Hey guys. Just a thought…
We go along day to day..we get up, go to work, come home, eat supper, watch tv, go to bed…we get up, go to work…
Every day it’s the same thing. We might go to church on Wednesday night. We might go out to eat instead of cooking at home. But every day it’s pretty much the same thing…and on and on…
But then, one day, without rhyme or reason…always on a random Tuesday..could have been any Tuesday before, but no, it was exactly at the time when our thoughts are embedded in the mundane things we deal with every day, every week or month.
Maybe you lose your job, your spouse asks for a divorce, the doctor gives you that diagnosis you feared for so long. But in a single moment, everything falls apart. And you lose everything or everyone…and you’re floundering in a sea of uncertainty.
But think about all the times in the Bible when things just didn’t go as planned…someone or something just threw a monkey wrench into the whole situation.
Mary, 13 years old, sweet, chaste girl…an angel shows up and tells her she’s gonna have a baby. You know she said, “Well, you need to stop by my Mama’s room, cos she ain’t gonna believe this one.”
Or when Jonah got on that boat, running from his calling. No way did he expect he’d end up in a whale’s belly. And It’s difficult to even imagine what was going through his mind. But when he got out he understood exactly what was expected of him. It took ripping everything away for him to clearly understand.
When Moses saw the strange bush aflame but not being consumed, it drew him closer. And when God talked to him, he absolutely knew it was God. He wasn’t convinced that he was the one to lead the Jews out of Egypt, but he knew God meant what He said. And he followed the commands. But it was a complete deviation from his life as a shepherd and he had to have complete faith.
There are countless examples of God causing a disruption to make way for His plan. If only our minds were open and expectant to the interruptions and what they might mean for our life.
It is not comfortable to have your life pulled out from under you. As a matter of fact, it pretty much stinks. And if you’ve not been living just exactly right, well…it can feel like an earthquake. And it can shake any remnant of faith you might have acquired in your recent years.
It’s difficult to see past your arm’s length when most of your life is no longer there..no spouse, no children, no friends…not even familiar places you’re used to going. And there’s no amount of tears or screaming gonna bring it back.
It’s important to remember, Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, “ declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Whew! That’s a relief! Cos I wasn’t gettin’ anywhere on my own!
And no, it’s not that easy. One has to work at it. Even if you have to immerse yourself in Psalm 23. Just like anything worth having, it takes thought and care. And yes, some days you’ll stumble…just don’t stay down, get back up and try again tomorrow. This world isn’t meant to be easy, but it is manageable..and God is never far away.
You guys take care. Much love…

It finally went away with acceptance.
It went away when I quit fighting with it, but invited it to tag along.
It went away when I saved it a seat.
It went away when I invited it on an adventure.
It went away when I bought it a special treat.
It went away when I pushed it on a swing.
It went away when I gave it its own pillow.
It went away when I asked for help.
It went away when I took it to serve someone.
It went away when I offered it healthy food.
It went away when we did ketamine together.
It went away as we walked mile after mile.

It went away when I realized it wasn’t a problem, but a person to be loved.

Dear World,

It started when I was in the psych hospital in August 2020 for a severe mixed manic-depressive episode.

I was sitting at the table, coloring pictures with the friends I had made at the hospital.

I looked up and saw the psychiatrist who was seeing me during my two-week stay. Except this time, I was looking at him… differently. He stood across the day room at the nurses’ station, his back to me.

I actually checked him out.

Checked. Him. Out.

“This is crazy!” I thought.

“What’s crazy?” my friend to my right said.

“Did I say that out loud?” I asked.

“You sure did.”

“I think I’m… in love with my psychiatrist.”

There was pandemonium at the table. My friends asked me so many questions. Nobody had ever talked about having romantic feelings for their psychiatrist. The interest was high.

The problem was that I had no idea how to answer any of their questions. This concept was new to me, too.

After I was discharged from the hospital, I spent months battling my romantic interest in my psychiatrist. I felt confused. Ashamed.

I was seeing my psychiatrist in intensive outpatient therapy as well. I never once mentioned my love for him. I was afraid that if I told him, he would reassign me to another psychiatrist, and I would never see him again.

One day in January 2021, five months after I… you know, I was curious and typed “I’m in love with my psychiatrist” into the Google search bar.

The results were amazing. I was not alone. There were articles about people falling in love with their therapists. Psychiatrists were less common.

I was experiencing a phenomenon called transference. Simply put, it happens when a client transfers feelings about an attachment figure in their lives, usually their parent or guardian, onto their therapist or psychiatrist.

Usually, those feelings of transference are familial, but sometimes those feelings are romantic. So while I am not a common occurrence, I am certainly not alone in my romantic feelings.

I digested this information on my own for two weeks. Then, I summoned the courage to tell my psychiatrist that I had been having romantic feelings toward him for the past five months.

My psychiatrist was compassionate. He said that while he will never pressure me to reveal anything else, the invitation to discuss my love for him will always be there.

I poured out my feelings to him slowly over the next four months as I kept switching between inpatient and intensive outpatient treatment. However, I still felt anxious to tell him yet more.

I had told very few people about being in love with my psychiatrist. I still felt uncomfortable sharing my feelings about him with others.

One day, I finally told my therapy group at intensive outpatient treatment that I have feelings of love for my psychiatrist. Then, I told them a little about transference.

I was not completely alone. Two other clients in the group said they had loving feelings toward their therapists, but it was parental for them, not romantic.

The group therapist said that transference is “the goal” in therapy – that if a client wants to make any progress in resolving their attachment issues, then they need to experience those feelings with someone compassionate – a therapist or psychiatrist – who will help them process and heal their attachment trauma.

I don’t think I’m a typical case of transference. I don’t see my psychiatrist regularly, only when I am in crisis at the psych hospital.

I have a therapist I see weekly, with whom I process my feelings toward my psychiatrist. I wish I could see my psychiatrist at least twice a month, but that, unfortunately, isn’t possible.

It has been four years since I fell in love with my psychiatrist. I have not resolved those feelings yet. I have processed so much, yet something feels stuck. However, I still believe it is possible to heal, so I am honest and open during every session with my therapist.

Here’s my message for you: If you develop strong feelings for your therapist or psychiatrist, whether your feelings for them are familial or romantic, you are not experiencing a setback.

You are making incredible progress.

Keep going. Explore your feelings for your therapist or psychiatrist. Talk to them about how you feel. A good one will be receptive, warm, and friendly.

You will peel back many layers of emotional pain and trauma, and you will eventually heal. I believe in you.

I learned how to swallow my sighs, how to cast my eyes downward rather than rolling them into the next dimension.
I learned how to contort myself to fit within the small spaces that you found acceptable, spine jutting out, breaking off bit by bit.
I learned how to bite my tongue, drinking my own blood until my veins felt empty and my head felt light. I learned how to bleed in silence.
I learned how to tell stories in which I was the clumsy main character, always getting bumped and bruised.
I learned how to read your eyes; a lore so dark and dense and impossible to put down – a real page turner.
I learned how to fight, rarely for myself, but always for you.
I learned how to buy drugs, how much you needed to get through a weekend without clenching your fists.
I learned how to set my needs aside and, probably because of the drugs, I could never remember where I put them.
I learned how to forget myself, and because I was so utterly and completely forgotten, it was hard work to eventually learn how to remember myself.

I learned how to crawl out of your small spaces, a band aide on each vertebrae, legs stiff but muscles smiling with relief.
I learned how to stand up, get knocked down, then stand up again.
I learned how to stomp on your eggshells unafraid.
I learned how much easier it is to breathe when my terrified, swollen heart isn’t beating viciously against my lungs.
I learned how to recognize when a person is a living, breathing cage. I learned how to steal the key, how to set myself free.
I learned how to remember myself.

what is life? life that’s heavily filled with mistakes and blessings but most of all intelligible lessons

you choose a certain route that you believe is the right way to go but deep, intensely down inside you know there’s a dead zone

approaching really and mighty slow you still take your time to believe to do what’s right but what’s right when two wrongs can’t make a right, up there look! at the left light you finally realized there was a yellow light all of this time but you still decided to speed on up right?

through and bright like the red light see this is why we have to accept things we cannot change the stop sign is only there for it’s own specific gain

which is for you to abide by and not potentially meant to be changed but change we expect to always fluctuate but are you ready?

to build up and mouton because you expect for things to always go your way but when human beings aren’t meant for you trust me you won’t have to over think double checking if you’re actually coherent in your own brain

the brain that allows for you to grow and change within all the impossible says and impossible many ways

another thing this isn’t a Marco Polo game stop choosing what chooses you listen don’t get offended

I’m talking about the venomous snake that’s in the grass that you live in, that you walked in with your own two feet without looking down to find yourself nothing to see

see the tricks that many sour candies can cause that you eat which is always sour than sweet but this life is created for everyone including you and me

but i can only talk not preach
this is your lesson, your mistakes, your testimony, your personal journey made just for you to experience and even see

I was a Young man TERRIFIED of getting baptized, I was determined NOT TO DO IT, and every time I was going to do it something would come up and I couldn’t do it, Well Nov 14, 1996 I got baptized at a hotel Called Wilson World, it was a Thursday night and I was helping a young man pray through ( I would be the one getting saved) Well we drove to the hotel and I was getting changed ( I lost my Bible that night) but I went down in JESUS NAME and it was AMAZING, that night I couldn’t sleep but I still made it up for school and I TOLD EVERYONE, I had a Spanish teacher, she knew Spanish but I knew Jesus.im still serving God and the only regret was I DIDN’T DO IT SOONER.

My message to the world would be simple. We as humankind must understand that we are not control of anything. Life happens we are on our own individual assignments. And what happens along our journey is predestined there are events that are out of control, the death of someone close , why are some able to stay and others leave this world much too soon Who we love and nurture we don’t get to choose our families, we become apart of them and they apart of us. We can’t control a person’s thoughts. And how they feel about you as much as we want them to love us , they choose not to. When can only take our thoughts captive. The journey of life is tedious and captivating . That’s not to say that are robotic we feel emotions , we strive for better in our individual ways. But at the end of everyday the fact remains we are just micro fragments in scheme of life. And we control nothing.

In the backdrop of the Wasatch mountains, a little askew from where life zooms by at 80 miles per hour, I stood with my friend on a trail, panting and staring up at a starkly blue sky. I was trying to find peace while he was droning on about the dramas of his dating life—of this twenty-two-year-old girl he was in love with and her inability to choose him. I think there was something about a forty-one-year-old preying on her, that she was letting it happen, and my own thoughts about youthfulness—about how she wasn’t at an age to know what it was she wanted. I kicked a rock and thought about how long we had been hiking, about how long he had been talking.

But did I know what it was that I wanted? After all, I had come to the mountains to breathe in the slowness, and I had selected terrible company for that goal. I’m twenty-eight but there’s not much difference between twenty-two and me, when my grandparents of eighty-three are smashing cake into each other’s mouths to celebrate sixty years of companionship. Even in their experience, they still don’t always know what it is they want for dinner that night.

My grandparents have experienced a treasure chest full of life, but life expands farther than their sheltered, walled in realm of Utah. Their treasure chest is their microcosm, their eighty years. A good microcosm, but not quite enough to have life “figured out.”

That was how my friend put it when he was relenting to my questions about this young girl he wanted to love. She thinks, at twenty-two, that she has life figured out. That she knows what this forty-one-year-old wants when he says he could see himself marrying her. I told my friend that he didn’t have life figured out either. No one did—not even ninety-year-old men who had seen everything under the sun. If they had seen war and read hundreds of books and maneuvered great political events in history, if they had lived to one-hundred-and-ten—

They still wouldn’t have life figured out. Because life is bigger than them.

The hiking trail I stood on with my dog and my friend and my backpack full of water was a microcosm in itself. It was a sliver of the greater planet that had eons of history embedded in it. It was a fleeting conversation between friends on the matter of life and love, truly young minds trying to grasp something abstract about living that they’ll never be able to grasp. Not a single person on this Earth has life figured out, and probably won’t until death.

From where I started to where I am now, helped me realize how quickly we can arrive at our destinations.
Soon after, these destinations become pit stops on the journey to our next location.
We rarely stop to take in all that we accomplished, and rush to do or be more.

I often remind myself to ‘lighten up,’ as I know I am walking in the right direction.
Sometimes I feel as though time is just passing me by while I stand in place.
Then I look back and realize I’m in a spot I once longed for.

Be sure to stop and acknowledge all you have accomplished so far, and use that as motivation to further yourself.

We are forever evolving and there is no time frame for growth. Embrace your journey with a whole heart and at your own pace.

Awoken by the phone,
Heart races, stomach turns.
Speeding home through salty tears.

Flashing red lights, sirens.
Plain white walls, nurses, doctors.
“I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”
“Know that he didn’t suffer.”

You can’t be gone.
There must be a mistake.
How could you leave me?
Who will walk me down the aisle?
Does everything really happen for a reason?
Will I understand someday?

Tears stream for days.
Days into weeks, weeks into months.
People show their true colors.
“It’s been months, why are you still crying?”
I pack my bags; I’m all alone.
The colorless world gets darker.
I retreat to my cocoon.

In the darkness, a moment of clarity:
I am existing.
I am surviving.
I am not living.

You exist in memory; I exist in flesh.
You are gone; I am here.
You are not alive; I NEED to live.

I was a caterpillar.
Predators feasted on me.
I survived. I formed a cocoon.
If you hadn’t left,
I never could have transformed.

Now I emerge with beautiful wings.
Now I understand.
Now I can soar.

Turning back the clock. To where I was never the same. I found myself alone in the woods. Locked in battle with my mind. Where the voices drove me onward till at last lost. Lost to a fake reality. Subjected to cruelty of their words. All out of my sanity. Then forced to be locked away. Without knowing why. Thinking loved ones forsaken me. That heaven was going to reject me. The devil was on the prowl. Yes!!! Forever changed by that nightmare. To be withdrawn into myself. But also more humble and kind. Never ill wishing towards anyone. To stop and listen. To think before I speak. Never judge anyone’s circumstances. To find a quiet resilience. A strength I never knew I had. Learning that the mind can be a dangerous place. But with the right help can change anything around.

The hardest lessons I’ve learned
The hardest lessons to learn in general,
Are the ones I feel ive truely earned,
As I still bear the scars from how my heart burned.

The only turning point i know
From the crying in cemeteries alone to the empty dial tone on the other side of the phone
Some people use people
And its something I was repetitively shown,
But the hardest lesson to get to know
Are the ones you will be repetitively given
History repeating itself, you’ll be made to relive it .

They treated you like your humanity was a resource
Not a person , less than a human being
Until you were drained and crying in pain
Feeling the shame for life’s disdain.
I’m sorry you chose the wrong people.
I’m sorry they played with your feelings
As if your mind and emotions were a game of solitaire but they chose to cut in.
Im sorry you Learned that even if they say they are,
Not everyone is your friend
And they were holding the knife again

But You did it again
And again,
And again,
Feeling like a Foolish girl
Who thought she had a place in the world, to make amends.
Filled with happiness laughter and friends
Only to find out she wasn’t worth it in the end.
I’m sorry youre the only one saying sorry again.

Have you gone stagnant with life
And lost your sense of control
Pick yourself up no matter the strife
Learn to love your soul

Open your heart for all to see
Don’t let anything hold you back
Allowing someone to control thee
You’re life will always crack

Your journey is a learning one
It’s truly for you to feel
If you can read you’re not done
It’s a time to live and heal

Sometimes when you don’t understand
Where the roads seem to go
Someone will come take your hand
And love you from head to toe

If you’re feeling unloved in anyway
Send prayers up above
Open your mind everyday
And God will send his love

Life is a beautiful race.
Embrace it and take your place.

Pick yourself up like a buttercup.
God chose you to show your stuff.

Live life as if there’s no tomorrow.
He will always remove the sorrow.

Never look back and let it go
Remove your past and let life flow

Beauty always comes from within
Never worry about the end

Keep moving forward and never look back
Sometimes life is supposed to crack

Change is a beautiful journey in life
Continue at it and make your strife

What lies ahead is the finish line
Get out the there and make yourself shine.

For five whole years, I was a pro,
At silent stares and calm “hello.”
No words were spilled, just quiet grace,
A masterclass in the art of no-face.

Then, at five, I made a decision.
Enough of this silent division.
I flipped the switch, let the chatter begin,
And suddenly, I was in full swing!

I spoke so much, you’d think they needed a chart,
To track the words I’d soon impart.
From “Why’s the sky blue?” to “What’s for lunch?”
I had a million questions, and a verbal punch.

I’d talk through movies, during lunch,
With tales told and stories won.
My endless chatter, a comic delight,
Turning each day into a verbal fight.

They’d ask, “Is she ever going to pause?”
But I just laughed, breaking all laws.
From mute to a mouth that won’t shut,
I’m the life of the party, and that’s a fact cut!

So if you see me with words galore,
Just remember, I’m making up for the silence before.
No more quiet—now it’s all in jest,
And I’m here to chat, and chat with zest!