Beauty for Ashes Part 8

Finding Beauty

Take this world from me
I don't need it anymore
I am finally free
My heart is spoken for

Oh and I praise you
Oh and I worship you...

[Chorus]
Covered by your love divine
Child of the risen Lord
To hear you say "This one's mine"
My heart is spoken for

Now I have a peace
I've never known before
I find myself complete
My heart is spoken for

Oh and I praise you
Oh and I worship you...

[Chorus]

By the power of the cross
You've taken what was lost
And made it fully yours
And I have been redeemed
By you that spoke to me
Now I am spoken for

[Chorus 2x]

Take this world from me
Don't need it anymore...

                                     (Spoken For by Mercy Me)

My trip to where my parents lived was amazing.  Everything about Alaska was big.  We flew up at the end of July when it was unbearably hot in Missouri, to find Alaska experiencing the end of summer.  The weather was chilly by our calculations, and it was rainy.  I remember we stayed overnight in Barrow, which is at the northern most point of the continent.  The next day we went out to the tip of the land appropriately named “land’s end.”  I stood there watching the angry Arctic Ocean weave its icy spell, its waters churning as it stretched to the horizon.  I felt truly alive in my soul for the first time in a very long time.  I felt an awakened sense of God’s awesomeness as I stared out at the dark waters.  Then I saw, in the middle of that angry mass, a bunch of little heads bouncing around in the water.  They were seals and they were having the time of their lives, playing and catching fish.  I laughed at the contradiction—their frivolity in what seemed such an ominous setting.  I inhaled deeply, the crisp salty air, reveling at the freeness of spirit I felt.  Being away from the city seemed to allow me room to breath again.

We flew in to Point Lay, the village where my parents lived, on a bush plane, which is a small aircraft chartered to take people into areas of Alaska where there are few roads.  Quite an experience, though not as frightening as I thought it might be.  I remember thinking how stark the colors were.  The ground was yellow grass and the dirt almost black.  There were no trees, only the distant ocean, dark and frothy.  Along the grass were little splashes of colored tundra flowers. The village buildings were raised off the ground on stilts.  Because Point Lay is on the tundra, having buildings on stilts prevents them from melting the permafrost.  Dirt had been hauled to sustain roadways in the village, and the school, where all ages attended, was the focal point of the village.  There were few vehicles.  People either walked, drove four wheelers, or snowmobiles.  Most of the villagers had dogs they kept chained up near their homes.  These dogs’ job in life was to alert their owners to the presence of polar bears.  Polar bears are very dangerous to the Arctic villages because when winter hits, the tundra is a white mass.  When the wind blows as it does a majority of the time, and it is snowing, polar bears blend in.  It is almost impossible to see them; hence the reason for the dogs to alert the village when there is one coming into the town.  From what I learned from the villagers, polar bears are deadly, and when they come into a village, they are looking to kill.  The dogs serve to protect the polar bears as well by warding them off from the village.  Once a bear is in the village, the villagers have to kill it, for it will not be afraid of humans and will continually come back to kill.

It had not yet snowed when Jayme and I were there.  Instead there were tremendous rainstorms.  From my parent’s bedroom window I could see past the lagoon that separated the village from the ocean.  A storm was broiling on the ocean, keeping the fuel barge from making its way to the village.  I could see the huge ocean waves rolling in and hitting the spit of land that separated the lagoon from the ocean.  Every day I sat at the window watching 30-foot waves hit that bit of land, and I wondered how it could hold under such force.  I would walk down past the embankment in front of my parent’s little townhouse, down to the edge of the lagoon.  It smelled of sea salt, fish, and something else I could not define.  I decided later that the smell was earth and detect in the air.  I loved the feeling of the storm as it whipped chilled air across my face and through my hair.  There in that desolate place, in the quiet with only the sound of water and wind around me, I felt the presence of God stronger than ever before.  He began to show me some things about Him I had not known.  There were no distractions.  I began to see that God had a plan for my life.  I had been told such things, but did not really believe it.  I felt, as Bilbo Baggins says in The Lord of The Rings, “...thin, like butter spread over too much toast.”  I felt a 100 years old if a day.  I had no dreams, for I had given them up years before, because they seemed frivolous in the face of what I was fighting.  I honestly did not think that I would survive mental illness, so why dream?  God began to show me that not only was I going to live, but He had something particular in mind for me. 

 I was still angry with Him.  Years before I had prayed He would show me where my anger came from, and how to let go of it.  It was there in that little village of Point Lay, I finally had the answers to my questions.  My mom, Jayme, and I had begun reading a book together by Dr. John Eldridge called Waking the Dead.  In reading the book, I discovered a wound I incurred as a young child.  I felt abandoned by everyone, even God.  I realized I had listened to a lie that said, “God doesn’t love you.  If He did He wouldn’t hang you out to dry like this.”  I had believed the lie, and that was the root of my anger.  I mentioned this at the beginning of my story, but it took me years to be willing to see where I was wounded.  I had accepted that God did not love me, and if He did not love me then how could I love others and myself?  I learned that God had never given up on me and that my heart was not as the church taught, continually dirty and never quite good enough.  I saw that God had never asked for perfection from me, and His grace covered me, making all my imperfections beautiful in His sight.  

Dr. Eldridge talked in the book about how God has a name He calls each of His children, something He sees in them.  In the Bible God called King David a “man after His own heart.”  Abraham, He called “Friend,” and Gideon who was the wimpiest in his family, God called “Mighty Warrior.”  I began to ask God how He saw me, what He called me.  I waited but nothing came.  I did not waver, but kept asking, knowing that one day God would show me.

It is hard for me to explain what happened to me in Point Lay.  What I can explain is that I left there, my anger gone, and the closure Larry had spoken of had finally happened.  I left knowing that God was not sitting around waiting for me to screw up so He could say, “Yep, I knew this one was no good, and every time she takes a breath, she proves me right.”  I had also discovered that stomping my foot as I continually yelled, “Why are you doing this to me,” was a waste my time.  I finally understood and accepted that God’s ways were not my ways, and that He did not do bad things to me, evil in the world did them.  I was a victim of a cosmic war between good and evil.  The difference was that God would take what was wrong in my life, all that happened to me, and use it for my good, making me into the kind of woman He wanted me to be.  I understood all this, finally, not because I had read a book written by some man I had never met, but because I had been shown a doorway that took me down a path where I found my heart.  I reclaimed my heart from all the trauma of my life.  It was not battered and riddled with holes as I had thought; God had kept it whole and safe.

I felt it beating again after so many years of not feeling or loving, but just fanning the flames of anger.  I realized that by trusting God with one’s heart, all the trials and tribulations cannot kill it or pull it from His grasp.  And in knowing that, I finally understood how, in the very darkest, ugliest pit my mind drug me through, God was there.  In every persecution I ever endured, He was there, not standing beside or behind me, but in front of me and covering me.  Everything that happened to me went through Him first.  What a concept.

On our way out of Anchorage, I looked down and saw all the trees, green and beautiful.  In the middle of all that green, though, was one tree whose leaves were already a beautiful yellow.  I was amazed that in August a tree had the courage to move forward ahead of the others, and that is when God said, “Do you have the courage to move ahead?”  I smiled to myself.  Yes.  I was ready to move out of the desert of my life.

I mentioned to Jayme what I had seen, and she was feeling similarly.  We had previously discussed that we would like to be closer to our parents.  Things started to line up for us, and we decided to move to Alaska.  The trick was to figure out where in Alaska.  I think it was Jayme who first started looking for schools.  She had wanted to continue her education and I encourage her to pursue her dream.  She finally mentioned Alaska Pacific University (APU) in Anchorage, Alaska.  I took a look at it and thought that the Master’s in Counseling and Psychology program looked interesting. So I encouraged her to request information to start the application process for obtaining her master’s degree. 

In the meantime, I decided it was high time I started some dreaming of my own, so on a fluke I applied to APU as well.  For me the real clincher would be whether I could get enough money for school and living expenses.  I was not sure how I would do in school.  The last school I had attended was Minot, and that had not gone well.  I resolved that if going to school was something I was supposed to do, there would be enough money.

I began to speculate on what I would do for a major.  I had gone to several different colleges with a different major at each college.  The major I had the most credits in was jazz performance.  I had pursued that degree at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming. 

As I mentioned, music was almost a requirement in our family, so it would follow that one of us would continue on in music.  However, none of us made music our profession in life.  Jayme finished her degree in music and then taught music for five years, so I guess she went the farthest.  But even she burned out, wanting to try something else.  I played jazz with some of the most brilliant and famous jazz musicians in this country.  I loved playing bass, but I was not content making it my life.  I remember the director of our program telling me that if I was not in love with music, I would not be able to make it my career.  But for me it was the fact that I was in love with music and playing bass that made me give it up.  I could not see myself having to play.  I would not want to feel forced to do something I felt so passionately about.  I was afraid that was what would happen, and I could not take such a chance with something that was such a significant part of me.  I might have ended up hating it, and my life without music would be an ugly thing.  I finished very close to an associate’s degree in jazz performance before I decided I could not do it anymore.

Music credits did not fill a lot of slots in the APU requirement guidelines, but along with my other credits picked up here and there, I would still transfer in somewhere between a sophomore and a junior.  The only thing left to cinch things up was the financial aid.  The day I heard the news that I would have plenty of financial aid, was a wonderful day.  That day signaled two things to me: Education was a dream I should pursue, and I was supposed to move to Alaska.  

From the day I got my financial aid information forward, it was all about waiting on God to provide a way out.  We did not have money for such an endeavor, yet enough showed up to get us to Montana where my folks still had their house.  I had two garage sales before we left, selling everything.  We each only had room in our small cars, and that was it.  Everything else, with the exception of some winter clothes we shipped, we got rid of.  That was a most excruciating experience.  It is amazing how one can get so attached to things.  Once we had managed it, I vowed never again to get so attached to material things, one of the few things in my life I have found relatively easy to maintain.

Saying good-bye to friends was very difficult as well.  My friend, Candi and her mom came, and took away some of our treasures we could not bear to have sold to just anyone.  I had a trunk from the 1800’s that my dad had given me and a wooden mahogany table he made my grandma when he was in high school.  Candi took those things for me. My friend Shawn took a few items as well and many of my plants.   

I remember one day, as I sat on the bank of a lake near my house peering off across its glistening waters, the sun shimmering across the lake’s surface, making it a series of dips and grooves.  I wondered how Jayme and I could leave the friends we had been so close to, to go blundering off almost 5000 miles across the continent.  I prayed, asking for answers to my many questions.  Then I silently waited, as I continued to watch the water, its ebb and flow a gentle rhythm.  As I stared across the lake, the light changed with the afternoon sun, and suddenly it seemed to narrow.  It appeared to shine in a near straight line across to the other side of the lake.  I watched as, in places the light illuminated, every motion the water made.  But then there were places that were in shadow where the light seemed to skip altogether or only thread through.  On the other side, the light illuminated the water right up to where it touched the land, but then there was only shadow.  I could vaguely see a path leading into the shrubbery, but it was difficult to discern any detail.

I realized I was looking at a path across the water from my side to the other side.  I heard a voice say, deep within me, “This is the road you are going to take.  The areas that are illuminated are things or parts of your journey you either see now or will see before you get to them.  The parts that are in shadow you will not see or know before you reach them.  The other side is your destination, and though you cannot see it clearly, you can see there is a way.  For all that you cannot see I am there.  I know the way.  You can trust me.”

The moment was so poignant, and the vision so real, I dared not breathe, but suddenly the wind blew, parting the water and clearing the path.  I sat for a long time filled with excitement, sensing the presence of the Lord very near to me.   

 In psychology having visions is sometimes referred to as having delusions.  I suppose one can call it what they like.  Maybe the fact that the mental barriers of my mind have been breached enables me to have these experiences more than if I were not mentally ill, I do not know.  What I do know is that I have had many visions over my lifetime, usually not for me but for others.  I have seen angels, and because of that I cannot watch Hollywood’s rendition.  They look more like something out of the movie 300 A.D. than the way they are usually depicted. I have seen three angels up close.  They were around eight feet tall, had arms the size of small cannons and had the most beautifully androgynous faces I’ve ever seen.  They’re hair was long, one blonde, one dark haired, and the other I can’t remember.  They were terrifyingly beautiful.  One held a scepter in his hand, another a huge sword I wouldn’t even be able to pick up, and the other carried something I couldn’t see.  I will never, as long as I live, forget those angels.  And when I think of angels watching over me now, I smile, because I know what they really look like. 

It was a hot June day when we began packing our cars.  It was so hot with the humidity in Missouri, that it did not take long before we were both miserable.  After the third time of unpacking my car and repacking it, I began to fling things onto the pavement behind me.  At the time I kept wondering how I was going to do without all those things I had flung out onto the ground, but now, I canot remember what a single one of those things was.  

Our duplex was clean and empty.  We pulled our weighted cars out of the drive and headed down the road to a nearby hotel where we planned to stop for the night before making a fresh start the next morning.  For me the whole experience from the edge of the driveway forward was traumatic.  My agoraphobia was a problem, causing one panic attack after another.  But once we got going out on the road, I began to do better.  I think much of it had to do with the fact that I was driving my own car.  It helped to have a little control.  We journeyed our way to Montana without incident.  Jayme’s cat, Mercury, was made for riding in vehicles.  From the time he was small we took him with us on trips.  He would sprawl out in the back of Jayme’s car to catch some sun.  I remember walking out of a gas station and seeing two ladies standing by Jayme’s car point and laughing. 

Merc was a Maincoon.  He was huge, as all Norwegian Forest Cats are supposed to be, weighing in around 22 pounds.  They have tons of hair and beautifully chiseled faces.  Jayme’s Norwegian Forest Cat was laying on his back in the back of Jayme’s car on top of all of her stuff, legs flopped open, sacked out.  The two ladies thought that was the most hysterical thing they had ever seen.  I smiled, glad one of us was seeing the change more as a vacation.

We made it to Montana in good time and spent a couple of months there with my mom who had come off the Arctic slope for a bit.  We spent the time going through our stuff again, weeding out even more, and setting some aside to be shipped up later after we had settled.  We had a garage sale to earn some money for the rest of the trip.  I think that between us, Jayme and I had 1000 dollars.  My grandparents gave us another 1000, and that was what we had have for the trip.  Both our cars got good gas mileage, and we determined to camp all the way there.  My aunt and uncle live in Wasilla, Alaska, not far from Anchorage, and they offered to let us stay with them until we found a place. 

I remember it took us 10 days to get there.  The camping slowed us down, because we had to find safe places to stop and camp before they were all taken for the evening, so we were not getting a lot of miles in each day.  It took a lot to set up camp and tear it down each time we stopped.  By the eighth day we were over the camping thing.  We had spent the previous night in the Yukon in a downpour and I had had to go to the bathroom outside, because apparently the owners did not like people using the facilities after a certain hour. They had padlocked the bathrooms!  To ensure indoor plumbing, we spent our next two nights in hotels, managing to get all our laundry done in the process. 

My dad kept saying every time we called, “Aren’t you two there yet?”  When we finally did make it to my aunt and uncle’s, I think all parties were relieved.  While the adventure was a great one, and one few get to experience, Jayme and I both agreed we did not want to drive the Alcan again.

We found a trailer for rent within our price range in Anchorage that was small but safe and quiet, and we outfitted it with items from garage sales.  We moved in just in time for school to start, and I was glad, because I was already nervous enough about starting school without added stresses.  It had been a long time since I’d been in school, and while I knew I had a high I.Q., it never seemed to show up in my schoolwork.  I hoped the different type of education format used by APU would accommodate me.

APU uses an active learning style, which means a concept is introduced in a classroom environment, but is then expanded by practical application and discussion.  Rather than the traditional style of testing, most professors I had used projects and formal papers to cement the learning experience.  Essay tests were another way I was tested through my educational experience.  I remember counting 37 papers I had written in one term for 12 credits.  

The semesters were set up differently as well.  There was a block where students could take four credits.  Then there was semester session, which was shorter than most semester sessions.  There was also a full session (more like a traditional quarter) where students started during block and went all the way through until the end of term.  The setup gave students more options for how they wanted to spend their credits and their money in a given semester.  I liked that idea.  

I decided I needed some credentials behind my name, which translated to more education, when I called my doctor (one I went to after my Italian doctor went to jail) asking for a refill of my prescription.  His condescension was apparent as he told me I had a responsibility to my mind and body to get blood work done, and keep my mental health a priority.  I, of course, told him where he could stick his priorities after I explained that I was perfectly responsible for myself, and my blood levels had never changed once in the almost seven years I had been on lithium.  I decided then that it was time I sat on the other side of the couch.  My opinion of people in the psychology field, especially therapists, was one of wariness and near loathing.  I had tried therapy when I had insurance.  One therapist was frightened of me when she learned I had a mental illness.  She looked at me and then around her beautifully set up office in her home like she thought I might steal something and then bolt.  The other therapist told me she did not really know how to work with bipolar but we could talk about stress management.  The interesting thing about her is that when I applied for social security after not being able to go back to work, she was the person they chose to assess my level of competency. 

I walked into her office and said, “I thought you didn’t work with mental illness and didn’t know much about it.”  She smiled blandly, “Well I work for social security in assessing competence.”

“Okay, but how can you assess competence when you don’t even know what the illness is?”

She just gestured toward a chair and smiled saying, “Why don’t you just have a seat and count backwards from 100 by seven?”  I could not count backwards from 100 by seven, which has little to do with my mental acuity and everything with knowing my 7 multiplication tables up through 100.  My verbal abilities, however, blew the curve, leaving me deemed capable to work as a cook in a fast food restaurant.  My doctor scoffed when he read that saying, “Any jackass knows one of the most stressful jobs in America is working as a fast food cook.  There is no way I’ll release you to go to work at your neighborhood McDonald’s.  That would be disastrous!”

My years at APU were crucial to my growth as a person.  I needed to expand my intellectual circle, and I needed to be challenged.  I would not say that the work so much challenged me, as my professor’s did.  I took most of my classes from two professors.  That is not to say the other professors in the psychology department were not great, they were and are, but I had my favorites and took as many classes from them as I could.  They challenged me beyond just producing great work. They challenged me to delve deeper into myself and to become a better person.  

The first time I met my advisor, he looked like a hairy, hippy in Birkenstocks (he will not mind the description, as it is a complement).  His office was stacked with papers at every turn.  I was completely comfortable with Robert right from the start, so seemed only natural I take my first class with him.  Robert’s laid back manner and objectivity has often reined in my impulsivity, causing me to think from all sides of the game board rather than just my own.  His opinion is one that matters a great deal to me, and I often consult him for his advice on matters that require objectivity.  I have great respect for him.

Kim was the other professor I took many classes from.  I was drawn to Kim for the strangest reason I can think of.  I was drawn to Kim because she knows how to hurt, and I am drawn to people who know how to experience not only their own pain, but others’ as well.  Now this may seem like a strange reason to some, but to someone who has spent the majority of her life not being able to feel much of anything, much less identify with others, such a quality is a thing of beauty.  Without making assumptions, for I will not psychoanalyze my professors out of respect, I think I can safely say, Kim genuinely cares about other people.  It was just really nice to learn from someone who did not judge me or was afraid of me.  Kim was simply interested.  She and Robert both applauded the uniqueness of my story and encouraged me to share it and speak to questions in class from my standpoint.  I had never been given that opportunity.  I appreciate Kim’s wisdom and I find her insights as well as her faith inspiring. 

My first test in Robert’s class did not go well.  It was essay.  I figured I could knock it out of the park.  I got a B, which was not a bad grade, but I really knew my subject matter well.  Robert and I discussed what had happened.  I have always had problems taking tests.  All the information is up there but it jams together as it is trying to get out of my head and through my pen.  We decided to try headphones on the next test to see if tuning out exterior noise would make a difference.  I generally use headphones when I write papers at home.  

I got an A+ on the next test.  We decided the headphones were keepers.  I used them all three years I was in college for every class where I had a test, and they worked wonderfully.  I even did well in Algebra, which was a miracle.  

I began to understand the workings behind psychology, the science of understanding human behaviors and applying a theory that will not necessarily fix the behavior, though that may be the ultimate goal, but to help the psychologist understand the behavior better, and where it is coming from inside the person.  I learned so much about objectivity and questioning everything.  I love to ask questions, and being in a profession that requires it is perfect for me.

I began to try to sort out where me and my personality ended and bipolar began.  During my time at APU I figured it out.  It was not an epiphany, though I have had many of those along the way.  It was a gentle tearing away, like mesh being pulled apart.  I discovered, one tear at a time, the shape of me without bipolar. Then I reattached myself, for the bipolar is the twisted amplification of me, brilliant, terrible, eccentric, and laser accurate.  I sometimes wonder if I would be at all interesting to know if I did not have bipolar.