Alphabet of Pain and Hope

Alphabet of Pain (and Hope)

by Aidan 

I’ve been Abused in countless ways, Bullied night and day

Confused about where to go, Discouraged by the pain,

Enveloped by a sadness I Fear won’t go away.

Giving up seems so easy; life is Hard as hell today.

I reach out but they Ignore my cries,

I’m so Jealous of other people’s lives.

I try to smile through the pain but the truth is Killing me inside

I’m Lonelier than I’ve ever been, Mad that I can’t get ahead.

Neglected by some of the ones I love, I need help but I’m Oppressed instead.

My Past won’t seem to let me go, some days I want to Quit trying--

Regrets and Sadness eat me up inside and Trouble always seems to find me.

I feel Ugly, Vulnerable, and Worthless,

Like there’s an X over my name

Yearning to know my purpose, feeling like Zero dollars in the bank.

This is my alphabet of pain, the only song I sing

And when my tears fall, Oh God, they fall like rain.

My alphabet of pain, Lord, change the song I sing,

And when my tears fall, oh God, let them be a healing rain.

All the Abuse is in the past, and the Bullies, they won’t last.

The clouds of Confusion fade away, Discouragement lost along Your path.

I’m Enveloped in Your love, Fear is not the spirit I was given.

Giving up is not an option, victory is my decision.

Life is still Hard sometimes, but I won’t Ignore Your Word,

In John 16:33, You say You conquered the world!

I’m not Jealous of anyone’s “easy life” and I won’t covet any longer,

Now that I see what hasn’t Killed me made me stronger.

And Loneliness has left me now that I commune with the King.

And because vengeance belongs to him, I’m not Mad about a thing!

And when I feel Neglected, and when I feel Oppressed,

I cast my cares upon the Lord and let Him deal with the rest.

My Past He has forgotten because I’ve been forgiven--

Now it’s my duty and my goal to Quit how I was livin’.

I don’t Regret the choices I’ve made because I’m born again,

And all the sadness and the Trouble led me straight to Him!

I’m beautiful, not Ugly, not Vulnerable but Strong,

I used to feel so Worthless but now I have a place I belong.

I’m written in His Book of Life and you can’t X out my name.

I Yearn to worship him with Zero complaint and all my praise!

This was my alphabet of pain, the song I used to sing

And when my tears fell, oh God, they fell like rain.

My alphabet of pain, God changed the song I sing,

And when my tears fell, oh God, You made them a healing rain.

And she sent me a beautiful birthday card:

And she drew a picture of her family who has stood firmly by her side:

Oh God, I love her SO much. Keep her safe and please keep turning the alphabet of pain into an alphabet of hope. 

INVICTUS and:

Why Spiders Are Terrible and Should Be Feared

I was going to tell you all why I'll never eat another Oreo in my life, but I'll save that story for another day.

Instead, I thought I'd talk about something I'm afraid of.

I often tell people I'm not afraid of anything, and it's true, in a way. I don't really have any phobias, like other people I know. I know some people are afraid of heights. My mom is scared of the sight of blood. Other people have more unconventional fears like aliens, or Men in Black, or clowns. Well, I guess clowns can be pretty scary. Some people are afraid of dogs, or cats, or snakes, or sharks. People can just about be afraid of anything and everything.

I'm not scared of any of those things. But there are things in this world that make my heart explode into bloody shreds of terror.

Those things are SPIDERS, and there are many perfectly sane reasons to be terrified of them.

If a spider crosses my path, or is somewhere in my house I do not want it to be, it will be a dead spider as soon as I can find something to smash it with. As much as I love the animal kingdom and life and love and all of us getting along, spiders have to die. A spider is one of the few things that'll make me scream like I'm being set on fire. I'd rather be on fire than have a spider crawl on me.

1. If you live in Oklahoma, you need to find a way to GET OUT. There, spiders will inspire you to become country bumpkins. When we lived in Oklahoma, I started to believe the state animals should be the skunk (you couldn't drive anywhere without the aroma of roadkill skunk making your child vomit in the backseat) and the spider.

Here's a GE street view recent image of the house we rented in Oklahoma, when our family just had three members:

Spiders were ALL OVER my house. And no matter how often I had the pest control guy spray, they'd always come back. Our house was backed up against a field with tall grass, and every time I mowed the lawn (yes, I was the one in the family that would mow the lawn), spiders of all kinds would literally leap out of the grass ahead of the mower. Just the thought of those spiders crawling all over the mowed grass gives me chills. And God forbid I should glance down and see one on my jeans...my ear-piercing shrieks made the neighborhood dogs howl on more than five occasions.

Needless to say, I didn't mow the lawn often, and my neighbor and friend, JeanAnne, would joke about getting a car on blocks to put in the yard.

2. Spiders are Masters of Disguise with just one motive--to strike icy fear into your heart. One time, I was out sweeping the prolific Oklahoma dust out of the garage when I saw a giant spider gamboling around like a fat little sumo wrestler. I took my broom and thought this would be an easy kill. But I was so woefully wrong!

I smashed the spider with the broom, and about a billion tiny baby spiders exploded from the big spider, spreading outward like a black tsunami of vile awfulness. I never screamed so loud in my life.

Imagine this times a million:

I dropped the broom as those little things washed over it's bristles and up the handles toward me like I was to be there very first meal. I ran into the house, grabbed a can of Raid, and raced back to the garage. I swallowed my terror just long enough to thoroughly poison the spiders and myself with a whole can of pesticide.

I will never poke a gamboling sumo spider again.

Do not let a spider fool you:

3. Some spiders are venomous, and they all like to bite you. Most spiders in the house could be killed leisurely, meaning I had time to go grab a shoe and come back and squash it. But there was one spider who struck more fear into my heart than any other spider, ever. And our house had a healthy population of them--the brown recluse.

Being an animal lover, and having researched animals all my life, I know about everything poisonous and venomous. I knew exactly what a brown recluse looked like. The first time I saw one in the house, I think I nearly had a heart attack. I can't remember what I was doing when I saw the first one, because there were many, many more to come, but I was probably watching TV or cleaning and saw it try to stalk stealthily across the white carpet.

Right away, I recognized the violin or fiddle shape on it's back, and knew it had to immediately die. I raced to grab the biggest show I could find (my husband at the time's combat boot worked nicely) and raced back to the spider, who noticed me freaking out, and started to make a run for it to the corner where it could slip into some crack like something out of a horror movie.

4. Brown recluses are aggressive magicians. Those spiders are fast. And, I didn't know it at the time, but they're also pretty fearless and aggressive. When it realized it wasn't going to make it to the safety of the crack, it stopped and reared up on its back legs, raising it's front ones in the air like some kind of evil spider magician weaving a curse to hurl at me.

I have never been more afraid in my life than when that spider raised up like that. Before it could hurl itself on me or fling the curse of death at me, I smashed it.

5. Spiders are incredibly hard to kill. The thing with spiders is that although you may smash them, and although they may appear to be all curled up and dead, they might not really be dead. They might be faking it. They're incredibly devious creatures, and they love it when you think they're dead. When they see you leave the room for gloves and a five feet long wad of paper towels to pick them up with, they laugh and uncurl from death, and start toward the crack in the wall, vowing to return when you're sleeping.

After a while, I learned you pretty much have to chop them into little pieces to really kill them.  So, I had a couple strategically placed spider-killing shoes placed around the house.

What a freaking liar:

6. Spiders purposely taunt you at the most inappropriate times. The problem was we had a lot of the aggressive, evil-tempered brown recluses. I would sometimes kill six to eight a day. And Aidan was about four years old at the time, and sometimes, I would find those spiders in her room, often when I was tucking her into bed. I did my best to hide my abject terror when I would see one taunting me by strolling across the carpet toward her bed while I was trying to sing her to sleep. I probably looked pretty terrifying myself as I grabbed the nearest spider shoe and pounded the thing into oblivion before resuming "You Are My Sunshine."

I eventually grew so rattled and so paranoid that I researched ways to keep them out of our beds when we were sleeping. Those spiders knew that we were most vulnerable when asleep and unable to wield a shoe, and they were just waiting for the right moment when we were in the deepest sleep to crawl in our mouths and bite our tongues.

I discovered a wonderful product then--two sided tape. It was recommended as a way to keep spiders out of the bed, and I went all out by tucking Aidan's comforter between the box spring and mattress so that it didn't touch the floor, then taping rolls and rolls of two sided tape to the legs of her bed.

I was in x-ray school at the time, so I was home a lot, which gave me time to eliminate as many spiders as I could find. Which was typically A LOT.

Anyway, I can't even express how happy and relieved I was when we got orders to leave the spider and skunk infested state of Oklahoma to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

7. Spiders think it's funny to hide in the very shoes you kill them with. It took just one horrifying experience of a long-legged joker hiding out (and probably chuckling) in a hiking boot I wore to mow the yard in for me to check every single shoe before putting it on for the rest of my life.

8. Spiders enjoy a sense of irony, and if they don't get you in one location, they will in another. During our two year stay in Oklahoma, I was never bitten by a spider. Then a couple years into our stay in NM, I was bitten by a black widow, and that was probably one of the most painful and worst experiences of my life. I'll save that story for another time, but the whole horrible experience only heightened my fear.

9 & 10. Spiders are evil and they are from Hell. And I don't often say this word, but spiders deserve it--spiders are assholes. I really don't think I have to convince anyone of this after my list of highly accurate and damning evidence, do I?

Ten Awesome Things

Well, we received news that The Discovery Channel may be looking our way for a show about girl treasure hunters. I think whatever producer submitted it is looking at me, Jamie, Diggin' Gypsy, and someone else. Since I don't know Diggin' or the other girl, I'll post some awesome things many people don't know about me and Jamie. When Jamie sent me her ten awesome things, I had no idea she was THAT awesome. It will be hard for me to live up to her awesomeness, but I'll try.

ADDENDUM: After listing my ten awesome things, I realized the post was going to be extremely long. So, please stay tuned for Jamie's awesomeness tomorrow morning. :)

1. When I was little, I was such a tomboy (I was the middle between 2 brothers), I hated swim suit tops, so I never wore them. Until I started getting boobs, and then I did the opposite and covered them up with the baggiest tops I could find.

2. I don't like fruits or vegetables. I take a lot of vitamins to make up for it. And I can't live without Coke Zero and a giant chocolate chip cookie now and then. I blame my mom.

3. Although I am a clumsy land mammal and often walk into walls and step on people's heels, I am actually pretty coordinated. I can juggle, drive a mean race truck, surf, swim, play beach volleyball, box, ride motorcycles, and jetski better than most guys.

4. I am fascinated by graveyards and gravestones. Especially old ones. In Montana, Jamie and I explored Point of Rocks Cemetery, and it was interesting. There was one gravestone that had the epitaph "Alone." There were also several "Unknown" graves. In England, I stumbled on Anne Bronte's grave in the little seaside town of Scarborough.

5. I am an avid researcher. I have traced my genealogy back to mythological beings. I am definitely related to Roger de Montgomerie. He was William the Conquerer's advisor, best friend, and brother-in law. He was granted all kinds of property in Scotland. His first residence was Castle Clun. He also lived in Arundel Castle for a time,

Roger's Grave in the Abbey of St. Peter and Paul

Before that the lines get a little blurry. If Ragnar the Viking was a real person, and evidence is mounting that he was, he is a relative of mine, He wasn't a nice guy, though. He was brutal and hated Christians with a passion. He burned them and hacked them to itty bitty pieces for pleasure. He probably didn't eat chocolate chip cookies. 

Ragnar--No cookies.

Then, there's Brunhild, the Valkyrie. Although she is definitely more mythological, she may have been based on a real person, and Marvel Comics even made her a superhero,

Brunhild looking sad about something. Probably because she had to come to live among the spoiled people of Earth and be a mortal.

And the, the relative to beat all relatives, Odin, or as he known outside of myth, Woden. There is also growing belief that he was also not entirely mythological, but based on a real Danish Chieftain.

6, I can play the guitar and piano. I am self taught on the guitar, and I had a year's worth of piano lessons, then self taught after that. I've tried to play the drums, but my left hand is too clumsy. I've also dabbled with violin, but life got in the way before I learned to play more than Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I am also a decent singer, although the only people who have ever heard me sing are my kids.

7. I would rather scrub nasty toilets for an hour than spend an hour in the grocery store.

8. When I was young, I wanted to be one of three things: a doctor, marine biologist, or an archaeologist. I read medical textbooks for fun, and read animal encyclopedias so much I could tell name just about every animal, it's habitat and even its gestational period.

It's okay that I didn't get to be a marine biologist, because I can swim (or kayak) with the dolphins and manatees all summer.

9. I've always been a treasure hunter, even before Forrest Fenn. But unlike Forrest, I have never found anything. I have a very expensive metal detector that I take out to the beach sometimes, but I've never been able to align the stars where I can go out first thing in the morning after a storm.

The detector was going off like crazy here, but after digging about 4 feet down, I had to give up.

10. In high school, I was an avid "Duranie." I wore the stupid felt fedora every day for a year. Thankfully, I redeemed myself by also liking REM and U2. Lol.

It's really true, I s'pose...

Growing up, I've always heard older people say, "Once you hit 45, everything goes downhill fast."

And whaddya know, it's true. Lol. I am falling apart and will likely need robotic parts before too long. Yesterday, my boss commented how I must have strong teeth because I snack on low calorie Smartfood Delight popcorn throughout the day. She broke her tooth a week or so ago--I can't remember if she said it was the popcorn, but it might have been. But the thing is, if you watch me eat popcorn, which I don't recommend, you'll notice that I inspect each piece before I eat it. If it's not fully popped, or has too much of the kernel left, or just isn't fluffy enough, I don't eat it. So, I'm not exactly biting down on the hard kernels. 

But last night, I decided to try a handful of the Christmas popcorn everyone said I should have at our holiday party. I inspected each piece as I always do, and tossed out the few that looked too kernelly (yes, I know that's not a word). 

Separating popcorn looks like this. Left side = mouth. Right side = trash

On the third piece, I bit down and felt this crazy, immediate pain in my very back tooth, and sure enough, it was cracked and part of it jiggled when I wiggled it. And it hurt to touch it too. 

So, I'm looking at an emergency dentist visit today, which will likely sap up the remainder of my holiday savings, and cause me to leave my coworkers short handed on the busiest day of the week (thank goodness we only have two providers today, but a jammed packed schedule). I think I'll go to work, call the dentist to see if getting in is even a possibility, then run there, get it fixed and rush back to work. 

Despite my throbbing tooth, things are pretty good in my life right now. But I miss my mom. This will be the first Christmas ever without her. In all my life, there may have been only one or two times I wasn't able to be home for Christmas, and if you follow this blog, you know my mom lived for Christmas. It was her favorite holiday. 

My coworkers are sympathetic, and they ask me how I'm doing, because a few of them have lost their moms, too, and know that first Christmas can be tough. I tell them I'm okay, and struggle not to cry when they give me a hug. 

The other day, I decided to put on a radio station in my office that plays Christmas carols non-stop throughout the day. So, when my mom's favorite Christmas carol, Feliz Navidad, came on, I immediately and unexpectedly teared up a little. I mentioned to Karen that this was my mom's favorite Christmas song, and I had always wondered why. It's not particularly Christmas-y. Last year, I asked her what it was about that song she liked so much that she would just put it on repeat all day long. 

Her reply was, "It just makes me happy." 

And that was a good enough reason for me. :) 

I have a few favorite Christmas songs. I like Silent Night, because when Aidan was little, she'd ask me to sing it every single night when I tucked her into bed. I think it was calming for her, and helped her fall asleep. 

I also like Carol of the Bells. The Pentatonix one is pretty cool...

Trans-Siberian Orchestra's version is great, too...

But their Christmas Canon may be my favorite Christmas song this year:

I like "Little Drummer Boy," especially the version by Pentatonix. And the one by Jars of Clay, too. I loved this song ever since I was very little. I remember thinking how nice it was to realize that kindness and respect are two of the best gifts you can ever give.

And I can't conclude this post without a Christmas song from my favorite modern violinist, Lindsey Sterling. This one is beautiful...

Merry Christmas, everyone...have a very happy holiday, and don't forget why we celebrate. May we all be Little Drummer Boys...every day of the year.