Two weeks ago I got plastered for the second time in my life.

The first time I was about ten years old and had broken my tibia while ice skating. The doctor called it a "bologne" cast but I only heard "below-knee". I remember my non-reaction to the terrible pun making the doctor a little awkward. Ha.

The more recent incident was a casting to make custom orthotics, a generous gift from my mother and a hopeful solution to my lingering foot pain/injury. I still don't see how it will help but I'm not the expert.

I lay on the crinkly exam paper on my stomach so my feet dangled off the end of the table. There was a poster right at my eye-level with images and descriptions of various healthy and diseased feet. It was as disgusting as it was fascinating.

The orthotist put the radio on which washed me over with relief. This was her alternative to small talk! 

She didn't narrate what she was doing and I didn't ask or turn around and look. I heard water drip back into a basin right before the warm--then hot!--gauze was placed on my foot. It felt great. It was like a foot bath or foot massage or both or something. 

The orthotist's next move was what gave me the blog post. She had to continually smooth the plastered gauze from heel to to toe, presumably to keep air out and get the most accurate cast. 

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Nobody touches my feet. It wasn't until recent years that anyone in my family was allowed to see me barefoot--and I still get mocked for it to this day.

I don't cuddle or snuggle. Even when I was taking care of the boys and they would come nestle beside me or sit on my lap it took so much energy and focus to not flinch that I didn't have any left to reciprocate.

Hugging is still almost always something I have to psych myself up for. Maybe it's in the past six or seven years that I've even started accepting/initiating hugs and I still feel new. I'm still building up that neuron pathway between Physical Embrace and Relational Affection. The two (can) have an organic link. I like people, I just don't know how to like physical affection. It's hard but it's getting less scary with practice.

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So, this almost-stranger is making even, deliberate strokes down the sole of my foot while my muscles and tendons relax right into it, in no small part because of the heat of the plaster. And something very elemental within me is feeling nourished. I feel like a baby, having no understanding of how physical touch aids development or feelings of security, having no understanding of what the words "physical" and "touch" mean, having no idea what my own nose is, but somehow being nurtured, nourished, fed by what I'm receiving.

I'm sad that I feel physical affection at such a basic level when I'm in my thirties. It shouldn't be this way. I shouldn't be this far behind. I first started noticing the phenomenon when I began receiving physiotherapy treatment last May. Then I had my first ever massage last November and it became even harder to ignore.

Some time last summer a low rumbling within nudged me to book more physiotherapy appointments than were strictly needed because someone would unhesitatingly make physical contact with me. They would be safe and they would have no emotional or relational expectations of me. I never did book those superfluous appointments--which I thank God for.

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But when it came to the plastering of two Mondays ago, the denial melted away. I have a serious physical affection deficiency, ignorance, and aversion. Feeling so profoundly nourished by the latex-gloved hands of an orthotist making a cast of my feet--not expressing her enjoyment of our friendship--registered as almost tragic. It felt GREAT and it shouldn't have. I'm an amateur and it's embarrassing.

My father was sporadically in my life and sporadically (read: largely unpredictably) gave hugs, put a hand on a shoulder, playfully smacked our legs while he was driving because that's all he could reach backwardsly, etc. On top of this I was so skittish around him that the contact registered sterile or mechanical. I could do it but I didn't mean or understand it. Maybe I should say it was inaccessible. My mum doesn't like hugs or being touched, and in later years she has said so explicitly. I have two distinct childhood memories of her stroking my head while I rested on her lap. Those memories feel amazing and fake at the same time.

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I want to be loved. I want to be known. I want to express through touch. I want to have relational trust and vulnerability and intimacy--and I say this with a marital relationship at the bottom of the list. I just want to be seen and valued and allowed in and allowed to need and communicate. I want to be close to someone.

I don't want my closest physical affection to come from health professionals. Lord, help me.

this is my gross heart.

"Whoa--free dinner!" I exclaimed. My sensitive nose had alerted me to it from a few yards away. And it smelled like just my type of cuisine.

 

I nipped over to get a closer look. Yup. It was a free, abandoned meal. And still hot! I did just eat but this was too good to pass up. And I was kinda hungry again. I was so excited it felt like my tail was wagging.

 

A final once-over and then I tucked in. It went down easy. It tasted pretty good. I licked my lips in satisfaction and headed off. 

 

Before long (out of nowhere!) my stomach tightened up in a sordid but slightly familiar way. Did I fall or something recently, and bruise my ribs? Did I go too hard with my morning exercise and now my abs are sore? I just scored a lovely free meal and now this mystery gut pain ruins it. I don't get it!

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As a dog returns to its vomit,

   so a fool repeats their folly.

                               (Proverbs 26:11)


 

Things for which to be thankful.

On Monday I read through the first eight verses of chapter 3 in Titus maybe six or seven times in preparation for this Sunday's service. I tend to read and re-read until I can see where we will need to be lead to enter the sermon and what we should take home after the sermon. Eventually I found the songs that I thought would work. But I thought more about flow of service, particular musicians, tempo, keys, saxophones, and how long it's been since we sang Song X.

Today I was assembling the slides for lyrics and Scripture that will be projected during the service. And as I updated to NIV 2011 not verse-by-verse but word-by-word and punctuation mark-by-punctuation mark, something got snagged in my fine-toothed comb.

I found this: He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. I read it and felt like I fell out of my chair. (I literally felt that way.) It was staggering. Us*... we are saved through the washing of rebirth. Somehow the phrasing got me. Somehow God hard-wired humans to understand cleanness and dirtiness on every figurative plane imaginable.
*moral scum buckets

And somehow He cleansed us! The washing of rebirth and renewal. Today it felt truly too good to be true. Too good to grasp. I couldn't touch fingertips trying to reach my hands around it. I couldn't bite into it, let alone swallow and digest it. I couldn't do anything but shake my head, dumbfounded. I couldn't see through it, I couldn't make sense of it, I just couldn't get it. It's too much. It's too good. IT REALLY IS GOOD NEWS. Oh, selah and amen.

Try it with me. Try reading the passage below and scrutinize each word like it's a restaurant and you're the health inspector.

Titus 3:3-7 -- At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

  Nothing more to say.

chop / chop / chop

I feel so fake sometimes. I had a couple half-ideas of what I would blog about this evening and though the ideas came naturally/spontaneously, I feel oddly obligated to "check in" with this web log because it feels like it's been a while. Sigh. I don't know what I'm doing. There's always something mitigating, something extenuating. I know I'm not obligated to write... but I can't stand the thought of me not feeling like writing. I can't lose that.

I wanted to write about how relaxed I felt today from about 5pm onward (though I started tensing up again maybe an hour ago). It was relaxed + happy + OK + balanced + relieved. By 5pm I felt great confidence that I had had a full and productive day. Worked hard on a couple of things today--volunteer tasks, seminary work, paid work--and most of it wasn't exactly the stuff I delight in. They were things that needed to be done and were either best done today or could only be done today. I kept my head down, dusted off my self-discipline manual and got it done.

By 5 o'clock I felt like I was allowed to just go home and have a Friday evening. I truly felt no guilt about having achieved too little or "nothing" that day so that if in the evening I only wanted to do leisure things, it would be OK. It feels like a miracle of God that I could have such a day. I'm so happy about it and I want another. It feels like seminary has slipped perfectly into the puzzle/pie chart/engine that is my life. It has fit in a good spot and instead of squishing the other parts, it complements and relaxes them. (Not wanting to push the analogy too far) it's like adding the capstone to an arch: it means all the other pieces bear the weight they should and that the arch is its most stable. I hope I can use the capstone/cornerstone analogy because seminary is about learning about/knowing/worshipping the Lord. I'm only three weeks in but ...I'm happy about how it has mopped up some of my spare time and converted it into something healthy and edifying.

The other thing I wanted to write about was yesterday's meltdown. I've thought about writing this type of post a lot lately but I refrain because it seems like the kind of thing you say to friends, not to cyberspace. But I don't know whom to talk to. Something mitigating, extenuating. I left work after an OK shift, and a mixed physiotherapy session, but not before being harshly snapped at by a coworker. It wasn't really a big deal and on a different day I'd dismiss it more easily. But on this day the donkey's back broke under the extra 0.5 grams of weight. On this day, I was juggling shin splints on the leg of my bad foot and a rolled ankle on the leg that's supposed to be bearing extra responsibility these days. The physiotherapy that was meant to help the rolled ankle aggravated it to the point where I felt my sanity was being stretched trying to sit quietly on the therapy bed and not yell out or cry.

It was the kind of pain that forces itself to the forefront of your mind. All of us have sore muscles or joints or throats sometimes and we manage to get on with our day and tend to the pain intermittently. This was so bad that it was every fourth thought. "I'm in so much pain," I would say in my mind, unable to come up with something more complex or less obvious to think about. One block and a half away from work I stopped to sit on a bench to give my foot/leg/ankle a rest and as I thought about the 20 minutes more of walking that I had to do if I wanted to get home, and how awful each step would be, I kept thinking that fourth thought. "I'm in so much pain." Then the two halves of the analogy that I had been trying to keep apart slammed together. I'm in so much emotional pain, too. It's also a mystery. It is also something people can't see. It is also something that I see no end to in the near future. It also makes me hate myself and my mistakes and my inability to make it better.

So, my sunglasses filled with saline. I tried to hide it which made me sob more. I hate crying in public. I hate being so low and so small and so stuck that I just cry in public until I can stop crying and get up.

Eventually I stopped crying and got up. I went for lunch even though I didn't want food. I ate out even though I had recently done a robust grocery shop. I felt distinctly pushed by the LORD (my Father), the Lord (my big Brother), to go and have something I would enjoy, something that would show how He loved me. I wanted something cheap and small just to get me home (it was almost 2pm and I had eaten a small breakfast around 8). He said, "nothing too good for my daughter," just as I came up Wyndham by Carden St, and I choked up again.

  Are You really here? Do You really see me? Do You get this?

Take me home. Take me with You. Tell me where to go, what to do. Tell me how to weather this. Tell me how a noble Christian lives this life. Help me to do it. Help me to trust You. Please let me see You.

At the restaurant, the server gave me that awkward look that strangers do when they can see you are crying/have just been crying/are about to cry. After I placed my order I started again. I was thinking of how nice it was to just share a meal with Him but how I had an assignment due that day and one due the next day which I wanted to start. I thought about my piles of reading that I could be doing, chipping away at. I thought about the other daunting tasks of Friday. I thought of how behind and useless I am. What's the point of anything? What's this stupid lunch going to solve? The tears came so quickly I had to go to the bathroom. My thumb hovered over "Send" on my phone for reach-out texts probably 10 times that day. But I couldn't do it. I cried in the stupid bathroom until I could stop crying. It's so awful. It's an awful prison. I don't know what's wrong.

But I made it out of the loo, and found the Psalms. (The Psalms found me.) Lunch was awesome. Just perfect and I don't know why the cold water tasted so awesome but it often does after one loses water through the eyes.

The rest of the day is practically a blur but I made it on strength that wasn't my own. I thank God for crouching down and guiding me muscle-by-muscle how to put one foot in front of the other.

This:

  Yes, my soul, find rest in God;
    my hope comes from him.
  Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
    he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
  My salvation and my honor depend on God;
    he is my mighty rock, my refuge.
  Trust in him at all times, you people;
    pour out your hearts to him,
    for God is our refuge. (Psalm 62:5-8)