figuring out his diagnosis, determining where he is on the alcoholic spectrum -- He said just plead the blood of Jesus over him.
Pray for him, God said, the same way i'd pray for my kids. With fierce protective-ness and blind comprehensiveness.
So these days, instead of wondering how to heal my husband, i've just been pleading the blood of Jesus over him -- his mind, his spirit, his genitals, his heart, body. i pray that God will protect him from the world, from me, protect our marriage.
It doesn't get anymore complicated than that.
But today, Pastor spoke about this ongoing resentment i have towards God about my marriage. He said he often thought he'd go to heaven with a barrage of questions -- all starting with WHY. But these days, he realizes as his faith matures, as he watches  God work and as he realizes God's Sovereignty, he thinks he'd get there and see everything in perspective and the first words he's say when he sees his Master are " But of course ".
And somehow, in this space of covenanting not to know, God whispers in my heart an explanation. To this curious, why-hungry child, He throws a bone of comfort in this time of waiting -- " I promise you, you'll know, You'll see my purpose. and at the end of the day you'll be able to say " But of course "
But just to keep me on track, i go to a Fundraiser and i have my favorite band Groovlily sing me their last song and the chorus goes " You don't have to know " and my heart melts with the irony and intimacy of a God who knows me.
He knows and that's all i care. i don't have to know yet He knows, that i need to. And He promise me answers, not because i deserve it but because He loves me, and reassures me -- of His purpose, of His perfect Plan and His sense making of my life.
I remember challenging Him in my youth -- " God!  If you could show me the purpose for my pain, i am willing to endure it. "
Today He promises me that i will say when i see Him " But of course " and for now that is all i need.
Bless you Lord.

Taken Care Of (Part 1)

Every now and then i get a glimpse of the Divine's meticulous care for me. i especially appreciate Him most in my career since it is a space that i am especially obsessive about. It started at age 15 when i was poring over job ads trying to figure out how i could support myself should my parents disown me for marrying a boy who hadn't finished high school.
It was the quickest crash-course in career counseling a pre-teen could ever have.
Years after my first love and i broke up, what remained was an obsession with crafting a career path to a design job in a large corporation.
I interned every summer since i was 15. I was clear about the currency i was being paid: i would make coffee and answer phones if i got to design one real print piece of work. I had a working portfolio by the time i got into college which enabled my college internships to be at Silicon Graphics, Apple's Research Lab and when i graduated from RISD, my first job out of college was at Oracle, and then Sun Microsystems. i even got a random Startup in there just so i could be part of the Internet Boom, secure the title of Art Director, transition myself into a different salary range and own an Aeron chair.

So you can imagine the how amazing it was to "randomly" land my counseling internships that way i did. I did very little research about which were the "hot" internships to have. i just went with the flow and ended up with 3 interviews and cornered two of them to make a decision, pitting them at each other in the same way i pitted the corporations to get me a good salary. Later i found out one wasn't even a real interview, i got the job. 
Every year i was in the 2 placements I chose, i wondered if there were better places to be; the same way i was at my corporate jobs. The minute i got a job, the fun of the search was over and all i wanted to do was start the search all over again. In the past, i would distract myself by going back to school. I got my MA at Stanford while bored out of my mind at Oracle and then Santa Clara while bored out of my mind at home.
But as i finish my 3000 hours, i am so amazed at the wisdom of God in planning my career. 4 Degrees, 5 corporate internships and jobs later, i told God that this career would be different. 
It wouldn't be about the end result, it would be about process. Unlike all my other degrees, where i would grit my teeth and barrel through the process, with my eyes fixed on a the end goal of a corporate gym, lunchtime yoga classes, in-house laundry and insurance that covered counseling -- this time going back to school was just going to be fun.
And so i took one class a quarter at Santa Clara because i needed a place to put my adult brain once a week. I needed to be in a classroom, i needed the security blanket of textbooks to carry around gym classes, while waiting for soccer classes to be over. i needed homework to signal deep breaths and distract myself as i was so tempted to hover over the children's homework hour. For 4.5 years, the kids and i would sit down at Starbucks, and they would do their homework and i would do mine.
i'd never forget the day i finished my degree. It was the most confusing feeling of " I did what ? i went and finished it ? Now what am i going to do from 545-845 once a week? "
i lost my motivation to consult as a designer ( previously it was to pay for graduate school ), i wandered around the streets aimlessly during the time i usually fought traffic to get to class. My nighttime routine unraveled, i didn't know what to do with all this free time. i was horrified at the possibility of sleeping at 9pm -- a time i would otherwise  come home from school and work till 1am on consulting gigs.
It was a huge adrenaline crash. i have to say i was mildly depressed for a couple of months. i had no plans to actually BE a counselor. i just needed a place to put my brain while i was bored out of my mind doing child-centered Stanley Greenspan's Floor Time with my kids as toddlers or when i struggled with mild rage wondering why my daughter could read large 3 syllable words and not still stumble on out.  School was suppose to coax me into being an informed, educated, researched supported parent. Winnicott, Bowen and Ainsworth were suppose to terrorize me with visions of insecurely attached infants and later adults enough so i would rethink stalking out of the room or taking out my anger on them.
It worked, i am a much better parent for it -- an attachment based one to boot. But now what?
As i look back at how the journey of mothering invited me to re-invent myself, how it forced me to be paid in happiness instead of cold-hard cash -- i am so grateful for where it culminated. God had bigger plans for me than a great job with an awesome gym and great insurance -- He had a calling.

3000 Hours!

i finished my 3000 hours! These are the accumulated hours of what a marriage and family therapist's equivalent to "residency" hours after graduation. It's taken me from April 2009 to March 2012 -- almost 3 years to do it. 2 years out of graduation which is pretty fast as they go.
It's the most surreal feeling having them done. i am now closer to being licensed, the next step is the two liscensure exams and then i am officially a psychotherapist! 
It feels real, it feels more momentous than it was being a designer. With the other i don't think i ever felt i WAS officially the role. It was whatever my clients hired me to do.i was always wondering if i was a bona fide interaction designer or a real interface designer. i have always prided myself in being interdisciplinary yet at the same time never felt like i could move with full confidence. Every job was different, every client, and every new company a learning curve. i often described my work as an interaction designer to others as a test of how fast i learned, and got up to speed. Underlying it all, was this horrible feeling of not getting it fast enough, or always being a novice each time i started a new project.But looking through my early entries as a therapist, and my journals on each client, i see myself grow and change with each year i practice. i was just telling God never let me lose that wide eyed wonder of disbelief that this is my job.i have relished the process, loved watching myself evolve, loved sensing my own confidence and my own trust in my intuition. It has been beautiful watching my practice unfold and grow and develop. It's been so amazing to see. And it could take any less than 3000 hours.
The other day i came home on a high after seeing a bunch of clients and i told him for the first time in a while -- " I can't believe i do this for a living ". It's so amazing and such a privilege to be let into people's lives on such an intimate and crucial level. It's such a sacred space, such an incredible way to spend 8 hours of life.
One of the things my fellow 12-stepper used to tell me was "Life is what you do between meetings ". i feel like life is what happens outside of the rooms i work in, it's a breather, it's a break, it's relief and self-care.
I hug my kids closer, grateful for each breath of their healthy, attached, loving smiles. i thank God for the things my husband does give me after the bittersweet sessions with my couples.
3000 hours. For the first time, my mind does not race to 10 years from now, envisioning what it'll be like as a therapist in my 50s. All i know is that this feels sustainable. i can do now, as i age. I can do it when my bones break down, when i look older. i don't have to compete with the new young Stanford grads coming into the tech industry. Age is not a liability but an asset in this field. i will write my book, i can write off my retreats and therapy as a business expense. Heck i can write my Phd as a business expense.
Thank you God for the most precious gift at the end of this journey of motherhood. For all the years of staying at home, all the years that cornered me to reinvent myself. i felt like i had to let go of my dreams of Brown and RISD in order to be there for my family.
You know that i've often felt like i got the shorter end of the stick. That God you love my husband more -- his career, his interests and passions. That all my purpose was in life, was to support him.
Today, i feel the prophecy that Liang Sin prophesied over me in junior college come to past --

The LORD will guide you always; 
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land 
and will strengthen your frame. 
You will be like a well-watered garden, 
like a spring whose waters never fail. 
¹² Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins 
and will raise up the age-old foundations; 
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, 
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Repairer of Broken Walls have hit me differently through the years, and i am sure God will keep revealing more. But for this season, it just resonates with such truth and poignancy.

Nourished by Presence

It's been a lovely evening with the kids. Enoch's complaint lately is that i don't spend enough time with the family. The old me would have lost it, gone over the edge, felt my identity as a mother threatened, reeled back to all those years he spent most of his days off traveling and his days on working.
Kudos to my program, my therapist, my recent dabble in EMDR, i held my cool. But it's evenings like tonight that make comments like those so inane. I am completely connected to the kids.
My day off, i can't wait to pick them up after school. i get Aidan's Besting cake and Nally's Bialy and i wait for them at the school. We do homework at Starbucks, we get groceries after, we chill.
And i know it's a good day when my baby girl tells me "It's been a peaceful day mommy" and the highlight of the evening is scrubbing them done and cuddling in bed. Simple pleasures, lots of hugs. i know i'm doing a fine job when we are chattering about our day and i get out of the blue spontaneous hugs; and my baby girl stops in the middle of her homework and takes up breastfeeding position in my arms and we rub noses right in the middle of Starbucks. i hope she never grows out of the cuddle position.
At the end of a day, a good day is a mindful day when i am not preoccupied, stressed, tired from the day. What a huge difference a day off makes. The weekends tire me and i am exhausted by bedtime and i can't wait for them to go down.
Tonight, Aidan and i ate strawberries and Nutella before bed. Nally made a fire like an expert with a flashlight checking the flu and crumpling newspaper. 
In the old days we would have gotten an hour of homeschooling, experiments and art therapy done by now. But these days, just being present is all the kids need. They can sense it, and they are nourished and so am i.

EMDR

Spent the weekend in an intensive 20 hour EMDR training. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, where a therapist uses eye movement to bridge the left and right brain relocating any trauma stuck in the left brain and integrating it with adult resources.
I have to say i was a huge skeptic going in. I've tried it before and it never worked on me rather disappointedly. A long time ago, it worked on Enoch which is the biggest segway he's made in any kind of therapy so a part of me is very impressed with it.
But i have to say that this weekend, i was really impressed with how much processing i got done. i have to be the most resistant client, extremely defended and determinedly skeptical.
But when in one session when we were practicing on each other and we were supposed to process just a recent incident and i brought up the ski trip enoch was going to take them, the session suddenly brought up memories of my parents saying they were going to leave for dinner as a child and me just going just about distaught over it. Then the memory shifted to less that my parents were gone but that i was by myself crying and just beside myself in tears and that no one came to comfort me. Then the memory changed to a visceral, implicit memory of being left in the dark without anyone coming to get me.
The instructor ( who in and of himself was a giant trigger ), made several astute observations during his visit with our little dyad. i had had a hard time concentrating and was all too willing to eavesdrop on all the other groups nearby. He made the comment that if i was in the dark a lot  how sensitive i would be to sound. He also said i had a hard time crossing the midline which typically results in learning disabilities (LDs ). I've been researching that for Nally for years and really believe she has this issue. And when he asked me about if i had any LDs i almost teared up because in Singapore, there was very little known about LDs at that time, but all i know was everything was twice as hard for me. 
The other processing session was about the memory of a time in junior college where i was taking a big exam and i was deathly ill. i was running a high fever and yet was completely certain that i had to take this exam or i would have to lose a year of school. It was this horrifying feeling again of being completely alone. The interesting thing was after each EMDR stimulation, i had no thoughts or feelings come up, except for this burning sensation in my eyes, and this feeling like i wanted to cry but couldn't.
i couldn't make out if it was because i was tired or if i was getting dry eyes. But after another eye-movement stimulation i was able to realize that i couldn't let myself cry because if i did, i wouldn't be able to finish the exam.
In the next session i cried, and then was able to imagine people coming around and comforting me. The core negative cognition was  " I don't deserve to be helped or comforted" the conversion was " People will be there for me ".
It was pretty wild stuff and i came home and experimented on Aidan. We processed two "bad memories " -- one time when he accidentally kicked his cousin and the other when Dominic his friend almost drowned in the pool. i was able to take distress level down from 10 to 5 and the other from 10-4. So pretty amazing stuff.

Chinese Speech Competition

Got the kids to school on time today. Proud and pleased with myself for not raging, for not yelling, for not dropping them off stressed and impaired for learning.
But i made the terrible mistake of working on the speech in the car. Aidan asked to hear his speech so i started and it went downhill from there. i heard Aidan's and then i wanted to hear Nally's and hers wasn't halfway ready and she was a sullen, reticient wet noodle about it.
And i told her calmly how disappointed i am with her, how she didn't keep her end of the bargain which was to memorize 1.5 pages of the speech over the weekend.That was the deal we made when they went skiing over the weekend. 
And for the first time, my child who always holds me tight when i drop her off, always has me kiss her a million times, just walked off.
My heart just sank. 
A part of me chided myself for working with Aidan and not Nally yesterday after homework and taking the easy way out of enjoying them and watching Modern Family with them instead. A part of me scolds me for trusting her when i saw her work on her speech yesterday by herself and not check to see progress.
It seems like every time i choose to let go and trust the process and trust the resources -- people fail. The school teacher doesn't translate, the tutor does a poor job. After having a fit about REFUSING TO DO IT THIS YEAR and being ALL OUT OF CHINESE, i have to rewrite it. 2 weeks and hours of Al-anon later i am still doing all the things i said i wouldn't do this time round because the whole process is just STRESSFUL and KILLS ME!
So this year, i am so determined to work my program. i decide the speech competition is just one giant metaphor for all the things i cannot control. What is written, how it's written, how much practice the kids get at school, what the tutor is doing with them since i am working.
i guess, this is the first year i don't have the energy and time and air time to work with them. And also,i  don't have the resilience to fight with Nally anymore. Part of me is so stuck in the space of "f-its", if you don't want to learn your multiplications, your speech, figure out your punctuation, learn to spell -- it's on you. i've been playing skip counting songs since you were two years old, i have offered to homeschool and work with you,i have paid through the nose for tutors, but now it's on you.
It's like i was talking to a mother of a 4th grader yesterday. " She's going to learn to not lie, manipulate, be late on her homework not because of you, but because of herself. You're not a good enough reason. "If only i can relinquish the residue guilt that goes with that. The lingering haunting refrains of perhaps somehow, in someway i could have done better. If i did it THIS WAY, with this theory, if i readjust myself -- you will finally take ownership for this crucial issues in your life. 
Bonafide co-addict behavior. It's the Al-anon anthem, the codependent pledge. i keep imagining these homeless kids or children of alcoholic families who learn to wake up in the morning, get the family going, fed and ready all by themselves because their parents are passed out in bed.
I did it with my husband's drinking, i am doing it with my kids. And i know better, working with mothers of teens, that adolescence is one giant period of grief work where we really confront the fact that we have little or no control over the outcome of our children's lives.

So this year, with the Chinese Speech Competition:

• I am going to offer my help at homework time.
• Work with only anyone who asks for it.
• Stop when it gets stressful.
• Let the tutor, school, life and maybe this whole experience create enough stress and urgency in them to get their act together.
• Guard my own serenity, well being, relationship with them at all costs
• Embrace daily the fact that they might go up there and bomb it.
• Decide that that would be the most valuable experience they could have
• Breathe, breathe, go to meetings and breathe
• Talk to my therapist about this

Joni Eareckson Tada

I met Joni Eareckson Tada for the first time this weekend. She was my hero at age 12. Today as i thumbed through my journal, i ran into a letter i wrote her when i was 12 years old. i remember reading her story at 12 and being completely enthralled and horrified at the same time; that a teenager only 5 years older than i was, would have her life completely changed by a single diving accident.
Through the years, i've listened to her music and thought about her.
Now as i turn 40 and she 45, it was amazing to be able to meet her in person and watch her preach live.
Yet 40 years later, i am less starry eyed, less idealistic and i found myself bracing myself to be sweet talked into another discourse on suffering.  
Yet she was so real. There was something so irresistibly pure and innocent about her faith, i really honestly was jealous. The therapist part of me was wondering ok how much dope or denial does one need to inhale in order to talk like this -- she was cheerily happy, giddily delightful, beaming like the angel on top of a Christmas tree. Something of me still gravitates to the dark, sardonic humor of Father Tom -- the darker the better.
Yet through it all, as she talked about her heart-breaking dream of being like the lame man at the edge of Bethesda wanting to be healed, and how she finally got to visit the ruins of that site last year on a trip to Israel -- a part of me believes she knows what she's talking about when she says " "There is so much more to life than walking and the use of my hands ".
Long time ago, i had labeled my marriage a special-needs one. Not so much how broken it was, but how far away it was from the idealized space i had imagined  marriage would be. i had identified less with the pathology of a special needs child, than the overwhelming heart break of being a special needs parent; of wanting something so bad and having been given something else.
Today as i read my 10 year old journal, i have been dreaming about marriage for the last 30 years. i named my husband GUS, God's specially chosen man. i wrote songs for him. On my right ring finger now, was the ring that i wore with God as a promise that i belonged to him.
Yet everything about marriage today was nothing like i imagined.
Yet God said through Joni, a version of what he said at least 7 years ago, " I dare you to have a wild and exciting life IN SPITE of your marriage ". And today He whispers to me " There is so much more to life than a fulfilling, connected marriage " and somehow i have felt broken, punished, a failure, let down because of all that we struggle through.
What if at the end of the day, i didn't break it. So i can't fix it. i can do my own part and work my own healing but even that can't fix it.
What if ? And i can i then say that the gifts of this journey, my independence, my degrees, my children, my recovery, my calling, the richness of my experience is worth it all ?
A part of me wishes i could go back to the innocence of 10 years old.
God's Specially Chosen Guy, how i've spent all those nights dreaming of him. He was going to come get me and save me from my loneliness.
Maybe it was and is only God's job.

Spirit Wings

Ran into this song again that i loved growing up. Somedays i feel like i gravitated to all the songs of being confined and trapped as a teenager. Found this on one of Joni's CDs. Lovely to hear it again.

SPIRIT WINGS

C                     
Some birds live in cages
F
They never learn to fly
G                                                    C
And like those birds, I never found my wings
C
But Lord, your love released me
F
So I could see the sky
Dm                                      G
And now my heart rejoices as I sing

Chorus:

C
Spirit Wings,
Em                               Am
You lift me over all the earth bound things
F                G                C
And like a bird, my heart is flying free
Em                                         Am
I'm soaring on the song your spirit brings
C/G                  F
O Lord of all, You let me see
C                     F
A vision of, your majesty
C    
You lift me up
D    E   F               G    C
And carry me on your spirit wings

Now when I'm feeling lonely
I just look at You
And soon my heart is soaring high above
Everything is clearer
From Your point of view
Lifted up on spirit wings of love

Chorus (X2)