I am still sick today – and here I thought I was all better. I laid down after I got up this morning for an extra 30 minutes. It didn’t really help much, except that I got hugs and kisses from Steve. I have my board meeting tonight, which is really too much, but I need to go since I’ve missed the last two (albeit through no fault of mine).

As I’ve been working on the exercises in the “Feeling Good” handbook, I’ve been more aware of my internal dialogue. Which is good. One thing I’ve identified is this thing I do – I place a thought, feeling, concept in the middle of a circle that encompasses everything I’m aware of at that particular moment. I wish I could describe the phenomenon more clearly. When I place the thought in the center of that circle of awareness, it interacts with everything and feels global. So, that is how one thought, feeling, idea becomes cosmic for me. And I don’t mean it in the simplistic sense of “all or nothing” – its not all or nothing thinking – its everything is related to this…thing (thought, feeling) and this thought/feeling relates to and affects everything else. So, when I hear a comment or philosophy or idea I don’t agree with, it enters the circle and the ripples widen. That is where much of my depression and anxiety come from. Its fascinating. I’ve learned some great techniques for examining my thoughts and un-twisting them. I can’t wait to get to the work on self confidence.

I sent out wedding pictures to people I haven’t communicated with in a while, and this is a message I got from Mette in Signapore:

“I down loaded your e-mail with the wonderful wedding pictures last night just as our Halloween Party was about to start, and was a little taken back. You got married! I am so happy for you and the pictures are so lovely, you looked relaxed and happy, the weather fabulous and the setting dreamy! Oh I bet it was beautiful! You my dear friend Lynn, wow what a lady! You haven't changed much, still the same knock-out, and so natural at the same time, and your family, wow just like I remember them, except Steph has become really tall and Joel-well wow a full grown MAN! You and your dad look the same, happy to be with one another! Wow Wow!

So when was this big momentous day? And where? How was the wedding, it looked intimate, with just the ones that mattered to you both! That's the best kind to have I think. Would you mind sharing a little bit about it? I have a feeling it was MN! Steve is from out East, right? The picture of you and your dad in your house? It reminds me of the house we had on Niles!

Thinking about all this, has me really realizing that I have not been a good friend these past many years, I'm afraid to think of how many it has been. The whole writing and keeping you updated and letting you know that I thought of you also, well has just kind of gone down the drain. When I think of the many letters I still have from you from our time in Africa, and after we left for Denmark and how important they were to me.... This year at Christmas time, my sister and I are going through all our old things at my parent's house, and I'm sure I'll be coming back to those many little memoirs. It will be a wonderful time, but also emotional. I still think of those days with much thanksgiving in my heart for the friendships and love. They still give me so much to this very day.

Well, I want to be a better friend, and I know that doesn't happen over night, and there will be times I will fail miserably, but I will make a very conscious move to try harder now.

I am so happy for you, and I hope that you'll find your marriage a great and sometimes mysterious adventure, that will bring you to new levels of what love means. I also hope to someday meet this man in your life, this man who has captured your heart. He must be very special! You make a wonderful looking couple!...”

I responded:

“Dearest Mette -

What a treat to get your long email, Mette – thank you for the update on your busy life. It feels likes you have been in Singapore for a very long time – you must really have established some friends and roots there by now. I don’t think I remember exactly what Mitch does for work – does he enjoy it? I assume you have plenty to do with the children and aren’t working outside the home – is that right? Do you still live in the same place?

I too have thought of you often over the past years.

I need to very honest with you and tell you that part of the reason I have been reluctant to be too much in touch with friends from Cameroon and CAR is because, well, my religious beliefs are very different from what they were when we lived in Cameroon, and very different from what I assume most ex-missionaries’ beliefs are. I have thought and thought about religion and being raised a Lutheran and examined and re-examined my thoughts and feelings over and over – for nearly all of my life. Even in Cameroon, I knew what I was thinking and feeling weren’t in line with what was around me. I always had trouble with the idea of Jesus dying for my sins – I never felt or believed it the way I saw other people feel and believe it. And after many years of thinking and pondering, the result is that I do not believe in the salvation doctrine of Christianity. I believe in a God. I believe Jesus was an amazing man who was killed for his beliefs, but I do not believe that a God who made me would make me so very sinful JUST BY BEING BORN that someone had to die to save me. It just doesn’t ring to true to my heart. And, unfortunately, I’ve found that most main-stream, conservative Christians I talk to a) want to convert me, b) want to change my mind, c) are very arrogant and smug in their views of the world, and d) are very judgmental. So, I have been hesitant to reconnect with old missionary friends because of the way I feel. My beliefs are pretty liberal – for example, I believe gay people should be able to get married and have or adopt children. I think women should be able to do whatever they want to do with their lives and their bodies in the sense that the government and society should not be able to impose its decisions upon a woman. I think that religion and government must be separate, etc.

I don’t mean that you would have treated me differently knowing this – I think I mean that I want you to know this about me, and then you can decide if you want to be in touch with me.

Now that that is off my chest!

I met Steve about three years ago, about a year after my divorce from AJ. Knowing and loving Steve has been a very good thing for me – not just for the obvious reasons. He is very different from me and very different from anyone I’ve ever loved – he stretches me more than anyone I’ve ever loved. And while that can be the most frustrating thing in the world sometimes, at other times it is the best thing in the world.

Steve moved into my house in St. Paul about a year ago right after we got engaged, and we were married on September 4th. The wedding was very small – just our immediate families (although Steve’s immediate family is very big). And you are right – isn’t Joel so grown up? Its hard to believe. He is a model young man. Truly to be admired.

My folks were visiting Steve and I this summer when the Cameroon/CAR picnic took place so we went. It was fun to see so many old friends – Uncle Ron hasn’t aged 1 day – he looks just the same. My mother and I were just marveling at how the missionaries never seem to get any older. Myrtle Nss looked the just the same. I couldn’t believe how few missionaries are left in Cameroon and CAR – even the Norwegians are all but gone. We saw the Hansons – Heidi was there and she just beautiful and we saw pictures of Bethany – she is lovely as well.

...

I would like to start trying to get pregnant this winter. I have a great job with wonderful benefits – so I think I will continue working at least part time when I have children – I work for Novartis Medical Nutrition as a Senior Contracts Administrator. Steve is changing careers – he has been a restaurant and hotel manager for most of his life and is now going into real estate. He has a funny habit of always thinking about things in terms a year – for him, things were always either a year ago, or will happen a year from now. So when we talk about having children – he thinks “a year from now” and doesn’t realize how long a time that really is. And so many people don’t get pregnant right away. Oh well – I’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m just anxious to start on “life.” I feel like I’ve waited for it for a long time and have come through some rough periods. (But that’s a story for another time).

Thank you for writing. I miss communicating with you.”

Mette wrote back:

“My dear Lynn,

Thank you for your long and full e-mail, you have given me so much information about yourself and how you live now, that I feel like I have been with you the past couple of years. Thank you for that, and for your honesty. I understand your need to communicate this to me, we were very close as young teenagers and people and their lives change, or can change dramatically over the years. No matter what, I will have to say though, I will always be your friend. You are like family to me, your friendship and love during the last year we were in Cameroon and for quite some time after we moved to Denmark, were my saving grace. That transitioning was the hardest I had ever had to do, in some ways, even up to now, especially because I didn't have the knowledge or wisdom I have now. That period of my life was about survival, not living, but survival.

I have really only come into a mode of really living the past 3-4 years. Well, it started way back when I first married Mitch, but I only feel the results of the LONG journey now. I have dealt with some of the same issues as you. I more felt a complete abandonment from my "missionary family" when I came to the US for school, they all were so busy with their own lives, and no one seemed to understand or have time for my neediness for direction and acceptance. I really needed their acceptance then, I thought. But I was an adult by then, and all I did was wander in the dark, never getting it right, until I met Mitch. He allowed me to be a "vegetable" for a couple of years, just soaking up his love and protection, he was my safe haven, that place of acceptance. Until I realized, when we moved to AZ how lonely and completely at my wit's end I was. I began to watch Oprah and I began to read "A Road Less Traveled". I carried that book with me for years, finally finishing it 3 years later! I had had Isaac by then, and I believe that was my true and real wake up call. Lynn, you cannot in your wildest dreams phantom how captured your heart gets when you begin to feel the life of that little being growing inside you. The fears and hopes and dreams all mingle into one sometimes big beautiful dream, other times your worst nightmare. Once that little person makes it's entry into your world in a physical way, you wish it could just stay inside you forever. You begin to realize how much could hurt this little creature, how much wrong you could do, and with all the worry you felt about all that could go wrong while it was growing inside you, it doubles once outside, for there is so much more that is not within your control. Your baby leaves you a prisoner, it makes and takes all that you thought pre-baby and throws it out the window. The emotions that come into your being with that new life in your arms, are unlike any you can imagine. They are so much deeper, the joys the pains. Your life is so much richer, and therefore so much more vulnerable. You begin to find that you cannot control everything in order to keep that little new life safe and out of harms way. You begin a huge journey of faith, no matter how much you don't want that in your life. I know you have some ideas about parenthood, you probably have friends with children that you see regularly, but I don't think that you can gage anything by what you see about them for yourself. Motherhood is for the woman, it is 100% woman. No matter how liberated we are, how much we love our careers or other things not having to do with that part of our nature. And there is nothing more beautiful than a mother, whether pregnant and huge, or after 3 kids and numerous soccer games. As much as we'd like to be "cool" about someone else seeing our child for most of the day, no matter how competent and loving they are, you find yourself looking at the clock at work, you ache when something has happen and you couldn't be there right away to make it all better. It's just natural and inbuilt. We can deny it, but we can't make it go away fully. I believe that this world, that is a man's world, has us wanting to believe that we don't care, and that we can easily be both and want to be both. Our women's rights have essentially become not the right to choose, only right to choose 1 thing-be like the men. I want to see a real choice for women, where she can have status and respect for the noble job of caring for her household and children, molding them into a better future because her self esteem in doing just that is secure. And for women who desire not to be moms, to be as respected and accepted just as equally. And for the few who really are able and desire to juggle both, truly, may do that just as equally, knowing that other women will be there to support her and make her feel just as esteemed. I want there to be a real choice for us. And the whole awful picture you get of "soccer moms" in the US, that is such an ugly label and undermines all the important roles moms have, all which can contribute to a healthy, informed and educated society. In my mind there is so much beauty and power in womanhood, we have such strength and ability, such courage and stamina, why shouldn't we be out there shaking it around so that we can live as true to ourselves as possible. Ok that was my political speech. As you can see I have become a woman's activist!

I am surrounded by women here from all walks of life, with all sorts of complicated and weird lives now while living overseas. Many operate as if they were single moms, their husbands are sometimes gone 70% of the year on business. They often come in by themselves to their new country and have to do house/school/dentist/doctor/etc hunting all by themselves. They are are like the toughest CEOs I've ever heard of, they have economy and culture and new driver's license tests all down and life up and running like some well oiled machine!! Incredible! There are also some that comes, realize they can have a live-in maid for $300 a month and give it all up to that Philipino maid. They have done all the above once to many. Then it gets sad, and unfortunately there are many like that here also. It's not an easy life. But it can be rewarding, if you can figure and handle it right for you. I'm in the process. I have a maid, but mostly she cares for the cleaning of the house and the groceries, and I get to have that much more time to play and go places with the kids, swim and teach and learn! It might sound boring, but when that little one arrives, I bet you, it will change your life in a million ways. You may have plans for how it could work now, but just be ready to change them and accept that they are changing when that time comes.

Having a baby, I think, is the most selfless thing that you can do in this world. Not by choice but by nature.

As for your religious feelings and views. I understand them. I have many sad things to recount about churches and other Christians I have met over the years. I sometimes marvel at the fact that I still hang on to my belief, for I have been disappointed so many times by others professing the same belief. My only take on it, as I think perhaps you have also discovered, is that it comes from the heart. It has to start there. It is a love relationship, therefore it requires the heart to be full and ungiving in it's certainty. I believe THAT is the only way to live the Christian faith. From the heart first. Because if the heart is certain, then all that follows, staying true to the One, will fall into place. Because the desire is there. That simple really, in my book at least. And as the heart is leading, the doctrine will not be the guide in your life, but instead your desire to stay close to the One, and therefore, a more "godly" person will evolve. It's a cycle. But I believe it has to start in the heart to be what God intended. Many I fear have forgotten this. It has instead become a way of life, my parents were Christians so I am also-I follow the path of my parents and weed out what doesn't apply to my life. A way of life that has no heart's gripping desire to guide it. Ok, that was also my 5 cents worth on that. I don't have all the answers, I can't even pretend to have, I mostly follow my heart and am aware that I falter a lot, and have learned to say "I'm sorry". That last part, by the way, has probably been one of the hardest things for me to learn to do!

Well, Lynnie, now you may want to cut all communication with me, as I rant on. I hope you are not offended by my beliefs, and hope that you won't feel I'm trying to "win you over" to anything I believe. Belief is personal, and more than anything we as a world need to remember that. Humans are complicated and emotional, full of mystery and wonder, capable of such pain and devastation. "Life is hard" says Dr. Peck, but it is what makes it worth living!

Your in my thoughts, and once again, I'm happy for you and Steve! Thank you so much for sharing your big day with me!”