Monday, May 5, 2014
Friday, February 7, 2014
Is it BPD or just a bad day?
You know something I'm finding out? When you carry the label "BPD" or "BiPolar" or "Depressed" or WHATEVER it may be, it's really easy to be too hard on ourselves for having a bad day!! Here's what I mean.
Yesterday, I was really moody. Cried at the drop of a hat, found myself in emotional turmoil about the goals in life I thought I would have achieved by now and haven't. And what's funny is I kept apologizing to my husband Ryan because I felt like once again he was left to deal with the aftermath of BPD-related craziness. But you know what, EVERYBODY has days when they're emotional...whether they have BPD or NOT! We with mental disorders or personality disorders tend to beat ourselves up for having normal, average-joe bad days, just out of the pre-conditioned mindset that it must be related to our illness. Here's today's message;
Go easy on yourself! Let yourself have a bad day FOR NO REASON. Don't make BPD or any other condition the scapegoat for any and everything. You know what? My bad day yesterday I'm pretty sure was strictly PMS related! Shocker. EVERY WOMAN HAS PMS. For once, I feel entitled to some grace for being normal! Have some chocolate cake and just be okay with not being okay. Not as a general rule, but there are times when that's just what the doctor ordered!
Yesterday, I was really moody. Cried at the drop of a hat, found myself in emotional turmoil about the goals in life I thought I would have achieved by now and haven't. And what's funny is I kept apologizing to my husband Ryan because I felt like once again he was left to deal with the aftermath of BPD-related craziness. But you know what, EVERYBODY has days when they're emotional...whether they have BPD or NOT! We with mental disorders or personality disorders tend to beat ourselves up for having normal, average-joe bad days, just out of the pre-conditioned mindset that it must be related to our illness. Here's today's message;
Go easy on yourself! Let yourself have a bad day FOR NO REASON. Don't make BPD or any other condition the scapegoat for any and everything. You know what? My bad day yesterday I'm pretty sure was strictly PMS related! Shocker. EVERY WOMAN HAS PMS. For once, I feel entitled to some grace for being normal! Have some chocolate cake and just be okay with not being okay. Not as a general rule, but there are times when that's just what the doctor ordered!
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Tired of living.
Days like this are tough. Days when nothing is wrong, but your emotions tell you that everything is wrong. The last couple of days, I've felt depression, sadness, injustice and the downright lack of will to live. And as always, I have to ask myself as a Christian, is that ok? I mean, I see all these people on Facebook posting about their blessings and how happy they are and I think to myself, "What am I missing?" And some people reading this might automatically jump to the conclusion of, "Well maybe you've just fallen out of touch with Jesus because He really is a source of great joy!" Yes, Jesus is our source of joy. But what happens when ACTUALLY you're so in touch with the reality of Him and heaven and the future He has made for us that living here seems unbearable? What if in a sense, your closeness with Christ is the source of your
The more I experience Jesus, and the more I taste the intimacy of feeling His very breath come off the pages of Scripture and open my mind to depths of knowledge I've never touched, the less I want to be here. I have truly spectacular encounters with Christ at my kitchen table in the mornings. But rather than fill me up with joy for the day ahead, it makes me just want to sit at that kitchen table and not get up. I sometimes ask myself, "how can I experience God's presence like this and then be motivated to go to work and package CD's and print artwork as if any of it matters? How can I listen to customers complain that their cover photo's font should be scooted 1/16th of an inch to the left and me not go crazy? All these little things that people obsess over and expect ME to care about just makes me crazy!"
And once again, for all you "Jesus jukers" as my husband and I call them (*a Jesus juker is someone who constantly dodges or "jukes" your statements about the reality of your life and throws back a cheesy and unwanted scripture reference or spiritual remedy*) who would say, "But Jordan, every little thing matters as long as you do it to the glory of God!" That's very nice. Thank you. Pat yourself on the back and admire your own wisdom.
Now, back to reality....
I know that doing all things to God's glory is important. But what I can't stand is the human obsession with things that don't matter. It's not about my job being "unimportant", it's about being surrounded constantly by customers consumed with tedious details that don't make their music sound any better. Most of the music coming through this studio is abhorable. Uncreative, poorly arranged, and mediocre singing to top it off. And yet they care if the font on their CD cover needs to be nudged to the left? Wake up!
Also, just watching people scurry around the holidays filling their shopping carts with junk. Just toys upon toys upon clothes upon clothes. Standing in lines at 4am to get discounts on more stuff. There are kids I know of right now that don't have clean water to drink that can be given clean water for $140. I'm tired of the injustice of it all. People so consumed with improving their lives and making their world more convenient while kids are starving to death is outrageous.
So I guess to bring this whole blog together and summarize it in one thought: I'm depressed today. Feeling like I'm forced to spin aimlessly in the American cycle of "work, pay bills, work, pay bills" and I feel like my life doesn't matter. The only time I get a true taste of what I was made for is in God's presence, and though I'm aware God's presence is with me everywhere I go, I am tired of having to live in a world full of selfishness and injustice. I see brokenness everywhere I look. The world is fallen and I want Christ to come back and make it all new. I feel like I have no purpose in life because everything i would ever do to try and make the world around me better is just thwarted from the start. Sigh. Thanks for listening to my pity party. Sorry if you came here today looking for something upbeat and happy. Maybe tomorrow.
The more I experience Jesus, and the more I taste the intimacy of feeling His very breath come off the pages of Scripture and open my mind to depths of knowledge I've never touched, the less I want to be here. I have truly spectacular encounters with Christ at my kitchen table in the mornings. But rather than fill me up with joy for the day ahead, it makes me just want to sit at that kitchen table and not get up. I sometimes ask myself, "how can I experience God's presence like this and then be motivated to go to work and package CD's and print artwork as if any of it matters? How can I listen to customers complain that their cover photo's font should be scooted 1/16th of an inch to the left and me not go crazy? All these little things that people obsess over and expect ME to care about just makes me crazy!"
And once again, for all you "Jesus jukers" as my husband and I call them (*a Jesus juker is someone who constantly dodges or "jukes" your statements about the reality of your life and throws back a cheesy and unwanted scripture reference or spiritual remedy*) who would say, "But Jordan, every little thing matters as long as you do it to the glory of God!" That's very nice. Thank you. Pat yourself on the back and admire your own wisdom.
Now, back to reality....
I know that doing all things to God's glory is important. But what I can't stand is the human obsession with things that don't matter. It's not about my job being "unimportant", it's about being surrounded constantly by customers consumed with tedious details that don't make their music sound any better. Most of the music coming through this studio is abhorable. Uncreative, poorly arranged, and mediocre singing to top it off. And yet they care if the font on their CD cover needs to be nudged to the left? Wake up!
Also, just watching people scurry around the holidays filling their shopping carts with junk. Just toys upon toys upon clothes upon clothes. Standing in lines at 4am to get discounts on more stuff. There are kids I know of right now that don't have clean water to drink that can be given clean water for $140. I'm tired of the injustice of it all. People so consumed with improving their lives and making their world more convenient while kids are starving to death is outrageous.
So I guess to bring this whole blog together and summarize it in one thought: I'm depressed today. Feeling like I'm forced to spin aimlessly in the American cycle of "work, pay bills, work, pay bills" and I feel like my life doesn't matter. The only time I get a true taste of what I was made for is in God's presence, and though I'm aware God's presence is with me everywhere I go, I am tired of having to live in a world full of selfishness and injustice. I see brokenness everywhere I look. The world is fallen and I want Christ to come back and make it all new. I feel like I have no purpose in life because everything i would ever do to try and make the world around me better is just thwarted from the start. Sigh. Thanks for listening to my pity party. Sorry if you came here today looking for something upbeat and happy. Maybe tomorrow.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Inside the mind of a BPD
Chances are you're reading this blog because you have interest in learning about BPD. If you're a family member that wants to know what goes through a BPD's mind and thus fuels their emotional episodes, here ya go. This is out of my journal and I want to share it so you can see how rejection/abandonment triggers extreme distress in the mind and heart of a BPD.
9-30-13:
I hate life right now. NOBODY understands me. Everything I feel is ALWAYS wrong! Nobody ever tells me that I'm right. It's always me that has "misunderstood" or "didn't hear that right" or "has no right to be upset" or is "making too big a deal" about something. I want to leave my church and here's why:
I helped build this church from the ground up. I was there putting nails in the wall and paint on the doors til 1a.m. when most nights nobody else felt like showing up. I have PROVED my desire to be there and to be a part of it. I slept in the computer room floor of my neighbor's house when my pastor's family (who i was living with at the time) had family over and there wasn't room for me. I never took salary even though I built the band, administrated rehearsals and delivered impeccable quality of worship music. And then this past year when they finally decided to pay Ryan and I something, it equals to $47 a week. Over the last two and a half years I have been overlooked and ignored. I even called a meeting to address these feelings with the church's two pastors. After expressing my feelings about the complete lack of any votes of confidence via opportunities to teach or lead any sort of studies, one pastor made me this list of promises:
1.) Jordan, I think the tension between you and I has been that after so long of doing life and ministry together I just took off and started doing my own thing without you and you felt abandoned. So Jordan here's what we're gonna do, we're gonna find something that we can do together. Just me and you. Whether it's prison ministry, writing songs together, we're gonna find something that's OURS.
It's two years later and he never once came back with a single idea on anything he wanted to try together. not one.
2.) Also Jordan, no matter what, from now on you and I are going to start Sunday mornings at the altar at 9am and we are going to pray for God to work in this friendship and in this church.
He did this for two weeks in a row and then quit showing up.
(A FEW MONTHS LATER, HE MADE THESE PROMISES)
3.) You know Jordan, I've been needing some fun in my life. Let's you and I go to the studio and just write some country songs, just for the heck of it.
So, a few days later I stopped by his house and he was working on the computer. I said "hey i'm headed to the studio. you should come up there if you're free", to which he responded "yeah I'd love to do that! let me finish this graphic and I'll text you and let you know when i'm on the way." So i sat at the studio for 3 hours, waiting and waiting, and he never sent a text. Not even a text to say "hey I can't make it", just never showed and never told me why. This happened one more time where he said he would text me and let me know, and as a result left me waiting at the studio alone only for him to never come.
But like an idiot, 5 more times over the next month I texted him to try and get him to come hang out. Never responded to the texts. Just silence. So I gave up.
4.) After all that he comes up to me on a Sunday morning, "Ya know Jordan we still gotta do some writing. My wife says I need to quit focusing on serious stuff all the time and just have fun. So if it's ok with you I'm gonna text you this week and we can go to the studio and write. I've got this song idea".
like an idiot again i got excited about it. It never happened.
5.) Another Sunday morning he comes up to me "jordan you're really good at the blogging thing and I've got a ministry project that's gonna require some video blogs and different things. I'm gonna be calling you this week and we need to get together so you can teach me a few things and bring some fresh perspective".
He never called.
6.) Another Sunday, some church planters from Little Rock visited our church and so the pastors invited them to lunch after service. Because my husband and I are "on staff" they decided to invite us along. So as we're all sitting at Cracker Barrel eating lunch, the same pastor looks at Ryan and me and says "Man we need to do this again. Let's have dinner at our house this week. My wife makes a mean chicken fried steak and I'd suggest we do that except that's what ya'll are eating now. So something else probably. But Ryan, yeah, i'll text ya'll this week and we're gonna do dinner."
Never got one text or call. And haven't been invited or followed with since. It's been a month now.
I'm tired of getting ignored for ministry opportunities. I'm tired of feel under-valued and left out. I'm tired of being rotated in and out of being counted worthy of relationship based on whatever hair-brained idea the pastor is fancied with at the moment.
I want to look this pastor in the face and say "Ryan and I have been here from the ground up. Yeah, we're not socialites and don't start conversations at parties. But we minister A LOT one-on-one and have the personal messages and texts from various people to prove it. We put the nails in the walls and you have just shunned us. Having not once in 10 months called us just see how it's going, let alone have us to your home like friends. And tell me this: we deserve more respect than you've shown us in a long time. Tell me two other people you're going to find that are going to be able to bring what we bring on Sunday mornings for $47 a week. And if you can, give me their names and I'll call them to take our place in a heartbeat and maybe Ryan and I can finally find a church that treats us like family, not pawns.
9-30-13:
I hate life right now. NOBODY understands me. Everything I feel is ALWAYS wrong! Nobody ever tells me that I'm right. It's always me that has "misunderstood" or "didn't hear that right" or "has no right to be upset" or is "making too big a deal" about something. I want to leave my church and here's why:
I helped build this church from the ground up. I was there putting nails in the wall and paint on the doors til 1a.m. when most nights nobody else felt like showing up. I have PROVED my desire to be there and to be a part of it. I slept in the computer room floor of my neighbor's house when my pastor's family (who i was living with at the time) had family over and there wasn't room for me. I never took salary even though I built the band, administrated rehearsals and delivered impeccable quality of worship music. And then this past year when they finally decided to pay Ryan and I something, it equals to $47 a week. Over the last two and a half years I have been overlooked and ignored. I even called a meeting to address these feelings with the church's two pastors. After expressing my feelings about the complete lack of any votes of confidence via opportunities to teach or lead any sort of studies, one pastor made me this list of promises:
1.) Jordan, I think the tension between you and I has been that after so long of doing life and ministry together I just took off and started doing my own thing without you and you felt abandoned. So Jordan here's what we're gonna do, we're gonna find something that we can do together. Just me and you. Whether it's prison ministry, writing songs together, we're gonna find something that's OURS.
It's two years later and he never once came back with a single idea on anything he wanted to try together. not one.
2.) Also Jordan, no matter what, from now on you and I are going to start Sunday mornings at the altar at 9am and we are going to pray for God to work in this friendship and in this church.
He did this for two weeks in a row and then quit showing up.
(A FEW MONTHS LATER, HE MADE THESE PROMISES)
3.) You know Jordan, I've been needing some fun in my life. Let's you and I go to the studio and just write some country songs, just for the heck of it.
So, a few days later I stopped by his house and he was working on the computer. I said "hey i'm headed to the studio. you should come up there if you're free", to which he responded "yeah I'd love to do that! let me finish this graphic and I'll text you and let you know when i'm on the way." So i sat at the studio for 3 hours, waiting and waiting, and he never sent a text. Not even a text to say "hey I can't make it", just never showed and never told me why. This happened one more time where he said he would text me and let me know, and as a result left me waiting at the studio alone only for him to never come.
But like an idiot, 5 more times over the next month I texted him to try and get him to come hang out. Never responded to the texts. Just silence. So I gave up.
4.) After all that he comes up to me on a Sunday morning, "Ya know Jordan we still gotta do some writing. My wife says I need to quit focusing on serious stuff all the time and just have fun. So if it's ok with you I'm gonna text you this week and we can go to the studio and write. I've got this song idea".
like an idiot again i got excited about it. It never happened.
5.) Another Sunday morning he comes up to me "jordan you're really good at the blogging thing and I've got a ministry project that's gonna require some video blogs and different things. I'm gonna be calling you this week and we need to get together so you can teach me a few things and bring some fresh perspective".
He never called.
6.) Another Sunday, some church planters from Little Rock visited our church and so the pastors invited them to lunch after service. Because my husband and I are "on staff" they decided to invite us along. So as we're all sitting at Cracker Barrel eating lunch, the same pastor looks at Ryan and me and says "Man we need to do this again. Let's have dinner at our house this week. My wife makes a mean chicken fried steak and I'd suggest we do that except that's what ya'll are eating now. So something else probably. But Ryan, yeah, i'll text ya'll this week and we're gonna do dinner."
Never got one text or call. And haven't been invited or followed with since. It's been a month now.
I'm tired of getting ignored for ministry opportunities. I'm tired of feel under-valued and left out. I'm tired of being rotated in and out of being counted worthy of relationship based on whatever hair-brained idea the pastor is fancied with at the moment.
I want to look this pastor in the face and say "Ryan and I have been here from the ground up. Yeah, we're not socialites and don't start conversations at parties. But we minister A LOT one-on-one and have the personal messages and texts from various people to prove it. We put the nails in the walls and you have just shunned us. Having not once in 10 months called us just see how it's going, let alone have us to your home like friends. And tell me this: we deserve more respect than you've shown us in a long time. Tell me two other people you're going to find that are going to be able to bring what we bring on Sunday mornings for $47 a week. And if you can, give me their names and I'll call them to take our place in a heartbeat and maybe Ryan and I can finally find a church that treats us like family, not pawns.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Is there any help to be found?
Hopeless. That is the feeling tonight. Will the chaos ever cease? I feel alone tonight. Misunderstood. Condemned for not being spiritually sound enough; made to feel that if only I had a better concept of who Christ is or if my priorities somehow were better aligned that all this would go away. I feel like every statement I make to try to help people understand better what I'm going through, ironically, the less they understand. I can't get anyone to see that my problems aren't solely a spiritual problem, that I am actually in need of practical daily life skills and just wish that someone might offer some 1. 2. 3. steps to solve problems rather than pitch another bible verse or propose a kink in my theology. I wish people that I turn to would stop automatically linking my illness with my faith. I actually have an intimate and special relationship with Christ that I engage in daily, beginning with my morning coffee and His word open. I do receive revelation from Him and feel His voice in my heart often, even correcting and reproving me on behavioral and heart-related issues concerning my earthly relationships. But people assume that because I am experiencing chaos and emotional turmoil that it must be a kink in my view of God. Does it ever occur to anyone that it's not a faith issue, that it's MEDICAL????
If an amputee went to a Christian counselor and said, "Man i'm having such a hard time in physical therapy, I just can't get used to living life with my arm missing. I can't cook, drive, or even give my kids a full hug..." would that counselor say to that person, "Well, you're inability to complete daily tasks isn't due to your physical obstacle, it's simply that you need to better understand Christ. Seek Christ instead of seeking what Christ can do for you." No. I imagine that the amputee was probably just going to someone for some comradory, to hear a voice say, "I know it's tough but let's figure out some alternative ways to cook and drive with one arm. We can do this. I love you."
Having BPD is like having an emotional limb missing. The stabilizing factor that is supposed to help you see problems in a rational light and navigate through challenges until they are overcome is cut off and we're left straggling trying to take care of ourselves with a major gap in our mental coordination. My relationship with Christ is my own, He disciples me and teaches me and I can attest personally to my continual progress via my private journals. And I don't want to feel like I have to defend my relationship with Christ when I admit to a fellow Christian that I have a struggle and ask for help.
If an amputee went to a Christian counselor and said, "Man i'm having such a hard time in physical therapy, I just can't get used to living life with my arm missing. I can't cook, drive, or even give my kids a full hug..." would that counselor say to that person, "Well, you're inability to complete daily tasks isn't due to your physical obstacle, it's simply that you need to better understand Christ. Seek Christ instead of seeking what Christ can do for you." No. I imagine that the amputee was probably just going to someone for some comradory, to hear a voice say, "I know it's tough but let's figure out some alternative ways to cook and drive with one arm. We can do this. I love you."
Having BPD is like having an emotional limb missing. The stabilizing factor that is supposed to help you see problems in a rational light and navigate through challenges until they are overcome is cut off and we're left straggling trying to take care of ourselves with a major gap in our mental coordination. My relationship with Christ is my own, He disciples me and teaches me and I can attest personally to my continual progress via my private journals. And I don't want to feel like I have to defend my relationship with Christ when I admit to a fellow Christian that I have a struggle and ask for help.
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