Archive for July 2013

I hit the wall

I started this post a while ago and abandoned it to the drafts folder. Then tried to write it yesterday and lost half of it. 3rd time’s the charm?

“I hit the wall” is a running (or any other endurance sport) term, but this isn’t about a run. And really, I’ve been metaphorically hitting the wall for a while now. I really have way more on my plate than I can handle, and have had for some time. And got “called out” for it during vacation by one of my cousins as I fought having a meltdown in her kitchen.

Back in March before the Tobacco Road, Karyn vowed to drag me across the finish line if I got to where I couldn’t even crawl to it. I think that is where I am at now, metaphorically. I am done. Spent. Enough so that I did something that I didn’t think I could get myself to do. I went to an Al-Anon meeting. Alone. The introvert who really just wants to blend in the background. And you can’t go to one of those types of meetings and stay completely silent. You have to at a minimum introduce yourself. It was just “Hi, I’m Martha,” but yeah, that was tough. But not nearly as tough as parking the car and actually getting my butt up out of the car and walking into the building.

I went to Al-Anon because I went to an open AA meeting last week. That wasn’t my first AA meeting (my second, actually), but it had a profound effect on me this time. Enough to put my social anxiety aside to give Al-Anon a chance. And dang if it wasn’t just like an AA meeting, so at least I was able to blend in somewhat.

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I’m no stranger to depression. High stress –> panic attacks –> depression. Depression is when I’ve hit the wall. I understand how people become suicidal. (I’m not. Just sayin’.) But when you are deep in the pit, sometimes you just can’t see that the circumstances that got you there are temporary. The dark is too crushing and feels more real than the truth.

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. (2 Corinthians 10:3-6, ESV)

The near constant struggle for days against the onslaught of unwanted angry, bitter, vengeful thoughts has left me battle weary. I still have the thoughts from time to time, but at least it’s not a barrage. So there is some respite in the pit. Even during the onslaught, I could see how past trials were preparing for this one, but all I could think was “What’s next?” Each trial is worse than the last.

How broken do I have to be?

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, ESV)

There is always purpose in the pain.

The struggle is real

For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8-9, ESV)

And once again, this is where I find myself. There was some tension and stress before I went on vacation, but it didn’t really seem that big. My mom has Alzheimer’s, so I spent a lot of time with her dealing with the effects of that. And I thank God for family there who are taking care of her. Then I came home to a nightmare. In no particular order, here is what has/is happening:

1. When I got back, my husband wasn’t home, wasn’t answering his phone, and the house house was trashed like he had partied like it was 1999.

2. The electricity is out in the master bedroom/bathroom. The breaker keeps tripping. I replaced the breaker (because that was cheap & easy), but the new one tripped immediately. So there is a short, and I am slowly replacing outlets and switches before blaming the ceiling fan. Because I don’t want to deal with the ceiling fan. A spider lives in it, and we have an agreement.

3. The dishwasher was not cleaning, and I pulled out a bunch of dirty dishes in the cabinet thanks to #1. Finally determined the problem was not enough water getting into the dishwasher. I checked both ends of the intake hose, and after checking the end attached to the dishwasher itself (the other end was way easier), I flooded the kitchen floor when testing. Ah, a leak in the hose! So I went through the trouble of replacing the intake hose (and pretty sure I contracted hantavirus), only to discover it was the drain hose with a huge hole that flooded the laundry room. 2nd trip to Lowes, and rather than replace the hose, I repaired it with some handy dandy emergency hose repair tape. And I had clean dishes this morning.

4. No TP. Ok, there was one roll downstairs, and 3 squares upstairs, but still. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if I hadn’t written on the white board when I left to buy toilet paper.

5. Broken windows. One is double paned and only one pane is broken, so it’s not such a huge deal. The other is a completely broken out single pane. Yeah, I don’t know how to fix window panes. The hubster did that. But I have no qualms about throwing up a piece of plywood.

6. The morning after I got home, he finally called. Suicidal & homicidal. So I picked him up and took him to the ER at Duke since he had been seeing a psychologist and psychiatrist there and I knew he would be in the system. They locked him up in the psychiatric ward (which I am sure now has a politically correct name, but I’m old skool), and next day transferred him to an acute psychiatric and substance abuse treatment center. One of the things that contributed to his breakdown was running out of his meds. Naturally he “self medicated”, and went way overboard. As he does. And he is demanding long term treatment, but nobody will accept him with a pending court date. So now he has to get with his lawyer (somehow) and get the DWI resolved. And he wasn’t answering his phone because he destroyed it.

7. He got the truck stuck, and through the course of getting it out, got it impounded. Fortunately without another DWI or wrecking it. But it cost nearly $400 anyway between the tow and storage to get it back home.

8. He drove the daughter’s scooter across town and left it behind a friend’s house. That friend took him to another friend’s house which is where I picked him up from. No I’m not naming names. Anyway, picking up the scooter was an adventure with #7 that I will eventually blog about separately. But the hubby had someone work on the scooter so now it runs even worse than it did. :rolleye:

9. He lost his wallet. In.The.House. I still haven’t found it.

10. We have no money left. No savings. All credit cards maxed out. And the dude he worked for for 4 months still hasn’t paid him yet. Which was also a significant contribution to the breakdown. That and when he came back after the last rehab I told him not to get us back in debt again. And he can’t blame me this time.

11. The lawn mowers are at someone else’s house, and I have to retrieve them soon. Because the yard is out of control. If one friend isn’t able to bring them to the house by tomorrow, another friend is going to help me load the riding mower in the truck tomorrow after work.

(These have cropped up in the past 3 days.)

12. There is a dead mouse under my fridge stinking to high heaven and I just haven’t had the time or motivation (or stomach) to get it out.

13. Evie decided to start puking again. Ugh.

A lot on my plate? Oh yeah. More than I can handle. More than I can do. I’ve pretty much run the gamut of emotions. Fear, anger, despair. I’ve felt trapped, hopeless, and alone. It has been a constant battle with my emotions more than anything to process them, root out the lies, submit them to truth, and just do what I can a task at a time instead of looking at everything together. All together, it is so overwhelming that I end up sitting (or laying) down and playing minesweeper or whirly word much of the time while accomplishing nothing.

This is what happens when you pray “Whatever it takes.” The fact that I haven’t completely collapsed under the weight of it is testimony to the grace of God.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:26, ESV)

To be continued…

Back from vacation

I started this yesterday, but it just didn’t get finished.

Oh, man. What a week it was! But my kids survived the lack of internet at Granny’s house. 😉 I’m not sure I survived the flights. But I didn’t seem to get badly glutened even though I ate a small piece of Aunt Becky’s black eyed pea cornbread knowing it had wheat flour. I had to know, and it was good!

I tried to keep it on the down low that I was going home to Arkansas because there were issues I didn’t want to address. It only partially worked as they popped up in a way that I had to address them after I got back. But in a way that I’ve avoided any public meltdowns. So far.

I was supposed to run 9 miles the weekend I traveled to AR, but there was no run happening on flight day, and I wasn’t running 9 before church, and wasn’t running that evening. So I attempted it Monday morning. I made it 4.73 miles (according to MapMyRun). Around mile 4 I realized I had stopped sweating, and decided not to push it. I walked into the house and exploded in sweat. After I cooled down and cleaned up, I took the kids to Petit Jean Mountain. We did the obligatory trip to “the point”, and were going to do the Museum of Automobiles, but there was no one there but us and the kids were all “Uh, no.” So we went to the petting zoo.

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Oh hai

Oh hai

We went to the visitor center, and then went on to the Cedar Falls Overlook area.

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One word.  Creepy.

One word. Creepy.

Jamie wanted to hike down to the falls, and I was game. However, we couldn’t figure out how, and so then she decided we should go to some cave. We didn’t make it to the cave, and only made it as far as the Davies bridge on the creek above the falls. It was down there that I used what little service I had on my phone to text Karyn and let her know that having come down that trail, the Campbell Creek Trail at Raven Rock is an easy moderate trail. And we had to climb back up out of there. 1.17 miles down and back. I added that to what we walked on the other side to the overlooks, and decided 3 miles of trail on the mountain made up for the 4.2 miles I didn’t run that morning.

Cedar Falls

Cedar Falls

Davies Bridge

Davies Bridge

Tuesday, we went to the zoo. It’s a mile around the zoo, and we did enough looping and backtracking that I think I got in a couple of miles.

He likes penguins.  And making that face.

He likes penguins. And making that face.

I was amused by the cat sleeping sprawled out on it's back.

I was amused by the cat sleeping sprawled out on it’s back.

I think we wandered around downtown Conway on Wednesday.

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The kids wanted to go to Toadsuck...until we got there.

The kids wanted to go to Toadsuck…until we got there.

Thursday was the annual family reunion for my dad’s side of the family. There was a low turnout, but I was glad to see those who were able to come. In an effort to prevent glutening, I fried chicken to take. As I was opening the package before I fried it, I thought, “Oh, man. 18 pieces was too much. I hope people eat this!” We only brought back 4 pieces.

3 of my cousins...with red solo cup...

3 of my cousins…with red solo cup…

We went by the old homeplace when we left. :sigh: It sure doesn’t look anything like it did when I lived there.

This is where the house was.

This is where the house was.

I spent Friday wrapping up remaining loose ends, and hopefully all of them for the time being. I got caught up on my reading, and my planks. But I didn’t do any planks over the weekend. I arrived to too much drama. But that is a story in itself that I started to blog, but then I saved it to drafts and decided to leave it alone for now.

First dorm at college.  Short Hall

First dorm at college. Short Hall

My second dorm.  Denney Hall.

My second dorm. Denney Hall.

Common area between Short and Denney.  Only dorms that still look exactly like when I went to UCA.

Common area between Short and Denney. Only dorms that still look exactly like when I went to UCA.

Old Main at UCA.  It seems bigger than it was.

Old Main at UCA. It seems bigger than it was.

Brenda was on vacation at the beach when I was home so I didn’t get to see her. Which means she has to come out here to visit me. lol Anyway, when I talked to her last, she told me I should go by and see Kevin’s headstone. So I did, and probably would have melted down if Jamie hadn’t been with me.

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There are a few more photos on my Instagram.