gijasue's blog

I just came back from a PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) Retreat and it’s a bit hard to express everything that happened to me there … but here goes.

First thing I noticed was the attitudes of some of the people from Stuttgart (this was a combined retreat since we don’t have many people in Garmisch). The one woman I noticed the most was always saying that the Lord had just told her to say this or do that. It had been a while since I had heard anyone say that and it had me wishing for that kind of security in the Lord.

Then there was the speaker, Amy Stephens. She was so obviously happy and excited to share what God had laid on her heart. I felt drawn to her and so did others because someone else told me that it had never been so easy to fall in love with someone, as it was with her.

The first two sessions she spoke of many thing that I took in, but didn’t really fully understand until the third session.

There was also something that happened before she spoke the third time, which really made me receptive to hear and believe what God was saying to me. It was right before she was going to speak on Saturday night and we were told by Shannon to hug ten people. I went around and huged about five people before I saw Amy sitting on the floor in the back, so I went to hug her. After hugging her she said that she had noticed me this weekend and had wanted to talk to me and get to know me.

I don’t remember any woman ever saying that to me, and here was this beautiful woman who wanted to get to know me even though there were at least 59 other people here that she could say that to. It made me feel special. It made me feel wanted.

And then she went on to talk about many things but the thing that hit me was when she talked about trusting him completely and letting him take care of us. I thought, ‘I can and should do that.’ But then I thought, ‘Why should he do the things I ask of him. What am I to him but a lowly sinner.’ Then I thought of what she had been telling us about how God loves us and that we are his workmanship (Eph 2:10). And she kept talking about how many women have a hard time accepting that God accepts us and loves us the way we are.

So, God loves me, how does that mean that he’s going to do these things for me? But I had put God in a box. I had made him smaller than he was. I had forgotten that this was the same God that raised people from the dead and made Peter walk on water. What were my small problems to him?

There were many other things that she had spoken about over the last few sessions that just broke on me like waves. It was like someone had tripped a line of dominoes and everything that she had been speaking about over the last two sessions seemed to fall into place. There were many things that I had heard all of my life but had never really understood. Like why we don’t have to worry … because we need to let God choose our path and show us every step of the way … we don’t have to figure it out ourselves.

Much of this seems so banal as I write it down like this, but it was like a shockwave to me at the time. I started crying and didn’t really stop for almost two hours.

These are some of the things that came out of this:

What I know is that God loves me the way I am and I can give all my burdens to him. I know that I need to ask him EVERY DAY what he wants me to do … for everything. What I know is that he will help me and he does have a plan … even if it isn’t my own plan. What I know is that I want to be really happy in the Lord like these people were and that I can’t do this on my own — I need his help.

The enormity of all this is slowly dawning on me. I also know that some things in my life have to change for this to work. I know that it will not be easy. I pray that he give me the hunger to go to him every day. I know that it would be so easy to slip back into the life that I have been living. I know that sometimes I won’t hear his voice when I should and I pray that he’ll send me a reminder to stop and listen and go to His Word to get the advice I need.

I also know that I want this for the people in my life, especially my family. I know this sounds like I’m preaching to the choir, since I know that they have prayed for me a long time and I’m sure that has gotten me through things I wouldn’t have gotten through without their love and support. But … I know that I have never seen people as joyous and carefree in the Lord, as I have seen this weekend. I know that worries about earthly things has robbed some of the joy the Lord wants to give to my family. I want them to have this joy, just like I want this joy.

I hope to allow all of you to see my struggle and hear of my joy as I learn about my God and Savior. I don’t want to be like the man in the Sistine Chapel who couldn’t care less about God reaching out for him … I want to be the one that reaches for God. Please pray for me to continue on search for him and for his truth.

Here’s a scrap book page that I recently made of A’s lost teeth. I’ve been getting into digital scrapbooking lately. It’s really quite fun.

I always liked the idea of doing paper scrappbooking before but never had the patience to sit down with all of the junk I’ve got, lay it all out and figure out what goes where — well, I actually did a few pages here and there when A was a baby — but it was hard to lay it out and then put it all away again.

I did digital scrapping before but I never had the money to buy the really expensive software or the expensive digital sets so what I did was pretty sorry (at least it seemed that way to me).

Last year I got it into my head to make digital photo books online and I was quite pleased with the results. Unfortunately, it’s not cheap and I was still looking for something that could record some of the everyday stuff without spending a fortune.

At Christmas I was impressed by how my sister has kept up with her daughter’s life by digital scrapping and I determined that I would give digital scrapping another try … so I went out and bought a book.

This worked for a little while … I made a few pages for friends of ours that were going away. I thought they were OK but I still wasn’t satisfied.

But then I found ScrapGirls.com.

If you are looking for some cheap (or even free!) tutorials and graphics to use in scrapping, this is the place! They send out a newsletter 5 days a week with 2 freebies and lots of info and ideas so you don’t even have to buy anything if you don’t want to.

And this is good for me. I have a tendancy to get excited in the beginning but then forget about it in a little while but these guys won’t let you.

Anyway, this is a page I made with their products and I love it. Great papers and embellishments for a great price.

Enought of the advertisement. I just hope to be able to show you all some more the the pages I’ve done.

Here I am, after almost seven month, breaking the silence. Not that I meant to be silent, but it was just hard to write with everything else going on in my life.

Many things have happened in those months, one of them was that my writing contract expired mid-Dec. Since then, the powers that be have no chosen to renew it or hire anyone else. I don’t know why they’ve done this — they have yet to even contact me whatsoever. But, the upshot of this is that I’ve got much more time on my hands.

So, I’m trying to get organized (it only took me a month and a half of being out of work) and do some of the things I should have or meant to be doing before. One of them is writing in my blog. Some of the others are keeping a regular exercise schedule, sticking to a better diet, keeping up with the housework and going to a Bible study.

For those of you not in my family, here are some of the things that have been going on in my life in the last seven months.

– My daughter started Kindergarten, unfortunately we also found out that she may have ADHD. We’re now going to a Dr. who specializes in this and working out what we can do to help her.

– A. turned 5.

– We took our first family trip to Berlin in Oct. J. had been there up until about 6 months before the wall fell so this was a quite different Berlin than the one that he had known.
– We also went home for two weeks over the holidays to catch up with our families and spend lots of money on books and buying clothes for A. It was also very good for A. to meet many of her cousins and reconnect with the family that she already remembers. Now she wants to go back to the States and live near Grammy and Pop Pops.

– We also had a Valentine’s Tea Party for A. the Sunday before Valentine’s day. She loves them and it’s a great way for her to connect to her friends that she doesn’t see outside of school or church.

Many other little things happened but things are moving along. J. still does a lot of business trips — the most recent ones have been to Armenia and Albainia — not exactly the best tourist destinations but he got me some nice gifts.

On everyday stuff, this year had been a no snow year in Garmisch and it is beautiful but still very odd. But I’m not complaining because it’s allowed me to run more than any other winter here.
I’m hoping to keep everyone updated from now on — at least until I start working again — then we’ll see.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

— Virginia Woolf

It’s very interesting that the last two daily thoughts have been something relating to my life at this time. The way this one relates is that tonight I took a one night cooking class. My first one ever!

Actually, it was more of a showing and eating class, but who would quibble with such a small thing?

The important thing was that it was an Asian cooking class with a Korean teacher. Right up my alley. Both J. and I have had an incredible hankering for Korean food, especially since it’s hard to find a Korean restaurant here or even in Munich.

So, I learned how to make kimbap (literally translated dried seaweed and rice) but most everyone else called it sushi. It’s actually the Korean version of sushi rolls (without the fish) and I like it better. I also learned how to cut the meat for bulgogi. Which is a Korean style of marinating sliced meat and then grilling it. We also learned how to roll spring rolls, but I don’t consider those Korean or plan on making them very often.

After she showed us those things and had a few people try out the techniques, we ate the same kinds of food we were making but most of it was stuff she had cooked previously. It was great and I stuffed myself to the gills.

The funny thing about these recipes that she give us and the stuff she showed us is that it was so easy. When I was in Korea I it just all seemed so hard and the recipes were so badly translated into English that I never cooked any of this stuff. Not to mention that it was so cheap to eat out, that I had no reason to cook any of the stuff.

Now I will try to cook some of this stuff and slake this need we have to eat all things Korean. For those of you who know what kind of cook I am, you know I’m going to need all the luck I can get.

“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.”

— Doug Larson

Well, that was the thought for the day that came to my e-mail. I just thought that anyone who knows me would find this amusing when it’s applied to me.

Because, as you all know, I like to talk. And, most people know also that I still have that blonde streak running through me, although I’m mostly fake blonde now.

So I guess that leaves out my chances for being wise.

Well, we’re halfway through another week already. I know this because I just put another issue of the newsletter to bed, but it really doesn’t seem like Wednesday. More like just one long day since the beginning of the week.

The trouble is that it seems as though I should have enough time to keep up with everything, since I’m only working 25 to 30 hours a week, but really, I’m just barely keeping the chaos from enfolding us entirely. At least that’s the way it feels.

I think part of the problem is my sleep habits. I’ve always felt more comfortable going to bed later and getting up later. This causes my day to start later than it should, which pushes everything back until I don’t have the kind of time I need before 5 p.m. rolls around again.
Sometimes I feel lazy but I think that I just choose to take my free time later in the day than most people. And I think it works better this way because I actually have time alone — since my husband goes to bed earlier — where I wouldn’t otherwise. He has his time alone in the morning.

I know that things will have to change over the summer before A. starts to go to school. I’m looking forward to it in a way, it’ll make me get up earlier and give me a chance to have some more time during the day.

I know that this new job is taking over my life right now, and I guess that’s normal. But I hope that in a few months I’ll have a more even-keeled perspective and I’ll be able to take back the part of my life that needs keeping up.

An interesting thing happened today, someone I knew from church while I was in high school but had lost contact with over the years, sent me a message over MSN Messenger. Actually, a few days ago, she asked to be added to my buddy list and I said yes, but I didn’t know who it was.

She said she sent me an e-mail, too, but I have no idea if I deleted it myself or if it got filtered out with my junk mail. It really is a sad world when the junk mail these day uses such familiar wording that it’s easier to delete anything unfamiliar then to take the chance that you’re getting a computer virus.

So, we talked for a little while.

It was kind of weird remembering some of the things that happened so long ago. I know that I wasn’t particularly happy with what I was then. It wasn’t a “I’m unhappy so I’m depressed” kind of unhappy, it was just a lack of self-confidence due to many factors. One of the biggest was that most of my fellow schoolmates treated me badly. It probably initially started because I was an outsider at a small church school with less than 20 people per class, but it grew into something mean and out of control because I was gullible, trusting, emotionally sensitive and easily bated (there are probably a lot more reasons, but these were the biggest ones that had to do with my character and not what I looked like, etc.). My need for socialization, and lack thereof, made the situation even worse because I was seen as a pest even when the others in my class were tired of picking on me and willing to hang out with me.

Unfortunately, I see this trait in A. and I hope that once she begins school and needs help with making friends or just getting along with others, that I can use my experience as a guide to what she should avoid. This is where I hope the characteristics my husband has given to her, kick in.

But back to my story.

Back in high school, I was overly sensitive to things. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t imagining that the other kids teased me. Since I have graduated, I’ve had at least five of my classmates apologize (or as close as they would get to apologizing) for the way they treated me (this is out of 16 that graduated with me and at least three of those didn’t have anything to really apologize for and two are already dead). How many of you, who remember being treated badly, have had that happen?

Being overly sensitive did have a way of warping the way I felt about that time. For the longest time I harbored, deep in my heart, some kind of need to change, or make up, for that period of my life. Of course, I wanted to show my classmates that I was better than them or had made something of my life, but what person doesn’t get that feeling at some time in their life, especially close to high-school reunion time? But it was more than that. It was a need to show them that I was worth something, worth their time and their friendship. Which is something they didn’t think I was worth in high school.

There were times in my life when I would look back at my school days and feel something grip my heart almost painfully when I thought of all the injustices I was served. It took a lot out of me to keep this pain going, but most of the time I just couldn’t let it go. I just felt I had to make it right and show them that they were wrong. For a long time it shaped how I treated people and made friends.

Although I’ve felt comfortable in my skin and basically happy with the way that I am for over twelve years now, it’s only just thinking about high school today that made me realize that the pain is almost completely gone.

I don’t know when it left me. I don’t know how, either (even though I have some ideas). I’m just happy it’s gone.

My husband has a saying he continually repeats to me, that goes, “The best revenge is living well.”

I don’t know if I was out for revenge in particular but I do feel as if I’m living well. I’m very satisfied with my life now and if I never see those high school classmates again, that’s fine with me.

Just a footnote: The woman that contacted me today was not one of my classmates from high school.

It has begun.

This weekend we started a kind of allowance for A. She got some money for cleaning up the living room and some for cleaning up her room. Of course, they were such disasters that we had to help direct her where to put everything because it was just to large and long of a task for her to do all on her own. But, she did very well.

Usually she loses interest in about one minute and walks away. The interest she had in getting some money, kept her on task for as long as it took.

Then we went out and bought her a cute little gold piggie bank (probably one of the cutest I’ve ever seen). We told her that she was to put half of her money in the piggy bank and the other half can be her spending money. She was OK with that because she just loved putting the money in the bank. We also gave half of it in coins so it made it more fun for her to put it in the bank.

And today at Children’s church, she even gave some of it to Jesus. She was so happy to have her own money to do that, she was showing it off to everyone.

So, I guess we’ll see how it goes from now on. I think it may slow down her requests for toys at the store when she sees her money go so fast. At least that’s what I’m hoping. And I hope she learns the right way to save money and how to enjoy what spending money she has and not spend it on worthless things, like I did as a kid. Only time will tell.

This weekend didn’t quite turn out as expected. I had planned on driving to Heidelberg on Friday to meet J. there, do some shopping, eat some wonderful Korean food, and head back home. Apparently A. had ideas, other than mine, as to what was going to happen.

Friday started out as any other day, except we had a little more time on our hands since I wasn’t planning on leaving until 11 that morning. A. had breakfast and was killing time watching a movie on TV. She seemed to be doing fine as I stepped into the shower. When I stepped out of the shower, it was a different story.

I house was quiet (the movie had ended before I got into the shower) and I didn’t see her as I looked around but I figured she was involved with things, so I went to dry my hair.

When I came back out to get her to brush her teeth, I found her lying on the floor in the living room, saying that she didn’t want to move. From then on, things went quickly from bad to worse.

At the time, when I asked her to come to the bathroom, I just thought she was being lazy, but a few minutes later when she wanted to lay on the floor so I could put her pants on, I knew something was up. By the time I had come back upstairs from taking the trash out, she had fallen asleep on the bathroom rug, and I knew the trip was off.

Before putting her into bed, I took her temperature. It was 102.5. Now, I was pretty worried.

She’s been sick before, but it’s been a long time since she had a real fever.

The rest of the day was spent with her laying either on her bed or the couch, refusing to eat or drink almost everything. I finally managed to get her to choke down a cheese stick but even her favorite, bread and butter, was left to harden on a paper towel.

As we got ready for bed that night, she had a coughing fit that turned into a puking fit. It was not the last for the night.

At least she didn’t throw up again until J. came home at 11 that night, but once she got started, she had to get up every two hours (or less) to puke or dry heave some more.

Around midnight, I decided to sleep with her for the rest of the night. Neither of us got much sleep. I think A. was in one of those fever induced sleepless states. Her breath was fast and her body was still but she answered me when I whispered and was upset when I occationally left go of her hand.

Today, she woke up and seemed to be better, but within the hour, her fever had gone up again and she lay motionless on the couch. Sometimes she slept, other times just watched the TV.

Most of the time I reach for the pain reliever/fever reducer as soon as A. feels warm and acts sick, but I had waited this time. I had hoped that the fever would burn the virus out and it would go away soon, but by noon it had been more than 24 hours since she the fever had started and it seemed to be getting worse. I gave her Tylenol and, as usual, she was back to normal for a few hours, she even ate some stuff. By dinner the fever was back again, but she got some more Tylenol and felt better. She’s been fine since she went to bed.

Although I mildly regret missing my shopping trip and having a chance to get out, I’m glad that I was able to stay home and relax and take care of A. when she needed it. I still love being a mom when the occasion calls for me to go all out.

Today, Joe sent me this article about finding a job that you love. It gave me a lot to think about.

You see, recently I read this blog, and in it she talks about feeling (or not feeling, as was the case) “grown up,” having a “proper” job and “adult” concerns. At the time I read it, I felt I could understand her concerns, since I’ve felt that way before. Sometimes, when I look back at my life, it seems as if I’ve been swept along, going with whatever job seem to come by at the time. Although, when I remember those times clearly, the jobs seemed to be the right thing at the right time and were not taken lightly by me at the time.

But I still wonder, at times, if I shouldn’t be considered an adult, because I’m not sure if I’ve met some kind of nebulous requirement needed to be one. I’m not all knowing, as I, as a child, thought I would be, or some kind of hard working person who makes a huge difference to society. I still feel like … me.

So that brings me back to the first article about doing a job that you love. In this “essay” the author talks about not always knowing what you love to do, even after you’ve gone through your college, university or graduate school. And, I have to admit, I was one of those people. I had an idea of what I liked to do, and I knew what I wanted to do this second, as the author puts it. But those things really didn’t translate into a job right away.

It wasn’t until I heard about the photojournalist job in the Army that I had an idea that my like and my this second could be combined into a job that I definitely liked better than what I was doing at the time.

And so I went a step farther into finding out how to do the job that I loved.

But, there were things that I didn’t love, as many jobs have, and there came a point where the one outweighed the other and I quit. And moved on.

After a few more jobs that were nice, but not quite right, I moved into a position that I both loved and hated (sometimes at the same time). That was the Mom position.

Anyone of you that is a mother (or even a parent) can relate to that. So, while I did this job, life went on. But it was harder in some ways than a “proper” job. I missed the social interaction that was so integral to the other jobs that I had worked at. And still, I felt as though I wasn’t yet “grown up.” It seemed to me that I was adrift in life, with no other purpose than to help this child grow up. Not that it’s not a big responsibility, but she was ready to spread her wings, and so was I.

Then chance came along and offered me the job I have now. You could say it was just another one of those things that I was swept along into, but with this one, I felt that it was tailor made for me. It had the hours I wanted (not too much, not too little), the flexiblility that I needed, and the pay that was too nice to say “no” to.

And suddenly, here I was, back in the Army job I liked without the things I didn’t like. And, to my surprise, I was being treated like a “grown up.” I began to feel like one to.

As I read this article (and as I’m getting more involved in my job and getting a real feel for it), I realized that this could be how I got the chance to do what I love. Maybe all of this drifting had a larger purpose and gave me a chance to see what was available out there.

I’m also realizing that I’m feeling more comfortable in my “grown up” skin. It’s not that I won’t ever revert back to that unsure young person I felt I was, but, I think I’m becoming happier with what I am now, and what I’m doing now. And I feel that’s one of the most important things in life.