Pamela Richards's Blog, page 5

Calming the Storm Within

We all know weather as a natural phenomenon that exists in both space and time.  Personally, I love a good, heart-thumping, air-clearing thunderstorm.  It's not so hard in most cases to survive bad weather.  If we can't outdistance a storm, we can usually find shelter and wait it out.
 
But what about the storms within?  The ones that defy space and time.  The storms we carry around with us seem to be set on constant repeat, forever promising a rainbow while never yielding anything but torrents, high winds and dark clouds.  
The weather inside us can make an outwardly sunny day feel like a disaster.
 
Why do we carry storms with us when they're so destructive?  Perhaps because we've never learned how to give them a rest.  Maybe the distraction of living out a storm keeps us from having to face difficult truths about our lives.  Maybe we've never found the voice that would allow us to call out for peace with others.  Maybe calming the inner storm would require us to forgive ourselves in ways we're not ready to face.

Kathleen Pooler has posted an interview about calming the storm of domestic abuse through faith on her blog.
I hope you will visit when you can.  I believe that treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is key to breaking the cycle of suffering that often follows down family generations in the wake of battle trauma, domestic violence, and child abuse/neglect.  

About a month after the interview above was first posted in 2/2013, I learned that several of my old friends from college had begun to find ways to offer help and support to those who are experiencing PTSD.  I looked forward to assisting in any small way possible.  Through contact with Rodney A. Ellis, Ph.D., I discovered that the rural medical clinic where he volunteers time for uninsured/underinsured individuals was in need of promotion.  Their limited budget would not accomodate a website, so I was blessed with the opportunity to donate one: http//www.baxtermedicalclinic.com/

 I admire all who have the courage to face the storms within to find the peace that passes understanding.  I hope to post more about the work of Baxter Medical Clinic and what is being discovered about rapidly effective treatments for PTSD soon. 

God calls us to live in peace, although it may require a longer journey for some of us than others.    

When Memories Hurt

Memories can bring us so much comfort and beauty.  Our favorite memories grant us blessings and bliss.  But because they bring us  back to our most difficult moments and feelings, memories of trauma hurt. 

When we remember, we  find ourselves again mourning the loss of a brighter
world, the one we thought  we lived in just moments before the accident, or the
battle, or the rape, or the  disaster, or the domestic abuse.

During the trauma, we  find ourselves unequipped to cope with the realities that face us both in our  newly broken worlds and newly broken hearts.  

Afterwards, instead  of confronting memories of the experience to discover there a meaning that  resonates in our hearts and speaks to our lives, we tend to avoid thinking about  the event that caused us so much suffering, just as we avoid moving our bodies  in ways that cause pain after an injury.

 While we may  effectively block memories of trauma from our consciousness, they still lie like  scars on our souls, waiting to be wakened instantly in reponse to a painful  touch.  And because they remain unresolved, when those memories awaken,  we re-live not their resolution, but the destructive impact they have had on our  lives.  No wonder we often find ourselves living as long as we can in a world of  blunted feeling in an attempt to avoid the suffering.  Often, we need time to  grow in strength--or for our circumstances to
change--before we attempt the work  of healing directly.   

The past shows us a  more perfect world, one that has been shattered and lost:
The present shows us  ongoing repeated pain in response to our loss:  
The future shows us  little hope of healing unless we can learn to view our lives and these  memories through eyes that see beyond time altogether.

 Some of us find  ourselves telling our stories in order to bring these moments of darkness into the light;  whether to a therapist, through metaphor, in the form of writing either a journal or a  memoir.  All of these approaches deserve our respect.  All of those who find the  strength to confront traumatic memories are facing a
great challenge with great  courage.  Setting our traumatic events into a brighter view of the world, one far greater than  our worst memories reveal, is a critical step on the path leading to a greater faith, hope, and love. 

One Year Later: Singing from Silence

A year after publishing Singing from Silence, I have added two new questions to the FAQ page:

Q:  Where can I find all the rumours that have been repeated about Rich Mullins?

A:  Not here.  I knew Rich Mullins as a friend and a songwriter, an artist whose working materials consisted of his own life experiences and the love of God.  The tools of his trade were honesty, brokenness, beauty, light and dark.      
    
Like all performers and through no fault of his own, Richard had a public side and a private side.  I understand that human nature makes the rest of us curious about the quirks and flaws  of our celebrities and heroes, but I do not intend seek the lowest common denominator by filling pages with questionable content.  Richard is the one who taught me about sharing the truth of our lives through art.  In gratitude for our friendship, Singing from Silence is in no part based on careless speculation or third-hand intrusions on the life stories of others.

The content of Singing from Silence is pared down to my own memories: the only ones I'm capable of writing with truth.  It tells the story of two human beings struggling to show one another the love of God in a fallen world.

Q:  Does the book do justice to Rich Mullins' memory?

A:  That question is very subjective.  If you want a book which stresses his successful musical career and his large base of fans, you might prefer to read An Arrow Pointing to Heaven by James Bryan Smith or perhaps the novel The Wind in the Wheat by Reed Arvin, which is said to be based in part on Richard's life.  

From my point of view, the whole idea of Singing from Silence is to be fair to Richard's memory.  Like many creative geniuises, Richard admitted to a dual nature.  To my way of thinking, when we overlook his life in favor of his art, his sorrow in favor of his laughter, his introspection in favor of his prophetic stance, we have lost half of what made him a human being.  My best memories are of Richard as a man who struggled as we all do to allow himself to be transformed in the hands of the Great Artist. 

I believe Richard wanted to be remembered as someone we can all relate to, because  his art touches us the most when we remember him that way.  This was my intention in publishing Singing from Silence. 

Q: Why is the book called Singing from Silence?
A: I can think of two--more, maybe five reasons I chose that title. . . (more)

Exponential Forgiveness

This may be one of those  puzzles I can't solve and can't shake:  or maybe it's four hundred and ninety  puzzles waiting to be unpacked.  Forgiveness.  Hard as it is to ask for, it's  harder to give.  

Ever try to unpeel the  center of a golf ball?    My brother and I were not so good at sports, but what  we lacked in coordination we made up for in geekiness, so this is one sports-oriented occupation that kept us busy for hours--when we weren't watching  The Three Stooges for tips on useful sibling interactions.  As a resourceful child who got a golf ball  with a good chip in it, you could usually find some way to tear off the outer  shell.  When you reached the inner ball, you'd find it was compacted of a long wrapped strand of stretched rubber band stuff.  All you had to do was touch it and it would turn brittle and shred into bits, spinning and pinging and snapping the whole time from the tension that was packed into the golf ball when it was first  formed.  

The golf ball reminds  me of a lifetime of small, repeated unhealed traumas.  Each little event winds  the rubber-band strand just a little tighter, makes the dimensions of the  center just a little greater, adds just a little more weight to the entire  center.  Over and over, during a lifetime of repeated trauma, the tension  builds.  Stress affects our emotional lives, our ability to think clearly, our  health and our ability to cope with  physical pain. As the center grows through  repeated events, our lives become ever more stressed as our attention is distanced from the  inner core--the heart, where healing can take place.

One day some assault  or trauma parts the outer shell from the ball and exposes the inner layer.  Some  events just remind us of others from long ago, making healing more complicated.   The original wound that began all of our trauma is still there under all the  spinning and pinging and snapping, but to get close enough to the core to do the  healing, we have a lot of unwinding to work through.   

Forgiveness is easier  when we can empathize with our offender, but sometimes we can make no rhyme or  reason of the actions of others.  These offenses are the most difficult to  forgive, and because we carry them longer, probably the most important. 

If we're traumatized  early enough and often enough, by the time we are adults, forgiving one single  event may depend on years of work on forgiving hundreds of past events.  To the  man who asked, "Should I forgive my brother seven times?"  Jesus answered, "Not  seven, but seventy times seven."  Maybe that's what Jesus was talking about.

Some things we forgive because we can.  Those are easy.  There are some things we forgive for our own personal growth.  I'm much more selfish than I like to admit.  In my life, there are some things I've forgiven just so my offender wouldn't have the privelege of keeping me out of the kingdom.  
 
No matter why we forgive, it's good to let go of our past grievances: just to let go of the stress so we can break through to a deeper healing.   We all want to believe God will forgive us; sometimes it's harder to believe God is willing to forgive our offender, too.  God forgives exponentially.

Note to self: 
Next  time I am tempted to offend, try to remember that I may be asking someone to  forgive me exponentially for something that seems to me like just one incident.

Disclaimer:   They don't always use the same methods for making golf balls as they used to, so no matter how resourceful you are,  I can't guarantee you'll have the same experience my brother and I had if you  try to unpeel one.

Lost and Found

Lost: Fear of what tomorrow may hold.
Found:  Joy in being given a new opportunity to give.

Many thanks for the prayers of many friends,
Pam Richards

More soon, thank God!

Cardiac Haiku

Cardiac Haiku
 
Medic alert charm bracelet:
Frankenheart prevents
Malignant arrythmia.
  
 
  
Lessons on Writing from the Heart

I have to admit it  is difficult for me to write this.  Writing may be a strength, a gift entrusted  to me.  Still, I struggle with how to put it to its best use.  
  
Recently, I had a conversation with a writer and advisor of writers who reinforced some facts of an authors' life.  One, writing books is not about making money.  No surprise, naturally.  Two, many authors write books to launch a related career in teaching  others to write, or alternately to achieve enough recognition to become known on  the lecture circuit.  Following in the footsteps of Mark Twain and Robert Frost,  I guess.
 
Not that I scorn any sucessful literary figures, but I doubt whether I'll become one of the few.     
     
I examined how and why the Spirit is leading me to write.  It comes down to this:  though I have only a little light, still I have been placed here to let that light shine.  Why  do I write?  To share the light, and perhaps, if the Spirit shows me how to lift  the candle high enough, to cast a little of that light behind me.
 
The Spirit has shown  me that transparency about our struggles is good, while in writing as in  life, placing all the blame for our struggles on others is  counterproductive.  Vulnerability is good, but attention-getting for the purpose  of self-aggrandizement puts my ego directly in the way of the little light I  have to share.  If you begin to get a sense my little light sometimes flickers,  you are reading me right:  I'm so far from perfect.  And so it becomes safe to compensate by saying less rather than more.  
 
I strive to write from what I find in my own heart, in response to my own experiences.  It is not always easy to know how much to filter, and how much is too much. Blogs tending toward daily updates on grooming routines and household products, in my opinion, err on the side of too much information.  Unless I'm filling out a marketing survey, I doubt if anyone really cares what I think of these things.  But just in the event you do, I 
won't be secretive: shea butter, baking soda and borax.
 
I'm sharing some personal information here to let readers know why my writing is going on hold for a 
while, and from here may progress more slowly than I had hoped a few months ago. 
 
My health isn't great, and that's an understatement.  I'd need a medic alert charm bracelet to list all my 
conditions, so I won't bore you with my entire history.  Those who know me well know it's nothing new.  I've known about the risk of sudden death due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy--an hereditary condition--for more than a  decade.  

Doctors have given me less than a year to live more times than I care  to say.  
 
There is a great advantage  to knowing that any day--today--might be the last.  I know my friend Richard claimed his awareness of mortality as a voluntary spiritual discipline.   I believe he gained a greater appreciation of life through his awareness of death, and that when he died unexpectedly, he was prepared to go. 
 
In my  own case, advances in medical technology have finally caught up with me.  I'm  going into the hospital next week for a defibrillator implant--not because my  heart is that much worse, but because heart treatments are that much better.  The purpose of the defibrillator is to send an eletrical shock to the heart to re-establish a regular rhythm whenever a fatal rhythm develops.  A Frankenheart won't make me immortal, but I have been told it will cut back on the potential causes of death.  Still, I maintain the hope and intention of completing more writing before the end of my life, yet as we have  been instructed to say, "if the Lord wills and we live. . ."  

Prayers appreciated,

Pam Richards


 

Freed for the Journey

An excerpt from the introduction to Walk Through the Valley:

The promises of the Beatitudes are more thrilling than any other eight consecutive verses of Scripture I can think of. What can be better than to own the kingdom of Heaven? To be comforted by God?  To inherit the Earth? To be filled with goodness?  To be shown mercy?  To see God? To be identified as God's own child?  To be be greatly rewarded in the kingdom of Heaven?  Yet the beatitudes teach us the path  to ascend the mountaintops lies through the valley, because this is the starting  point all humanity shares.  The word translated "salvation" in the New Testament  comes from a root word that means "freedom." Freedom implies movement and  action, not stasis. In the Beatitudes, Christ frees us to grow, to progress, and  to fight the good fight against our enemies within,  liberating ourselves one by one from the obstacles that encumber us.  Our spiritual journey is not complete as long as we are still alive, so we go on placing one foot before the other. 
   
Although I  would love to say I'd been with Rich Mullins every step of the way, I wasn't.   Our lives led in very
different directions, but still it was my friend Richard  who first taught me the Beatitudes.  Some of our best conversations centered on  the topic.  I was a new Christian, and though I've sometimes strayed and  sometimes stagnated since then, this is the map of the journey that has unfolded  for me over time.  I have learned through my own mistakes that neither a  milestone of spiritual growth, nor a fall from grace entitles us to abandon the  pilgrimage and take up occupancy in self-satisfaction or stagnation. Not that  growth is required before we can be saved, but because growth is the purpose for  which we were saved.  It is for freedom: for movement: for the journey, that  Christ has set us free.
 
I find myself often affirming that we loved to argue, just to clarify that I  don't pretend to speak on Richard's behalf.  We had our own perspectives about spiritual matters, but we each found through our discussions a synthesis leading  to greater understanding, as though by juxtaposing our ideas we could come up  with something neither of us had thought of before.  Everyone who knew Richard  well knew he had a great gift
of  connecting with others in this way.  Yet we both agreed that as freely as our  words may flow, the Beatitudes will transform us only when we pour our lives  into them.  You will find in Walk Through the Valley my best
memories  of conversations and events that led me to a deeper grasp of what Richard  thought of the Beatitudes, and how he lived them out.  
  
 

Heartsick on the Battlefield

When we have engaged our human enemies long and hard, one day we may hear the Spirit of God whisper as we stand on the battlefield:
 
"The heart is sick.  Look into the core.  The center is imperfect."
 
Love the sinner, hate  the sin.  It doesn't take much reconnaisance to locate the enemy.  These ills  are all common to humanity.  When we enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we will learn  to hate hate, greed, jealousy, vindictiveness, pride, rage, slander, gluttony,  lust.  One by one, when we strip our hearts of our enemies within, we reveal the  love that God placed there when he clothed us in the divine nature.  

A passing  kind thought for humankind does not aim high enough:  we must continue to rid  ourselves of the enemies within, for it is the pure in heart who see God.

Singing from Silence Goodreads Book Giveaway

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Giveaway ends April 20, 2013.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Blessings of Peace

God bless my enemies:

Bless them for showing me how low God is willing to stoop to open the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven;

Bless them for pushing me to take new steps when no friend stood beside me but God;

Bless them for showing me that nothing can belong to me unless I belong to God; 

Bless them for causing the pain that has expanded my capacity for joy;

Bless them for teaching me my errors so God can make them right;

Bless them for all the tears that God is turning into laughter in my heart;

Bless them for leading me to seek the peace that this world just cannot claim;

Bless them for the broken beauty of God's plan they have helped me discover.