Realisa

Ashes to ashes

Lisa — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:48:06 +0000

Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten season, a period of prayer and fasting for many Christians, the forehead marked with ashes, a memorial for the death of Jesus. Lent was once a period of rigorous fasting and abstinence, but contemporary Lent is often a time to give up an indulgence or a luxury habit, like beer or chocolate. In Ireland, Ash Wednesday is the National No Smoking day. Lent also mirrors the 40 days Jesus wandered in the desert being tempted by Satan. Over the years, I have elected to “sacrifice” for Lent a behavior, a thing that serves The Enemy and keeps me from drawing or remaining close to God. There are behaviors and conditioned responses to things that are very much like “indulgences”. If we give them an audience, they can damage our faith and separate us from the True path for our life. That first year, instead of giving up chocolate, I “sacrificed” pessimism. It sounds funny but pessimism eats hope, collapsing our faith in the world….in God’s purpose. I am innately a very optimistic, almost idealistic person. As a child….even sitting in my interview for medical school….I was seen as an idealistic dreamer. People said….when you grow up, you’ll get your head out of the clouds. Indeed, as I have grown up, I am far less likely to gaze dreamily at the clouds but rather, I stare at my feet on the ground, intent on avoiding the misstep. But pessimism, cynicism and skepticism are all fueled by doubt and fear. And of all the commandments given to us my Jesus during his ministry “Do not fear” is the most common. And through that first Lenten season…..and for many years since, I return to that promise to give up pessimism. Other years I have “sacrificed” fear, criticism, anxiety and doubt.

This year, I have struggled with what to sacrifice. It would be easier to just quit chocolate or Diet Coke for 40 days. But, I want to try to sacrifice something I would like to shed and leave behind completely. I consider giving up DEFENSIVENESS. The other possibility is RANTING or SARCASM. I have also considered ousting that inner inhabitant of my head that talks me out of exercise or socializing or pursuing my personal interests. I don’t know what to call that “inner voice”….especially since giving it a name makes me sound a bit psycho. I could also just try to “put something on”. Spend the next 40 days practicing joy. Smile everyday and often. Give people compliments. Offer praise. Sing. Look up and breathe deeply. Skip and twirl. And as I sit here, I hear the faint suggestion……give up SADNESS. Sorrow has been an enveloping companion for some time. And considering that today is a day I may receive news that is deeply sorrowful, the suggestion that I should give up grief and sadness is a tremendous sacrifice. What will I do if Doomsday arrives today? If I offer up my sadness in sacrifice, then how am I to genuinely deal with the gut wrenching if it happens?………..

And their is the message. YOU don’t deal with it, Lisa. Let God deal with it. You stay happy. You keep your hope. You trust Him. Let Him carry the sorrow and walk that terrible path for you. Stop crying……cease weeping. Believe and trust and KNOW that He will take care and you need not be sad.

Ginger kisses

Lisa — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:48:26 +0000

Compressed into a single day, we celebrate President’s day, as the national day of observing the birthdays of our founding and sentinel presidents. Tuesday is Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, the day of feasting and gluttony before the Lenten season of sacrifice and discernment. Monday, February 20th is also the birthday of my oldest child, my Sweet Potato child, my ginger son with his red hair and green brown eyes, sharp wit and stellar mind. While some may not consider a red haired man the norm of handsome, to me it is the mark or uniqueness and originality. We all agree to the fair beauty of the red haired maid, but there is something stalwart, strong and undefinable in the red haired man. He will be tall and lean, like his cousins and my father’s people.

February 20th is also the day I became a mother. While I celebrate his birth and his name and the blessing of his soul to my stewardship, I also give gracious thanks for the faith and trust with his life. And if we, as parents do our jobs well, our children grow strong and healthy and venture forth into the world. They are inquisitive and critical, curious and tenacious. They carry a healthy portion of caution without being restrained by fear or doubt. And most of all, they learn to trust and to love. If we are true, we teach them to love and love blindly. First by loving God and then by our example of loving them. For is it a shame for a child to doubt if they are loved, for a child to be uncertain of their worth, the value in life and the absoluteness of divine love for them and the unconditional love from their parents. Happy birthday Sweet Potato.

Face it

Lisa — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:30:27 +0000

If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.

Fear shackles the mind, navigating the sock drawer becomes a Nobel laureate feat. I frequently advise patients who present racked with anxiety that fear is not logical. One cannot talk themselves out of fear, nor can a friend coach you through or away from fear. Fear is the psychological equivalent of a bug zapper at a KOA camp ground. Once fear presents itself, we are drawn to it. Like a black hole vortex, resistance is often futile; fighting fear often escalates it.

I have learned to let fear just come. I think my fear is the adult equivalent of a toddler’s temper tantrum. Often, it coalesces out of nowhere without solicitation or trigger. And fear doesn’t leave until it’s done fucking with you. I know that trying to negotiate with fear provokes it. Trying to run from it simple antagonizes it; it shifts from stalking you languidly to a full throttle assault. And…at least for me….fear loathes passivity. No playing possum, fear ain’t fooled. So, you pony up, plant you feet and face the music. It doesn’t make sense, it’s not logical and it won’t be denied. Fear arises when I doubt myself, when I doubt my purpose, my value, my desires. And once doubt is seeded….anxiety and fear grow, replicating like a virulent strain of bacteria.Like any fever, you have to wait until it breaks.

There is a clarity after a struggle with fear. I am reminded of these things:

1. Why avoid fear? Accept fear. It is just an emotion, no different than joy or gratitude or satisfaction.Accepting my own fear is equal to accepting my joy. I desire joy and so I shall accept fear. I want the good stuff, so the counteraction is that I get the bad stuff too.

2. When the good stuff shows up unannounced like its second cousin Fear, I need to make just as big a deal. Laugh as loud as I cry. Celebrate as much as I panic. Thrill in the joy as much as I wallow in the dread.

3. Acknowledge the value of adversity. Sour vinegar will convert a bland cucumber into a tangy, crunchy pickle. A pearl is the result of irritating friction caused by a grain of sand. A diamond forms after long and tremendous pressure. If I want to be a brilliant diamond, then I have to withstand the pressure. I cannot wish myself into a diamond and everyone knows the difference between cubic zirconium and a true diamond.

4. When you can catch your breath, BREATHE. Inhale and exhale. Focus on the simple sensations. Taste, smell, touch, feel, move, listen and see. Then intentionally blind yourself, deprive your senses, be silent. Silence your world, contract your space. Limit your contacts. It is a sensory detox. Return to sensations that soothe: a playlist that triggers the desired Pavlovian outcome, a lavender soap or a special tea. Pajamas or fresh sheets that comfort. Focus on your physical space and get out of your head. While fear is in residence, it’s best to vacate the premises anyways. Eat simply and modestly. Drink minimally, alcohol is a possible tempering agent but can prolong the Occupy Fear event.

5. When the storm is over take inventory and acknowledge all that you did to minimize the impact. It’s like hurricane preparedness. Congratulate yourself for being prepared and storm ready. If you battened down the hatches, kept all your important documents dry and had provisions for the onslaught: Kudos! You did good, baby. Be proud. And if you did it this time, you’re ven better prepared for the next time. Accept that there will be a next time.

6. The intervals between Occupations can be spaced and lengthened. It requires daily honesty with yourself. Acknowledge the micro-fears. Do not avoid or shun fear. It creates a false sense of security. Remember, fear is like joy. If we are cool with Joy showing up daily unannounced…..we have to realize the potential for Fear to crash the party.

7. Feeling beats numbness everyday. While in the midst of a fear storm, we beg for anesthesia and numbness…it is an awful thing. Life…a genuine life, the AUTHENTIC life…..means you FEEL it. A true life is cognitive, intuitive, engaged and intentional. You step into Life and live it.

Craven

Lisa — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:24:28 +0000

I am listening to the unabridged audiobook Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in George R. R. Martin’s series. Samwell is craven. He calls himself craven, feels craven and dreads circumstances he knows will proclaim his cravenness. John Snow commands Samwell to cease calling himself craven; while Samwell might be craven in his heart John forbids him from speaking it aloud. And despite feeling craven, Samwell is far from cowardly. In the clutch, Samwell’s bravery astonishes. Cowardice is the failure to act valiantly in that clutch moment; in a critical moment, a man’s character fails. Cravenness is the overwhelming fear of failing, the dread of timidity and the lack of faith that you have a backbone and that in a desperate moment, you cannot be dependable.

I am craven. I dread circumstances. I avoid things that I fer will result in my failure or rather the failure of my character. I am craven about confrontation; I am thankful I am not my office manager. Out of my fear is born the tendency for a disproportionate response. I dread the confrontation and so I over prepare; I come like Rambo or the Terminator when all I needed was a slingshot. The misconception for others is that I appear to be completely without fear. If I come packing like Armageddon, then I must be fearless about stepping into the fray. Just the opposite.

And so like most people ruled by fear, I simply avoid that which causes me trepidation and stick to the stuff I have no hesitation. Like a Matchbox car on a black plastic racetrack, I go round and round and round without reserve. My individual track is known and predictable. But push me to an unfamiliar place and I quake. I have to literally shove Geronimo to my mental forefront as motivation. I must be my own awful stage mother; I must shove the pee-in-the-pants, barf backstage child actor out from behind the curtains in the wings into the spotlight. If I want to be a star, I have to walk out on stage.

Anyone who knows me knows that I loathe acting. I actively and vocally refuse any situation that requires me to “act”. I would never go on a talent show. I’d never do community theater. The mere thought gives me shudders. Yet, each time I must overcome my craven inner voice, I act. I put on the armor of the brave warrior and I step into the fray as if fearless. And in that moment, I realize: The Warrior is not fearless about war. The warrior is simply willing to take the first step. If you believe in the cause, in the realm, then in the moment of need, the courage arrives and works through you. Courage is not of a man; courage works through a man whose soul is willing. Courage comes from a higher place. A miserly, parsimonious soul closes to His Will and is proven the coward. And while I may be craven, I know I am no coward. I am willing to surrender my soul to a greater Will. I’ll put on my armor, I will suit up, I will go to the front lines, I will accept the mission. And on the dawn of the offensive, I will surrender….not to the Enemy….but to the Will higher than my own. I will submit to Their plan for me and I will do as I command.

There are more times in the New Testament of Jesus saying, “Do not fear” than there are of him commanding us to love. And in that I realize God knows man’s craven heart. He knows mine. He knows I need compassion and affirmation: “Do not be afraid. I am with you. And in the darkest moment, simply open your heart to My Will and I will bring you home.”

Chicken Heart

Lisa — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:27:28 +0000

“He was the only one who saw her clearly, yet the only one who could not see her.”

I wrote a story, a novel. Sometimes, it feels like the novel wrote itself. I cannot recall how or where I found the time to daily sit and write for three or four hours and still work my job and function. Yet, as time passed, the story came, the characters arrived and presented themselves to me. I listened. I saw. I tried, sometimes feverishly, to get out of my head, through my fingers and onto the computer the scenes that played before me, the conversations that I witnessed and the emotional drama. Sometimes things and people showed up I had not expected or even known, catalysts and provocateurs. Often, I felt merely instrumental, a conveyance, a telegraph. And then it was done. Or it seemed done. I maybe I felt like I needed to be done because the story was so big and complex.

Likely from a haze of creativity, I brashly and boldly entered a writing contest. Not a giant national medal awarding contest; I am an amateur at his and not busting with hubris. I was likely giddy and enthusiastic in a childlike way: “Look what I did! Isn’t it cool! Isn’t it? Isn’t it!” My enthusiasm was mostly because I actually wrote a NOVEL. Holy crap, I told a serious and compelling story. Look what I did!

And then something quite unexpected happened. The judges for the contest give me a nod. I make the finals. Whatever I am up to has some merit. That….or they make everyone a finalist to get them to join their club and attend the conference and awards ceremony. I went with the cynic’s view for a bit. That made more sense than there being genuine merit to me as a writer. I’m a doctor. I am a mother. How much OTHER stuff do I think I can do proficiently? Shouldn’t I stick with my regularly scheduled programming?

And so I did. I sewed a trunk load of quilts. I made jams and jellies and pickles. I focused of LOTS of other stuff. I ignored, abandoned and neglected the novel and all fiction writing. But the novel is like the Chicken Heart that Ate New York, thump thump. Like a Tell-Tale Heart, it rattled around and haunted me, taunted me. I tried to avoid. I claimed to be just a vehicle but not the driver and so therefore, not responsible. Go somewhere else if you need more telling. But the more I resisted the more Uncle Remus reminded me that it isn’t easy to fight with a tar baby. The more you resist, the more you get covered.

And so I wake this morning with a cascade of new words, new fragments, new images. The story gives me permission to leave out some stuff. “It’s enough that you know the whole story. You can leave out this part, this whole subplot. The other readers don’t need to know it. They don’t need all of it. It’s okay.” And in a nightfall I have gone from an arcane doctor leeching her patient to a modern surgeon with a scalpel in my hand. I am no trained surgeon. I could really botch this. And then I realize….who would know? No one knows this story but me. I’m killing it slowly through neglect. How is butchering it any less of a death?

And so….

I stripped the beds, cleaned the house, ate my cereal and I am headed to the Farmers’ Market and the quilt store in Trenton. Another day of avoidance.

This or That

Lisa — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:29:05 +0000

In The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes about success. What makes someone successful? How are they so successful, especially at a young age? Is it innate talent, luck, dogged persistence or drive? Gladwell makes an elegant proposition that it is a bit of all of those things plus environment and the simple application of time. Do something for ten years or ten thousands hours and you become an expert at it. Tiger Woods swinging a golf club at the age of three meant that by the time he was 15 he could kick the ass of almost any semi-serious golfer in the land. Same applies to Andre Agassi, Tom Petty, Tim Tebow, Mary Lou Reaton, Mikhail Barishnikov, Annie Leibowitz, Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard. People at the top of their fields, masters of their schtick are masters because they keep doing that schtick over and over for years. After ten years, they’ve trained their body and mind to do the act fluently and fluidly. Then they can start with the finesse. Then it gets interesting. The ten year rule applies to other things too. Flying jets and airplanes is not the skill set of a rookie. They put in hours and hours of simulator time. A general surgeon has a minimum of four years of general surgery training, logging cases and procedures before they are proficient, before THEY feel proficient. A top chef isn’t made from some dude that cooks on a Coleman gas stove while camping twice a year. A top chef is in the trenches of restaurants…..or cooking for a family… day after day for years.

There are things I wish to learn, become proficient, even master beyond my current skill set. I have practiced medicine since graduating med school in 1993. But by the time I had graduated, I had spent three years rotating through different specialities and talking to patients. Regardless of the service, the one uniform experience was the patient. So, by the time I finished my residency, I had 3 years of med school, 1 year of internship and then two more years of residency. Six years of asking questions and listening to patients’ answers, watching their body language and hearing the things they want to say but cannot speak: their fear, their anxiety, their dread. And so to some, I seem like a soothsayer, oddly intuitive and freakishly perceptive. None of that is true. The science of it is that I read people. Like John Gottman, I thin slice facial expressions and see the emotions embedded in people, even when they are doing their damnedest to conceal. It isn’t some divine talent….it is the by product of TIME spent doing what I do.I ask and then listen.

But I want to do OTHER stuff too. I want to sew and create. I want to garden and grow my own food. Reading and looking at photos and books is the simulator equivalent and not real. I have to eventually get into the dirt and try. I want to write…write more…polish my novel and write the other stories I tool around in my head. But, I can’t find the 10,000 hours to devote to those things and the realization that 10 years from this vantage point seems far different than where you are 25 looking forward 10 years. I feel the press of time to get in gear and at those things I want to learn and master. And then I feel the press of “why bother”. I am master of THIS. Why isn’t THIS enough? Why can’t I just be satisfied with THIS. Why must I always want THAT? Once I get THAT, I’ll want something ELSE. So, I should just focus on THIS. Except………I already GET THIS. THIS I know. THIS is less challenging. And there is a lot of time ahead of me to have only THIS to do.

Clack clack clack

Lisa — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:06:21 +0000

I love roller coasters. Right at the beginning, the cars pull away from the station and start their climb; clack-clack-clack the coaster climbs towards that first drop. Lately it seems, I get right to the point where the tracks start to curve and I lean forward, anticipating the impending free fall over and down the other side of the peak, only the drop doesn’t happen. We just keep climbing. Clack, clack, clack. How can it just keep going up and up and up? It defies physics….and the laws of fun and frivolity. Nothing fun can result from a free fall a mile high. Life, as of late, has been a stuttering, unsatisfying, clack-clack-clack towards nothing. No drop, no coaster ride, no resolution. It has been a perpetual, never ending climb up hill. And like every roller coaster, I’m strapped in and restrained, prevented from moving freely. It’s not fun. And while I would like to hope that THIS time, the sensation that we’re going over the top and will plummet through the twists and turns of a typical rollercoaster, I have been mislead so many times that I no longer believe this ride is designed like any standard amusement park coaster. In fact, I think somehow we might end up back at the station exiting the cars onto the opposite platform with some park employee telling us that the ride is over.

It’s a mystery. I am stymied. But I am still strapped in, locked down and unable to change the course of this ride until it returns to the station. I got on this thing voluntarily. I met the height requirements. I really WANTED to ride. I still want to ride….but all it seems to be doing is clack-clack-clack to nowhere.

Beta Test for Curvy ruler

Lisa — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:59:27 +0000

I bought the curvy ruler from Sewkindofwonderful and decided to test the ruler and my ability to cut and sew a double curved block. Before I take a rotary cutter to the two yards of MODA fabric I bought for the intended project, maybe a quick trial run is reasonable. The cutting was very easy. The piecing also was very easy and fairly forgiving. The end product will likely be two separate single block runners. I’ll keep one and I’ll gift the other. But I am waiting for the walking foot for my new Singer Curvy machine before I do any machine quilting.

Donuts

Lisa — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:09:59 +0000

I was given a donut pan as a Christmas gift this year. I hadn’t used it until today. The recipe that came with the pan is a little dry and I think I will search for recipes for a sour cream cake donut. That, or dunk the donuts in melted butter after baking and roll in the cinnamon sugar. That kind of defeats the purpose of baking the donuts, though. Honestly, the reason I don’t like making the donuts traditionally, is the smell of the fryer. I’ve done homemade donuts before and they were marvelous. But I have just wasted 30 minutes scouring through my photo library looking for the pictures to no avail. I’m off to do some sewing.

Half step

Lisa — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:57:10 +0000

My faith resides in my absolute understanding that I know nothing. I may be intelligent and clever but whatever the meaning of this life, I am clueless. I don’t even profess to know. I would appreciate getting clued in, getting a heads up, maybe some advance warning, but I accept my ignorance and innocence. Humility springs from this space. Humility is how I find peace. I have been faced with a few weeks of total uncertainty regarding something personal, something that means a great deal to me. This situation arose after facing and dealing with a scare over a lump in my breast. And while many people are shaken to their core when faced with cancer, I was absurdly calm, logical and unemotional about the whole thing. I figured that once I had true answers, I could then address how it made me feel. This new situation isn’t logical, it defies rationality and because of that, the emotions evoked are unpredictable and difficult to categorize.At the center of it all is the feeling that I want someone else to give me answers, make it all better. But that is a childish feeling. And I am not a child. I don’t want to be a child again, either. And so, I move forward. One small step (or half step) at a time.