I had oral surgery this week, and the experience was better than I thought it would be. Although the 24 hours of non-stop puking afterwards did leave something to be desired.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about things this week, since I’ve been pretty much flat on my back feeling like I’ve been run over by a truck. One of the things I’ve really been mulling over is power.

Who, or what, am I giving my power to?

Now, this seems pretty Yanni-ish to articulate, I know, and I feel kinda squeegy just mentioning it. But as I’m getting older, I’m starting to look around and think, “is this all there is?” Paying bills? Working 50 hours a week to pay bills? That can’t be all life is meant to be, right?

Reading this article today really made me realize that I am putting obstacles in the path of what I really want.

What is it that I really want?

I want to be able to spend more time with my husband. I want him to be able to work without spending 60-plus hours at a job that stresses him out more than I’ve ever seen him be stressed out. I want to be able to take off on a camping trip without worrying if we can pay the power bill if I don’t work 12 hours that day.

I know how to get to these goals: hard work and more hard work. I’ve started a couple new sites that I think are going to be crazy successful, and I’ve enrolled in a program with a friend of mine that I think is also going to be wildly awesome. But instead of throwing effort into these new ventures – ones that I think will most likely get me to where I want to be – I put up obstacles, distractions, roadblocks.

Like….

I check job boards constantly for new positions for Dean and me. Do I think these jobs will magically be the solution to all my problems? Yes. And no. When I really think it through I know it will just be more of the same.

I play around and waste time. You name it, I do it; Facebook, TV, reading. If I have a task to do, I find a way to get around it.

This quote from the article referenced above really resonated with me:

When you feed your power *directly* into your desires, progress can be very rapid. But when you shrink from your desires, you substitute cowardice for courage. Courage manifest results. Cowardice manifests non-results.

How much longer are you going to settle for non-results? How much longer will you keep applying the cowardly approach of feeding your power to something other than what you truly, deeply desire?

I never thought of my avoidance as “cowardice”. But that’s what it is. I’m afraid of putting so much hard work into something and then having it fail. That’s the bottom line.

“it’s very tempting to redirect your power into creating false delays and phony obstacles in the form of prerequisites, so you can satisfy yourself with the illusion of progress, even though you’re just spinning your wheels and going in circles.”

The illusion of progress, rather than real, tangible progress, whether that be success or failure? I’d rather take the real thing.

So these past few weeks, I’ve been steadily getting more and more uncomfortable with a giant toothache; I’ve got two broken teeth in the back from bad hygiene when I was a little kid, and they’ve gotten infected or demon-possessed or SOME muthafucking thing that is basically killing me and making me Ms. Grumpy Pants.

I had surgery scheduled for March, but then my tooth broke even more this weekend with a nice nail-grating CRUNCH in my mouth, and so I re-scheduled for this Wednesday. I swear to Baby Jebus I can’t wait until they knock me unconscious and carve these puppies out of my mouth. For the first time EVER, I am looking forward to the dentist! (and the drugs. Let’s not forget the drugs.)

*Castaway tooth scene reference.

I have kind of a weird confession to make.

I really enjoy popping other people’s zits.

GROSS!! I know. But there it is.

In fact, my middle kiddo is starting to kinda break out. I found at least five blackheads yesterday.

But there’s a Level Four boil brewing on his forehead that I’m just aching to get my fingernails into.

I’m mulling over perhaps making a lard tincture to spread on that puppy, to get it as big as humanly possible. Would that be wrong?

(This post is third in a series. You can read the second part here: Why I no longer believe – part two).

As time went on, and the Bible study, prayer, and meditation kept going south, I started investigating. I started researching other points of view that weren’t necessarily Christian, because even though I had been taught pretty much from birth that anything that took you from your faith was straight from Satan I was desperate enough for enlightenment that I didn’t give a rat’s ass anymore. I needed truth, REAL truth, instead of the pablum I’d been fed and feeding myself to for so long.

First, I started reading Christian theology and apologetics, searching for answers to my questions. I got a lot of rhetoric, a lot of hemming and hawing, and a lot of “you just need to have more faith.” That pissed me off. Was I supposed to just check my brain at the door and go on blind belief? Everything I was reading indicated that very thing.

Second, I started asking people whose faith I respected hard questions. More rhetoric, more hemming and hawing, more “you just need to have more faith”. In fact, I was told by one “woman of faith” that the reason our second child was having so many medical problems was that I didn’t have enough faith. She thought she was being encouraging.

This whole time, I was slowly but surely beginning to think that maybe I was looking at this whole thing from the wrong angle. Maybe instead of looking for reasons behind my faith, I needed to look for reasons why I needed to even KEEP my faith. I felt like the more I tried to figure it out from a logical point of view, with actual thought and reason involved, the more I was blocked. And it didn’t help that my childhood indoctrination jumped in to throw in a bit of sentimental ammo every five minutes as well; I mean, my Nana and Papa were staunch Christians and they were the most wonderful people I’d ever met. If they were Christians, and they weren’t bothered by any nagging questions, then why should I be?

So while the emotional part of my brain was holding on pretty tightly to what I had grown up with, the logical part of my brain was sliding slowly towards a conclusion that had been drifting around the edges for quite some time.

Maybe there wasn’t a God.

Maybe there wasn’t any concrete basis for religion. Perhaps I needed to stop beating myself up over my lack of faith in something that didn’t DESERVE my trust or belief, because it was just a little man behind a curtain, running everything for show.

Now, this revelation threw me for a loop, but as soon as I started really drinking it in it clicked into place and made sense right down to the bones. It made me so sad at the same time though. My religion had been a part of my life for 35 years. That’s a long time. You can’t just toss it and expect there not to be some blowback.

Instead of proclaiming this to the world, I’ve kept silent. Nobody I know has an INKLING that I don’t believe in God anymore. I still go to church on Sundays, believe it or not, but it’s not because I’m trying to grow in my faith or connect with a higher power, it’s because I don’t want to make my husband (a staunch Christian) uncomfortable, and I don’t want to tell my kids that there is no God. Yes, I believe it’s the truth, but it shook me so hard that I don’t know how to deal with it for myself, let alone my kids.

I want to believe, still. Really. I wish I could have that gift. I wish that I could have that peace that Christians profess to have, that relationship.

But it’s not as if I didn’t try. Which probably hurts the most.

(This is the second part of this series – for part one, go here: Why I no longer believe – part one).

So I moved to Germany and got married in Denmark. Since we were both super young and had our heads up our asses (most newlyweds do), we ran into a lot of problems right off the bat. You name it, we fought over it, but mostly financial-related stuff, since we were poorer than church mice (why do church mice have any money to begin with? It’s confusing.).

Life moved right along; we had our first kiddo, life was wonderful, la la la. Second kid comes along and there were problems: medical problems, mostly, but basically in a nutshell he was not growing due to a multitude of health crises, including only having one working kidney. Henry came 6 weeks early, he was only 4 pounds 2 ounces, and about from the very beginning we knew that he was “different” (I’ve written a lot about Henry in other posts on this blog, so I’ll leave it at that, although I think I might have to put his story in a series too).

We got pregnant with our third kiddo while we were both employed at Cannon Beach Conference Center. The pregnancy couldn’t have been more textbook perfect, until Memorial Day, when I went into early labor. And I do mean EARLY labor – she wasn’t due until Labor Day (how ironic, and how wonderfully convenient that both of these events took place on holidays so I could remember them better!). After a frantic visit to the ER and a 90 minute ambulance ride where I was puking non-stop, I then got to be on bedrest for six whole weeks.

This is where the crisis of faith began.

I sat in that hospital room, and since there are only so many episodes of Law and Order you can watch before your brain gets fried, I started doing more Bible study. Logical, right? I mean, I was accustomed to doing “daily devotions” so I was excited about the opportunity to really dig in and memorize, meditate, the works.

Funny thing was, that no matter how much I read the bible, no matter how much I prayed, the silence from God never changed. I chalked it up to one of those “desert times” that Christians are always talking about. Maybe God just wanted me to have more faith, and that he was testing me. That had to be it.

After six weeks in the hospital, I got to go on an outing, my first venture out of the hospital in almost two months. We had exactly $2.50 in our bank account, our van was completley broken down, we both had pretty much lost our jobs at this point because of me being in the hospital 90 minutes from home. I remember so clearly leaning my head against the borrowed car window and begging, pleading with God to show me a sign that he was still there, that he heard me, SOMETHING.

Nothing happened.

After the baby came, things got worse. I kept doing daily devotions, kept on praying, kept on going to church, kept on believing that God was testing me to see if my faith was real. And I’m talking for YEARS I did this. I was involved in every bible study that opened its doors, I led worship, I taught Sunday School, I told people I would pray for them when they were sick (and I really did it!).

Years of talking, listening, praying, with absolutely no sign that anyone was actually listening can get to you. Nagging questions in the back of my mind kept popping up, like “am I just wasting my time here?”, or “do you really exist?”

I wanted to believe that old chestnut that God must really have something special planned for my life since I had gone through such a long trial, but it just didn’t compute in my mind anymore. Just didn’t make sense.

I started questioning things I had always believed in, and asked for input from various friends and family. Without one exception, every single person I posed these questions of faith to told me that I just needed to pray more, have more faith, read the Bible more, or go to church more. Without ONE exception.

I was already doing all that, and my questions weren’t being answered. I wanted to know why God was silent. I wanted to know why God demanded worship all the time – was he that egotistical that he needed billions of people to simultaneously stroke his ego? I wanted to know why, when I prayed, that it felt like I was talking to myself (and it did just about that much good).

Nobody had any answers for me. I just made people uncomfortable, maybe because they had those questions themselves and had learned to either push them down and ignore them, or just chalk them up to Satan. Either way, no answers were coming.

To be continued….

(This post is first in a series; I started writing it and then realized “holy cow this is too much to stuff into one post”.)

I was raised in a Christian home, church every Sunday, Wednesday night gatherings, Vacation Bible School (I made so many crafts there, it was really fun!), summer camps. I don’t really remember doing the official “giving my heart to Jesus” thing, but I’m sure it happened. Until I was in sixth grade and my mom got remarried, we went to a large church that had lots of really fun stuff for kids, and we were there pretty much everytime the doors were open.

When my mom got remarried, we moved to a small town and started going to an Episcopal church, which was a WILDLY differing experience from what I had had so far. I kind of liked it; the ritual, the lack of surprises, the traditions. It was comforting. Just as a side-note, my brother and I used the phone in the nave to make phone sex calls for free. :>)

My mom and step-dad started fighting non-stop over church issues (among other things, but that was the biggest issue) pretty much from the moment they were married. Barry wanted to go to the Episcopal church, since that was how he was raised, and my mom wanted to go to a non-denominational church since that was how SHE was raised. It was a constant battle, with most Sundays resulting in not going to church at all, or being dragged to one church while the other parent sulked at home. I remember Christmas time being just awful; one Christmas morning Barry locked himself in his room and refused to come out because my mom didn’t want to go to early services with him. Absolutely ridiculous.

When I got into highschool, they seemed to call truce for a while and we started going to the church where I would pretty much form my spiritual identity. Youth group was AWESOME. I met friends there that I still have today (including my husband), almost twenty years later. We went on retreats, had overnighters, hung out with each other every weekend, went tp-ing together (that was a monthly outing). It was so much fun. But more than the fun, I felt connected to God in a way that I had never found before. I read my Bible all the time, prayed, and I felt so grounded in my faith. It was an anchor that I couldn’t imagine living without.

I worked at our local summer camp every summer I was in high school, and went further in my exploration of the Christian faith than I had ever before. It was my LIFE. It defined me. Every facet of my life was wrapped up in my faith, every decision I made was first run through the filter of my faith. In fact, I remember being torn between going to two different Christian colleges, and fasting and praying for 24 hours to help me make my decision.

In college, I joined every Christian group there was (and since it was a Christian college, there were a lot). I started a prayer group in my dorm that met every day at 6 AM to pray for the day. I went to gospel services every Thursday, read my Bible every day, and used my faith to direct my life. It was my compass, my lodestone.

I had to leave college early (I’m finishing up now at Oregon State University, so yeah, lots of time in-between), and came home to live with my mom and step-dad. Horrible. They fought all the time, and even though I was an adult, it still affected me. I dealt with it the only way I knew how: prayer, Bible reading, the works.

My best friend and I had been corresponding back and forth for a couple years at this point (he was stationed overseas), and things changed, we got romantic, and ended up having a long-distance courtship. We married after about two years of this, and I moved to Germany to be with him.

To be continued……

• Staying Home on Sunday Morning (exchristian.net)
• The Messiah Formerly Known as Jesus by Tom Breen (collectedmiscellany.com)
• If my parents had been humanists… (exchristian.net)
• A Buddhist in Church (zen-traveler.blogspot.com)
• Muslims, Christians set homes ablaze in Egypt (msnbc.msn.com)

I don’t think there’s ever been a time when I haven’t been able to laugh at a fart. Well, except that one time when I was at work, 6 months pregnant, and thought I was alone in the office (you can see where this is going). I bore down and let go a mammoth concoction of putrid gas that made my chair rumble in protest, it was EPIC. After that, I looked up to see the Human Resources Director sitting in the office across from me, staring at me in horror. Yeah, not so funny, that one.

But farts are usually super hilarious. I mean, seriously – the ability to make such a horrific noise AND smell at the same time, with seemingly little effort…it’s surprising to me that more people don’t see the pure beauty of this. It’s like I woke up and spat out the Mona Lisa or something.

For some reason, kids are super farty. Little kids especially, and they’re cute enough that even though their farts have the potential to put you in a coma, you’re still all “DID YOU JUST MAKE A LITTLE TOOT TOOT IMMA GONNA HUG YOU NOM NOM NOM”.

Kids ages 9 to about 12 are still farty but not so cute about it. For example, when you’re adjusting your daughter’s headband from being freakishly tight to just headache-worthy tight, it’s not adorable to experience a smell that hints at the sweet potato casserole you ate last night, with a slight waft of sulfphur from the bowels of hell mixed in for that extra special something.

Kids ages about 15 and up are just nasty gross with their farts. They’re not cute AT ALL, and in fact, even though I have a pretty muscular gag reflex, I really have to work at not completely losing my shit (ah, how ironic THAT phrase is) when my oldest decides to let loose.

Adult farts are funny except when you’re in bed, then it’s just “Did you just shit on me?” and it gets awkward. The Hubs has a special fart that he likes to share whenever my mom is over for the day; it tends to waft around and stay a while, no matter how much Febreeze and blowtorches you might have handy. It’s all “Heyyyy, gurl……you wanna watch some “Dirty Dancing” and eat some Fritos? UH HUH!”

For reals: the other day I farted so hard that I popped my back. NOT GONNA LIE, it was awesome. I laughed so hard that I farted again but that one didn’t have such a happy byproduct. I mean seriously, I FARTED SO HARD I POPPED MY BACK. That’s like some kind of Quentin Tarantino shit right there.

Not really sure how to end this without, you know, actually FARTING, and since I can’t reach through my computer screen and submit you to various indignities, I’ll just let this video do it for me:

Today, due to a mixup in schedules (mine), I thought I was volunteering in the Health Room at school but then I got there and it turned out that I had the wrong day down and somebody else was already there. Of course, we went through the requisite “Oh, I’ll stay!” mumbo-jumbo, but once she did the “you just did it yesterday though!” I was OUT OF THERE.

Not that I don’t like volunteering in the health room; it’s a solid hour of pretty much doing nothing for long periods of time interspersed with blood, crying, and general unpleasantness. Kind of like Robert Downey Jr.’s career, when you think about it. SHAZAM!

Anyway, I jetted out of there and decided to see if Henry had been to lunch yet so I could squeeze him a little. We actually ended up bumping into each other in the hall, and then we went out to recess together.

It was only about 15 minutes, but seriously? It was like the most fun I’ve had in months, Christmas included. We took a walk around the playground, holding hands, then we played on the swings, then we shot some hoops, and then walked around some more. His cheeks got all red in the cold.

All this sounds pretty mundane, and it was, but the thing I couldn’t get over was how happy he was to have me out there. How simple a pleasure, to just be happy in someone else’s presence to the point that you just can’t even take your eyes off of them. You can’t stop smiling. To have that kind of love focused on you is utterly delicious.