almost Christmas and I'm alone...

It's saturday night, around 11:30pm, and I'm homesick. I have always been the independent woman, I rarely miss a lot of things, but today I feel an ache of loneliness. Earlier in the evening, I was watching Sound of Music, a movie that has so much sentiment as it was one of our family favorites, so needless to say, I cried through out most of the singing. I thought about my family and wished I could be with them. I talked to my parents during the day, and I ached to see them and just be around them, but I won't be.

A lot of my friends are gone home to be with their families and it pains me that I'm here by myself. To add on this, I don't like Christmas...I think it's a bad excuse for people to spend ridiculous amounts of money buying presents that will soon be forgetten and maybe fakely accepted or celebrated. My friend Deepak and I were at a Toys 'R' Us and he motioned me to look over at a cash register across from us where a woman had spent $1,700 for toys...that's how much I make in a month. All of it spent on toys that kids will soon outgrow. Seriously people, is this what Christmas is all about??? I really don't get it. And for those who say it's to give the same way Christ gave, let me remind you that Christ was actually born in March...we are just following a tradition that is perpertuating commercialism draped in the name of celebrating the birth of Christ. Maybe I'm just bitter that I don't get to spend time with my family, but I just don't like Christmas at all.

So anyway, this will be my Christmas holiday...I'll go to church, I'm still tentative on going to a friends for Christmas day. I might just spend the day at home, it might be pathetic, but I that's how I feel.

Dirty Dishes

The dishes had been pilling for almost a week. I was stubborn and wasn’t going to wash them since I knew they were not mine. But every time I went to wash my dishes, I’d get frustrated because no one was taking responsibility for them. It’s like a ghost had come, used them and left them there. My plan was to hold out for as long as I could, until Rob Bell threw me for a loop. Why is this guy so intent on undoing my stubbornness? Why is he so intent on raining on my little parade of what he calls the myth of redemptive violence? I do really well at this, you know when a friend drives me up the wall, the most logical retaliation is to make sneaky remarks in their earshot indirectly aimed at them, but meant to be directed at them, which by the way is the most highschoolish way of handling such moments, another clear sign that maybe I’m not really as grown as I like to think. Or better yet, there’s the good old silent treatment or complete avoidance of the person, yeah, such mature ways of handling conflict. Some are bolder or maybe have deeper issues and will probably slash your tires…either way, earlier during the day (when I couldn’t handle the unwashed dishes anymore), I had listened to a message by Rob Bell “Calling All Peacemakers” that just shattered my little world of passive aggression, another thing I’m really good at. This message was really timely because, besides the dishes, I’ve been struggling with a friend whom I’ve basically vowed to avoid because I just can’t handle them anymore without wanting to harm them…again, I have some major issues.

Bell used the story of Samson who had gone to check on his wife only to find that she’d been given to his friend. So what does he do? He sets the whole town’s economy on fire using foxes to protest against his father-in-law. When the Philistines found all their prospective harvest reduced to ashes inquired as to what happened, and what do they do? They burn his wife’s family as a revenge, and then when Samson finds out what happened he goes on a slaughter hunt! It’s like a game of let’s-see-who-can-up-the-other-with horrible acts. At the end of the day, I don’t think that the conflict was really resolved. Bell then fast forwards to Matthew where Judas is getting ready to betray Jesus and one the disciples is pretty pissed about this and so his solution to the whole problem? Cut off one the high priests’ servants ear off!, yeah like that will solve anything. So Christ tells the disciple to put the sword away…solving problems with swords will lead to death by the sword. And this is where the message starts to undo me. When Jesus was proclaiming about the new Kingdom, it wasn’t just about salvation…it’s this completely new way of thinking, of seeing the world, of understanding how we relate to people and situations. Before, tit for tat was okay, but now it was about letting someone who slapped you on one cheek, slap you on the other…completely new way of thinking. When you had an enemy, you fed them and gave them all they needed for their sustenance instead of letting them go in need…again a new way of thinking.

So back to the dishes…I finished dinner and was washing my dishes, when Bell’s message kept hammering on me. The normal thing to do would be to let the dishes stay there until someone, other than me, washed them…I wonder if that’s the same thing my roommates were thinking, in which case they probably would have been there for eternity. But if I was going to respond according to this new way of thinking regardless of who those dishes belonged to, I needed to wash them. It didn’t make sense, but it’s what I needed to do. So after a brief battle between my two selves, I washed the dishes, no there were no angels cheering after they were done, but the dirty dishes were gone. So now I’m wondering how I should deal with my friend…the one I can’t stand. So far I’ve just tried to avoid them, talk about them to some of my friends, do all I can to vilify them and make them into the really ‘bad guy’ all the while, presenting myself as completely blameless, without fault, holier than thou. And I won’t lie, it feels great! To know that I’m in the right and they are in the wrong, but, to take up this new way of thinking means that I can’t relish in these kinds of thoughts. Aaagghhh!!!!

So far this is what I know. Talking to my friends about my friend doesn’t really do a lot, it rather spreads the poison. Avoiding them doesn’t really help either, it’s more the cowardly way of handling the situation, another thing I’m really good at. Here’s a scary reality…I’m as bad as I’ve tried to make them appear…I have a tendency to act out in similar ways they do, that drives me crazy…so there goes my blameless plead…so what next? Honestly, I don’t know. I’m a coward at best. I HATE conflict and would rather die than have to confront them. And so that’s where I’m stuck, without a clear way of how to handle this in light on this new way of thinking. And there goes another day in my life…

It's Dreams Season

I have dream seasons. By this I mean, I go through moments where I have very vivid dreams and I’ll actually remember them. Often times they involve people I know or seem to refer to a dream I had previously. Lately, some of the dreams have been really puzzling, some have involved my family, my friends, others with people I don’t know and I always wake up wondering if they mean anything. Everyone has a view of dreams. Some believe they mean nothing, others say it’s our subconscious trying to tell us something, I’m not sure what category I fall in.

Last week, I kept hearing or reading about dreams. The first was an article on RedEye about dreams and what some of the general dreams mean. The following day while I was getting ready for work one of the interviews on the radio program I was listening to had a dream interpreter… laugh if you want to or call it coincidence or whatever else feels right to you.

As I said I’ve had a few interesting dreams and I’ll try to recount them cause I think they are interesting. One involved me trying to attend this function, I think it was a Christian event or conference. I was trying to find a good place to sit, but didn’t like any of the seating that was available so I was walking around the auditorium trying to find a place. I got on a level of the auditorium where there were steep stairs, and I looked to my right and this guy was just sitting there…I remember thinking he wasn’t that good looking, but for some reason I was conscious of the fact that he’d be watching me take the stairs and realize that I had weak legs. In reality, I do have weak legs because of Piriformis syndrome and it felt as though him knowing I had this weakness would almost discredit the persona I was trying to carry. Since I was aware that my legs weren’t too strong, I turned around. I then found myself if this old building and I was going to take the stairs down to go outside, somehow that was going to reconnect me with the original building I was in, but I realized there was water shooting half-way through the staircase and I didn’t want to get wet, so I went to the desk attendant and told them about the water leakage and they told me how to find the elevator which I did and that was the end.

Another dream was about me literally flying, but I was running from something and I went into this cave to hide, but the entrance I wanted to use was closed(obviously, I guess I’d been there before and I think with someone cause I remember thinking I wish ‘he’ was here to open that entrance) so I had to find another place to hide and I found this hole and stayed up there. But down below there were people who were doing construction and they were talking about me and I had to tell them to keep quite so no one finds out where I was hiding. Then the dream ended with these high profile people finding me and figuring out how they could help me…I think they were in the government or something like that and I was trying to tell them my story so they could help me.

Another dream involved a guy who I’ve never met, again, I noticed that he wasn’t very good looking. Somehow I had driven to his place of work and was waiting for him to drive. I was on the passengers side and he open the door on my side and wanted me to drive, but I said I’m not a very good driver, so he got in through my side and sat on the drivers side and started to drive. By the way, the steering was on the right side of the car, not sure why I remembered that. I figured that we were either dating or married, not quite sure. I think he was a little bit upset with me, and I was trying to tickle him to make him laugh, but what lingered, and still does, about this dream was how free, actually free doesn’t even come close to what I felt…something that in all honesty is very elusive for me, but for purposes of impressing others, can come off as being free. Lately, I’ve started to believe that maybe I’ll never find that ‘special person’… I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I’ll be 30 soon…and so to feel this comfort-that-is-beyond-comfort, to experience this peace-that-is-beyond-peace, a sense of being home where every-puzzle-is-in-it’s-place-feeling was beyond what words could describe. I would love to re-run this dream over and over again…just to get a sense of full being, comfortable, at home, at peace, safe, whole….God, what was that feeling, is it humanly possible????? A dream I’ve had that keeps coming back involves traveling. I’m always taking off from the same field with a bunch of strangers, but I don’t know what the destination is, anyway, last night there were bombs exploding as the flight I was in was trying to take off, obviously this was a huge distraction and I was very concerned that one of the bombs would hit the plane I was in so I think I got off. To make it more interesting was the fact that in one night this dream extended to the three major modes of transportation, air, land and sea. I was on a train, a car, a bus, a ship, and a plane…I know, really weird…and with each, there seemed to be something that was hindering me from getting to my destination. I’ve heard that when someone dreams about flying it means that a change is taking place. Which would be appropriate since I’m hoping to move in the summer. But as of yet, it’s hard to be excited about this move. I’m still suffering from a slight depression and lately a rage that makes me scared. I don’t know if this has anything to do with change, but I’m just curious and wondering how it will all resolve.

I think while I have my dream season, I’ll log my dreams…that should make an interesting journal…obviously there are some dreams I wouldn’t even dream of writing down cause some can be pretty disturbing…