Posts Tagged friends
True or False: A blog is a safe place to share or rant.
Posted by crusaderjennblog in debateable, Faith, lifestyle on August 25, 2015
Years ago, I was one of those who lived on the Faceplant (Facebook). See the film “The Internship” if you’re not familiar with the Faceplant reference. I spent hours lurking, liking and responding to people’s posts. Because I was sick (really I was in a wheelchair for a while) and could do nothing, but vicariously live through other’s activities. That was years ago and over the years, that time on Facebook diminished a great deal, to now, when I can barely tolerate it. I’m on there maybe once a week and primarily to see family and like/support the Seahawks feed. I might find myself feeling like I should like friend’s posts if I happen to make it to being logged-in 5 minutes 90 seconds. I set my profile on private and all my settings are also private so people really can’t see much about me like my birthday or anniversary. If I had that information available to others, than I would feel obligated to also give people the appropriate, “Happy or Congratulatory” remarks on their walls. So I rarely log-in to the social network thank goodness because who has time? When I got a new iPhone last Christmas, much to my dismay the Facebook app came pre-loaded, but I do not use the app for the reason that I am not that important. And Twitter? I have an account, but I also don’t use that. Because I’m not that important.
My husband laughs at my attitude because he thinks I sound like an elderly person. Hush, you whippersnapper. I guess I noticed last time I logged-in that people used Facebook as a means of obtaining relationship advice. A while back, I saw the marital demise of some friends based on the surplus of their disparaging Facebook posts at each other that were out there for the world to see. Don’t people tire of notifying everyone of what they’re feeling moment to moment or capturing every second of their life through taking pictures of themselves and posting another variation of their emotions or what they’re wearing? #Narcissism
Speaking of Instagram, I joined and my husband will attest to the fact that it was while borderline kicking and screaming. Social networks elicit that kind of a reaction any more because I feel like it’s, “just one more thing” that I’m required to monitor consistently. Thank you to those who hounded me on Facebook a few years ago when I didn’t respond in your timely fashion (immediately). And I closed the social network and turned to blogging.
I read a blog the other day and the writer was annoyed by the self-appointed blog experts who condemn bloggers new and old, like me for ‘doing it wrong.’ I can accept that I don’t know a lot, but I write because I like to and am not in any way trying to reach a certain crowd or a certain number of followers through my writing. The only thing I fear with blogging is making a commitment for a daily or weekly post and may miss a day because for example, Music Monday is on Monday and God forbid I miss the right day and have to post it on Thursday. That’s failure to me and a very real fear. That silly idea happened months ago and I already failed to maintain Music Monday because well, I was busy staging our home to look like we actually live here and then the whole thing with adoption started taking root, so you may understand that life has become busy.
My social networking pages are about me or what I want to see. I have a right to post what I want to post or filter-out what I don’t want to see. I should be able to maintain a page without fear of another individual high-jacking MY post by inserting their hashtag to use my post as their vehicle to support what or who they support. I guess I have this mentality that because I wouldn’t be that selfish to use a hashtag on a friend’s page, others also shouldn’t be selfish. It’s already challenging enough for me to share / post anything on Facebook without having to monitor / censor friends comments that appear. I support the Hawks and with football season beginning shortly, I changed my page’s photos to reflect my support. A friend commented that they couldn’t ‘like’ the new photos because they support a different team – insert hashtag. I deleted the comment because the hashtag supported an opposing team. I posted those pictures for ME to support the Hawks so perhaps a better response to those mascot pictures might have been for my friend to roll their eyes and NOT comment with an opposing hashtag? I guess I fear this friend’s response if they were to read this, because I don’t believe they can separate the difference between me disliking (deleting) their response or disliking them as a person, which is not the issue because I like them very much.
I get that there’s a certain satisfaction / ego boost that goes with razzing friends who support opposing teams, but why the hashtag? Personally, I see the hashtag as a great way to categorize, but because of their over-abundant use anymore, I’ve grown to see the symbol as #anotsocleverfiller. I #rantneverriot
Of what social networking trends are you tired or bored? Thank you for reading.
~Jenn
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It is well with my soul
Posted by crusaderjennblog in Faith, Inspiration, Living with MS on July 22, 2015
I love the newer version of this old hymn and God has continued to use this song to keep me and my thoughts in-check because at times, and I’ll be honest, I’ve gone from zero negativity to Defcon Red in milliseconds, for which there is really no valid reason. Those reasons have been ridiculous and those worries have been entirely unfounded. The “what if?” game and I have been on again, off again roommates and I still have to work at kicking-out the unwanted guest when they attempt to argue, sit down and makes themselves at home for an extended stay as they readily rehash what’s wrong in my life, when all I must do is counter-hash everything that is right. Here is Matt Redman’s version of “It Is Well With My Soul.”
I have been so very blessed! In 2001 my MS was on a fast-track quickly retrogressing and I became dependent upon using a wheelchair full-time. 2015 marks 10 years since I regained feeling in my legs, was healed and able to again walk and not require the assistance of a wheelchair. Thank you, Lord.
My Dad was diagnosed with cancer a little over a year ago in 2014. With each quarterly exam, the cancer was confirmed with the understanding that because it was a slow-growing cancer, nothing was an emergency, but it would need to be monitored. My Dad’s quarterly cancer check-up and biopsy in June came back, “No cancer.” As in with all the many many samples they extracted, there was NO TRACE of it. Thank you, Lord.
Our oldest kitty Thor, died at end of April- just a couple of months ago. He was with us 18 years and he lived a pretty long and happy life filled with chasing string and consistent purrs. We adopted Thor shortly after B and I married. Our youngest kitty, Zephyr was diagnosed with kidney stones last winter and because of the process of going under the knife, we’ve hesitated to get him the surgery. With our loss of Thor, the Lord knew we needed some comfort and allowed Zephyr to be instrumental in providing that with lots of loves and cuddles as we mourned, but we remained worried that his condition would also take him from us too soon. Zephyr is now stone-free. Thank you, Lord.
My husband had a bad cough for about a year and the doctor said it was fine. It went away and then the cough started again and I kept reminding B to go to his doctor to see what was going on. They did a full exam and also ran an x-ray this time around. The x-ray was clear and everything is absolutely fine with his lungs except that the doc put him on an allergy regimen and now that painful cough is almost completely gone. Thank you, Lord.
I doubt that there are any other Christians out there who have ever been able to relate to being control-freaks or worrying excessively. What? You might resemble being controlling? You worry about stuff too? Then you can relate… I guess that somehow I believed in my very misguided perception is that if I worried needlessly about anything big or small, that things will get better or something ridiculous like that. I am thankful that God has a plan and that through my worries, He’s waited patiently for me to step-back, give him those reigns for my inner control-freak extraordinaire and just let him be God. It’s a process and I am an active work-in-progress with needing to remind myself daily that, “‘He’s got this, Jenn.” It’s very silly the amount of control that I perceive I have. I believe that the above situations served for no other purpose than to get my faith on-track. But then, it may not be all about me, so perhaps my perspective is selfish in that the listed situations were to grow my faith, when those also could have also served to grow my husband’s faith, my Dad faith, my Mom’s faith and / or my Sister’s faith…
As B and I have again felt led to pursue adoption, our faith has very much been stretched. It’s far from ideal circumstances since we’re older and have less money than the first time we attempted to adopt in ’07, but God’s bigger. We’ve been called to just be obedient to his guidance. He’s bigger than our perceived ideal circumstances and we have questions, but more than anything, we must trust in him.
Relinquishing control is not easy, but I’m confident that considering my own life is just a little blip on God’s screen, that He can see all things past, present and future and that there is a Divine purpose for him allowing you or me or any other person to go through anything. Those situations are either good or bad character building or faith building.
What are you made of? Do you struggle with doubt? What kind of situations have challenged your own faith?
Jenn
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It’s come to my attention that I’m clairvoyant
Posted by crusaderjennblog in Faith, family on July 16, 2015
And it’s not anything that I ever wanted, but I guess since it’s not in any way a career path, we’re all good. Since my left brain-ness typically only considers the literal about most things, it takes me a while to ‘get’ anything outside the box, because I’m legalistic that way. In summary of this situation, one might say, I failed to add two and two, where the most basic of addition would have lead me to recognize a simple correlation between nearby regional earthquakes and a challenging vertigo episode that often begins within a few hours to 48 hours before a quake. Perhaps it all depends on how slow or fast the tectonic plates shift or how massive the seismic activity in my geographic region? Is there a seismic expert in the house?
I only recognized this during the recent few months that with each earthquake that has occurred within my region in the last 20 years, I’ve experienced severe vertigo. By ‘severe’, I mean vertigo that has me seeing doubles/triples and everything around me spinning at an exponential speed. How’s that for fun? On the bright side, this ‘fun’ occurs without warning and gives me a sensation that I am taking full advantage of an unlimited pass to ride all the twisting and turning roller-coasters on this planet – all in a few minutes. Yay for me! Now the reality is that one of these unwelcome vertigo episodes begins with spinning and often gets worse through the first day only to climax until the earthquake occurs. Then as a final reminder to not forget that this unwelcome guest stopped-by and overstayed its welcome, it provides a sickness ‘hangover’ for at least a day after the event. When you’ve been sick with a cold or flu for example and have taken those fantastic symptom hiding over-the-counter treatments like the, “Sniffling, sneezing, head-aching, so you can rest magic,” and wake the next morning feeling a little more clear-headed, but wondering where and what barricade you hit going 55 miles per hour, that’s the medicine hangover I’m talking about, as I wouldn’t know anything about other types.
When the most recent episode occurred June 23, I posted to the social network: I said something to the effect that, “History states whenever I experience a severe case of vertigo, an earthquake occurs in my geographic region within 48 hours, but I hope for once I will be a false prophet.” So, 48 hours came and went and nothing happened. Except it did. But I’m not on the network enough to see comments or even watch the local news because I might at times resemble living under a rock when said vertigo occurs. Watching TV and reading the paper is impossible when I see doubles and triples of everything. So, a friend saw my post and watched our regional news closely and notified me that a quake occurred on our fault line. In Alaska. Another quake occurred May 22 – same situation in me having vertigo a couple days ahead. We also had a quake earlier in the year and like clock-work, vertigo set in a couple days in advance. So wherever we’ve lived, vertigo is indicative of an earthquake within 48 hours. I believe there’s a correlation between how much of he human body is water (60-75%) depending on which expert and just like the changing tides and the closer a full moon gets to earth, there is something that sets off my balance and the liquid in my inner-ear that goes wonky with seismic activity.
You probably agree that my husband had an interesting perspective about this. B’s interpretation was that upon me discovering my ‘ability” to foresee earthquakes, I should also consider that God’s using this ability to communicate with me. Wow! That interpretation was unexpected. Decades ago at the private school, my classmate’s nickname for me, was ‘Doubting Thomas,’ which could not be more accurate than it is now. And the reason it’s relevant is because for over a year, I’ve received these ‘snapshots’ that just appear in my head. These uninspired and by uninspired, I haven’t seen a tear-jerker commercial, for example, but these snapshots have been of me or B or both of us with one or two children, but since we don’t have children, I got into the habit of quickly disregarding these ‘snapshots.’ (I’ll share with you later about B’s reaction a few months ago to my confession about the snapshots). And that’s why B’s interpretation is that just like I foresee earthquakes, God’s trying to show me that these snapshots are going to be reality. What? Whoa, Dude! No way! Is this even a reasonable possibility? Yes. Matthew 19:26. And Mark 9:24 has also become a daily reference. Dear Lord, I want to believe and I think I believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!
Are you clairvoyant or have you experienced anything like this or have you been a witness to someone experiencing this?
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I was mad at God…
Posted by crusaderjennblog in Faith, family, Maintaining Faith on June 2, 2015
I have been all over the place mentally and emotionally, therefore, my blogging has suffered severely for all you daily followers – wink, wink. A couple of months ago, I was in the middle of being angry with God. Nothing was immune from my long and increasing list of grievances toward God about… the distance from my family in WA, my husband’s health, my dad’s health as he fights cancer, my now late cat, my circumstances, well…everything. But God is merciful and lead me back to being on track with him. I am ashamed to admit that I was holding God to some very wrong and misguided performance based expectations – as in if I was being blessed, than I felt like I should spend time in prayer and reading my Bible, but there was nothing going-on in which I was thankful because I was stuck in my pit of despair. But I am out of that now. He has a plan for me and I just have to follow his lead. And for this control-freak-extraordinaire, that is the most challenging because I want to be in charge.
I have to back-up a bit, but the history is necessary so back in January, I was at our small group and our group’s new Bible study had me almost immediately feeling very convicted and I was like, “Oh-no-you-di-n’t!” all the way home by myself because B had to work late, which was a good thing as I had time to think. The next morning, the conviction hadn’t gone away though and I was like, “This is completely unacceptable.” The Holy Spirit had convicted me of being apathetic and showed me I needed to volunteer at church. At which point I joined our church’s cleaning team and also became a Sunday School Teacher. And the squirming stopped and I had peace because I was obedient to God, but then at some point, I started thinking, “Since I’m doing this and this, You need to do somethings for me,” but God does not work like that and I already know this, but I was stuck in seeing so many things around me not go according to my plan. But it’s not about and has never been about my plan.
I don’t even know where to pin-point when/how the anger started, but I do know there’s been some things following me around for a while years because I never let-go of for example our failed adoption. I heard something a while back to the effect that if I don’t let go of things that God has forgiven me for, it’s like re-crucifying Jesus again and again, which is like saying his forgiveness wasn’t good enough the first time. So like confession, I was waiting for my sovereign God to confess to me his allowing our adoption to fail. Pretty wacky, huh? I finally came to the eye-opening conclusion years ago that the failed adoption was our own fault and I’ve also been working on not chastising myself repeatedly for stuff I’ve been forgiven. In the middle of this, I began to recognize the snapshots that periodically and randomly appeared, but at the beginning of seeing those about a year ago, I quickly disregarded them and thought, “Where did that come from?” But then a few weeks ago, B and I were chatting about his job and how moving back to WA is not even on the horizon as God has kept us here for a reason and then my next comment was so unexpected as it hadn’t even been something I thought about. I said, “Maybe we’re still here to adopt a child.” WHAT?!? Even after I said that, I was confused, so I have to believe, it was God-led because after the attempted adoption seven years ago, that option was far from either of our thoughts. But then B had a lot of questions about me thinking about this because again, this was far from being an option for either of us.
So, in FBI questioning-a suspect-style, B set-up a bright-light shining in my eyes at our dining room table, where he sat on the opposite side to interrogate me. Just kidding about the light, but his rapid-fire questions combined with my own somewhat confused answers were very much making both of us pause to reassess many things, but mainly that we both recognized that the failed adoption was our own fault – it didn’t make the failure hurt any less, but instead of following God’s lead seven years ago, we made the mistake of taking things into our own hands and never sought his guidance, which could’ve saved us a lot of grief and some savings. In summary, after much prayer and conviction, we decided to try again, but we are not leading this charge. God has his hands all over this because there is nothing about this situation that makes an ounce of sense, which I will address next time.
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Engaging with people is so much work
Posted by crusaderjennblog in debateable, health, Inspiration, Jesus on January 26, 2015
Friendships require work and openness. I’ve been very guarded where friendships are concerned because I have been open to a fault with a few who I believed were ‘safe’ only to regret sharing when I experienced their over-developed sense of superiority due to their own perfection, which apparently made it allowable for them to judge me. In WA, I had a smallish group of females I trusted with whom I’d go out for a girls night like for drinks and music or a movie, but upon our relocation to NV, I’ve been closed-off to making more friends. Knowing our time here is short-lived, I’ve failed to pursue making friends with anyone beyond an acquaintance level because my outlook has been, “We won’t be here long enough to make it worth the effort.” Shame on me. No, BIG SHAME ON ME and please forgive me for not bothering to be friends with you.
For many years when we committed to going-out with, for the purpose of cultivating friendships with other couples, we were always on time and to cancel last minute was never an option. Although we were consistently on the receiving end of other’s flakiness because for some and you know who you are, being a flake is a lifestyle choice. Emergencies happen and those are excusable, but failing to plan, “Our plans slipped my mind,” is NOT a reasonable excuse when you know the date of said plans. Maybe you commit, but by committing perhaps you should always provide this disclaimer, “I commit right now, but what I really mean is I’m selfish and I’ll cancel at the last possible moment never giving a thought to any arrangements you might make in the hope that I might show-up and grace you with my presence for the evening, when my regretful decline could have given you an opportunity to do something else,” is what you should say.
But then after some reflection of last year, I have clearly become a poster-child for flaky as I have became somewhat of a borderline agoraphobic. My home is my safe and happy place. I get up. I shower. I read my Bible and pray. I take care of our pets. I exercise. I bake goodies. I drink wine and even catalog it in my little black book of Wine Notes. I read books and I might play an Ap for fun on my iPad. I run errands as needed. These activities became MY own little self-created-safe-zone when I determined that 15 minutes from home is the furthest and safest acceptable distance I can be from home at any time. Our church’s small group fits that, but I’ve rarely attended any more.
Being budget-conscious and to save money, we quit using full-time air-conditioning and as a result, our home becomes suffocating hot during summer. If it’s 108 degrees outdoors, it’s around 87 indoors and multiply that if it’s humid. Just a touch hot and with MS, the heat renders me useless until the AC comes on for a couple of hours each morning and then again in the evening and when the AC comes on, I’m in recovery mode, which has been my ongoing excuse for not attending our small group except that now that we’re out of summer, there is no viable excuse for my non-attendance, which means that I evolved into what I detest and became a flake! Our small group from church started a new study last week and I attended, but came home feeling convicted for many things one of which seems to appear in red flashing bold letters, “Making excuses for not attending our small group when I can during these cooler months,” or was that flashing in red just for me?
So now that I’ve explained why I have become what I’ve become, I’m actively working to change my habits. It’s not a New Year’s resolution per se as my followers may have already read about in https://wordpress.com/post/81313185/142/ but I guess I’m reaching-out as a means of publicly recognizing I must stop my hermit-like habits, which also equates to fostering friendships and getting together for things like coffee or being friendly instead of remaining holed-up in a book or a game Ap. Step 1 was the easiest in recognizing I had a problem. It’s the next stuff that’ll present the biggest challenges for me because I can be very content with operating within my little world. Yes, I know it’s not healthy, but it’s comfortable and that’s become the biggest challenge for me with our new small group study: to go beyond my comfort-zone. I’ll keep you updated in how I fare through this what I suspect will be an uncomfortable process.
Do you have a comfort zone? Do you have a negative habit? Did you create a positive habit to replace your negative habit? Or how did you overcome it?
~Jenn
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