QUICK LIFE UPDATE:
It has been a crazy full busy — well maybe more so because it’s mentally busy? — week, since coming home, and realizing that what used to seem like such a cleared schedule (since leaving that part-time work-from-home job) has filled up so quickly with life and family and friends, and ministry that seems to be growing seemingly exponentially in an exciting but not-always-so-easy-to-feel-on-top-of-everything way. SO grateful for family and friends who love me and are patient and understanding (and forgiving!) and helpful and just…awesome and make my life a journey that I enjoy and don’t have to be afraid of cuz I’m not on it alone =).
Last week I wrote the last week’s homework for my Bible Study on James (which we will possibly finish next week), and tomorrow I will be finishing up notes for Session 2 of introducing Inner Healing to my weekly Community Group. Since this is a topic I want to learn how to teach well, although I had envisioned it being easy to write up quick outlines and just share from my heart, I decided I wanted to re-study all my notes and the book we use at our Church, to just make sure I am offering my best…so it’s turned out to be not that easy and much more time-consuming than I envisioned, but I am really glad to be making time to really study and understand a topic that is so important to me. Friday night will be my talk at ECBC Youth Group on Depression — which I really am excited for as well, because that’s the topic I would love to be speaking on more regularly if I can ever get my thoughts and notes organized enough (which I’m in the process of praying through for Friday!). Will keep you all posted on these things, and when I can kinda refine and edit my notes, hopefully I can start trying to put some of the content on here as well.
ANYhow, as one meeting has been postponed an hour tonight, I wanted to quickly share one of the experiences from our Disney vacation before it seems too late:
DISNEYLAND FROM AMEE’S POINT OF VIEW:
After arriving at Disneyland and heading directly to enter Fantasyland through the Princess Castle (this holiday was all about Princesses for our 2 girls), experiencing a few of her first “rides” (walking through Sleeping Beauty, riding Peter Pan, and one other ride..) my almost-6-year-old Amethyst (Amee for short) saw some girls lining up to take photos with the Evil Queen from Sleeping Beauty. She asked her daddy if she could take a look — not stand in line for a photo, but just really wanted to see the Queen’s face, as it was covered by the high collar of her cape.
After observing for a moment, with a thoughtful look on her face, she told her daddy that she was a little bit disappointed with Disneyland. As this was day 1 of our 2-day pass, Ivan told her that if she didn’t like it, we wouldn’t have to go back for a second day (not sure if he meant that…). Amee responded, “No, I do like it — I am just a little bit disappointed, because it wasn’t what I thought. Disneyland is really just like a big fair!”
Earlier in the car ride over, she had asked us both if the princesses at Disneyland were real, or if they were people acting… Before thinking about it too much, I responded that they are people who are acting. I thought maybe I should have said, “Why don’t you go and see first, and then you can tell us what you think?” But we have never been the kind of parents that pretend Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny are real, etc. (we also don’t not celebrate with those types of things, but I tend to like to explain what Santa Claus, etc. stands for, and why that’s important and how it can be good and fun). Anyhow, it was too late. And Ivan said she would’ve figured it out…
I think seeing the Evil Queen was Amee conducting her own little investigation and finding confirmation of what we had told her. A couple years back, when one of her friends had returned from her first trip to Disneyland, she had shared that everything was fun, except that the Evil Queen (which she saw from a distance, I think) was scary. She commented to her daddy that that was not the real Queen, because she was smiling at and talking so nicely with the kids who had lined up to talk to and take a photo with her.
Part of me was proud of Amee for figuring all of this out, a thinker and observer that reminds me so much of myself, and yet, still being undeterred by her realizations and resulting disappointment to enjoy and make the most out everything we did have planned for her first Disney Vacation experience (even if it couldn’t include a real castle or real princesses).
For me, it has always been important to be able to see things and know things as they really are. This was probably my biggest motivation as a teenager to never look to alcohol or drugs to deal with and try to forget about my struggles with depression or to “party” (even before I decided to become a follower of Jesus and aspired to refrain from drunkenness for moral reasons). I never wanted to be seemingly “feeling better” if I wasn’t actually better (i.e. after drunkenness or a “high” wore off), and I also never wanted to be only able to “have a good time” by being somehow intoxicated, because then to me it wasn’t really having a good time… I didn’t want some “fake” version of drug-induced happiness or peace…
That way, if there ever actually was a way for me to overcome and rise up and above my depression and all its surrounding issues and struggles, then (1) I would be mentally available and alert enough to be looking for it, and (2) I would be able to experience and recognize the significance of it, because whatever “wholeness” or “wellness” I would feel, it would be “real.”
My challenge to God was that if human life was really valuable as He argues it to be in the Bible (we are all fearfully and wonderfully made, Psalm 139; and “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Genesis 1:26-31), then He must have thought out a plan for “life” for each of us human beings to be at the very least “potentially good,” and “good” in a way that each of us can actually say at the end of the day, we really “like” being alive, that whatever disappointments or struggles or hardships may be involved as part of our journey, that at the end of the day, we can say without any doubt that it is still worth it, that we would still choose to live “our” lives…and not just be longing for whatever idealized life or fantasy-version we may otherwise have thought up and been hoping for… Basically, I wanted to know that, if my “life” was Disneyland, when I arrived to each day, even if I realized this or that part was not exactly what I had expected and honestly I was “a little bit disappointed,” that I would still really sincerely be glad to be there, not needing in the least bit to have to “pretend,” but happy to go ahead and see and experience what was there for me to enjoy, and know with confidence that this is worth the cost of the ticket and traveling to get there .
Hopefully, my daughter won’t need to be overcoming the same types of emotional issues — or at least not to the same extent! — but she is definitely a girl I am proud to call my own, and I love the idea of getting to see what God can do in and through her life as I learn how to make my ceiling of breakthroughs her floor…