Thursday, July 22, 2010

according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, or principle, conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern

that is what websters says is normal.

after the mathematical definition of course...

I'll start with afternoon when in conversation i uncomfortably heard my mother describe the difference between sara on aderol, and sara off aderol.

sara when she's herself, and sara when she can actually get things done.

like normal people.

we knew I had a.d.d. from an early age. my parents knew before i did. they didn't want me to be labeled. if i could survive without the medications then thats what i would do.

until i stopped being able to, that is until my grades no longer matched my intelligence.

when i was little i thought that spacing off was normal. i thought everybody did it. i didn't realize that everyone else could keep track of time, and finish tasks directly after them being given them.
in the first grade i had no idea what was going on and wondered how everyone else seemed to figure things out before i did.

by the time i got to high school and it was painfully apparent that i needed to be on some form of medication if i expected to graduate high school i felt relieved. but when i actually heard the doctor say "yup she has all the symptoms. i'm prescribing 20 mg of aderol a day."

i felt broken. it had been made official that there was something ABnormal about my brain that made fluent cognitive function difficult to attain in the least. there is no train of thought i will have that will not derail. its one of the reasons i enjoy blogging so much. i get all my thoughts out at once before i forget where i'm going or what i'm doing.

but the truth is i've never felt normal. i've either been too smart, or too fat, or too tall, too broad, to weird, too technical, too literal, too artistic, too feminine, too androgenous, too much or little of anything that everyone else said i needed to be.

the fault lies with myself as much as others. they should not be comparing me to themselves, nor should i be comparing myself to them. its to Christ i need to compare myself to. how do i measure up?

i hate my aderol. it makes me feel weird physically, and i become a robot, unable to exude the emotion i feel in quite the right way.

but the other day i was studying my dear friends' scott and nikki's baby Brooklyn. she is so so so so so so joyfully human. and i've fallen in love with that. i find myself watching more and more babies just to see if they all act so very human.

what i mean by that is that she is completely uninhibited in the emotion she portrays or feels. when she feels happy you can tell, when she feels sad you can tell. there is not a beat between thought and reaction for her. and why should there be? it won't be until she gets older that someone will say "you shouldn't laugh at that" or "you ought to be glad" it won't be until she's older that she'll realize that the world holds a different definition of how she should feel, and from that moment on she will measure her reactions as we all do. i dread that day for her.

but for now she's the most genuine thing on the planet.

today more than any other day i realized that the kids i work with at hilltop each struggle with their own definitions of normalcy. there are more than a few that struggle with differences in themselves that inhibit their relationships with others. some suffer from emotional differences, others physical. one particular girl Saba is Muslim. and if she hasn't experienced it yet there will come a day when she feels a separation between her and everyone else due to that religion, or possibly being the only indian girl in a class filled with white girls. someday she'll feel it if she hasn't already.

will saba feel broken because she isn't normal?
at least what she will perceive as normal because of her environment.

we're all broken, but why do we feel inferior to other humans when we realize it?

why can't i see others broken ness? is it because they hide it well?

or because they're human and its just that obvious.

how do i look like them, do i just live without inhibition, or increase it?

why do i want to look like them?

i wnat these kids to be able to play together and laugh together and just be normal kids together. but they won't let each other be normal because of the things that make them different.

i know that i am to comopare myself to Christ, but its so hard sometimes with all of these physical people in front of my eyes to compare myself to.

i guess there is no conclusion to this blog. im still contemplating on what normal is and why i can't figure out how to "be" it.

i've been outcasted for my presumed faults of every kind

how they thought i looked
how they perceived me sexually
intellectually
emotionally
religiously

its just frustrating and it hurts to think of my own abnormality, and then to see other people struggle with similar problems. i don't want them to feel abnormal. i don't want them to feel how i felt in high school.

but maybe thats human too.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

yes i'm a hypocrite...and?

So theres a hole in my fortress that is optimism

aka my faith.

I've been a bit prideful about my own optimism, if for no other reason than the fact that it is a philosophy that so many people don't recognize, and yet i've found to be fully effective.

To sum it up:

If God is truly good (which He is) and He has kept all His promises (which He has) and He now promises that He is in control and that all will be well in the end (which He does) and does in fact truly love us (which He also does) then there is NO reason not to be an optimist.

I expect the best to occur, because the man at the wheel says that it will.

It started when i was eleven years old. Before i was eleven i'm not going to lie, it was a pretty dark time in my life. I always feel a little silly saying that because such a young age group shouldn't experience some of the feelings I had but its true. If i hadn't accepted Christ when i was 9, i'm not so sure i'd be alive today, or at the very least so well adjusted. The statistics tell us that a kid like me when i was in elementary school tends to develop violent tendencies, drug abuse problems, promiscuity, due to lack of self esteem.

but those years are in the past.

anyway when i was eleven my mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer (there is no stage five) we weren't given a time limit because when she asked the doctor wouldn't give her one, said that would be bad for her which i now agree with. its not good for someone fighting for their life to be racing against a clock.

i don't know if it was denial but i told my mom "we'll get through this" and i didn't realize it at the time but she took great stock in my words. later when i heard my mom telling others that i had been a great inspiration to her to keep fighting because of how positive i'd been, i realized that i had to be this way. i had to be an optimist and just choose to know that everything was going to be all right. there were times when i felt it a heavy responsibility, and an unfair one, that i should be the only voice of encouragment in some circles, but this faith is strength, and it requires practice of strength to stay strong.

however for some reason when it comes to myself (probably theres some connection to self esteem issues rooted in the childhood i had) i can't be an optimist.

i walk around telling people that optimism is the best policy, that God will pull through for them, that they need to have faith in His capable hands, and believe that He made them beautiful, and made them for a positive purpose.

and yet when it comes to myself i see failure, i see ugliness, i see all the things that i fight against.

hipocrite-an actor, someone who says one thing but does another. i say that God is in control and that we have no reason to expect otherwise, yet i don't apply this to myself?

its a problem i thought that i'd worked through in the last year or so. i'd been resisting God in a pathway, but i wound up relenting of course, and my life has been going so much better since.

and then this little thing happened.

this little, tiny thing that for the last couple of days has been keeping me on the verge of tears, which it shouldn't be.

i might have an ear infection.

...so?

ive been swimming a lot because of my work and thats been leading to some ear issues. i feel as though its been some moisture issues, and possibly excess ear wax build up. i don't know whats the deal, but i know that i can't really hear out of my left ear right now, and i've not been able to for almost forty-eight hours.

yesterday i got into two fights with my mom over it, in which neither of us said very helpful things to one another.

and i've been terrrified. i've been scared that i'll get permanent ear damage and that i'll develop a hearing disability in which i won't be able to perform basically every ministry i've been called to.

playing in the youth band with the girls.
learning chinese so that i can take steps toward ending the sweatshop labor issue.
being a listener to the teenagers.

all of those require my ability to hear.

i'd think of going to the doctor, but we can't afford that right now. we can barely afford to keep moving.

and then i realized this morning, why am i fretting so much? why am i thinking about all the worst possible scenarios? i can go to the doctor, God will help us afford it, i can get this taken care of. these things happen every day. if God wants me to perform these ministries, then i will perform these ministries. and if he wants me to do it with partial hearing then i will STILL do it with only partial hearing.

i'm silly for fretting so.

although my hearing is still greatly diminished in my left ear. i know that everything is going to be alright.

why?

because God says so.