Hunt's Catch-Up ;-)

Ahhhhh! :) Hi everyone. I have so much catching up to do, and i actually am writing this to say.... that's not going to happen tonight. I know, thanks for brangin' us here fer nuttin'. (i'm not sure at all why i imagine you all saying that in a hick accent :-))  OK well, i will do some catching up ;-)

I am tired in every way a human can be. Physically exhausted, emotionally, mentally... i don't think spiritually though, so that's good. And an understatement. I am in the home of precious people who haven't known me long. Have plenty of their own challenges in life, but who told me yesterday wanted - and have - to offer me a "Sanctuary". 

Sanctuary. I love that. The word, all that it means. A safe place, a protected place. A place to be and feel and do all one needs to do - which also can mean do nothing at all. We have shared meals, i have slept on a great bed i really need to get back to soon. No one is asking me about tomorrow and i so need that right now, to rest. Just when i think, "Life is not fair, my life is not fair!", someone offers a blessing. A hand up. It has been really cool for me these past 3 and a half days to watch a happy, sweet marriage. To watch how they both parent, which has just (i need new phrases! :) I think i might have maxed out "Blown me away". But it has, they do!! 

I miss my kitty girls. Lots of things are still very tangled in life. But for right now, i am OK. The future remains scary, i'm not sure whose doesn't though. And while someone in my life thinks this all  (the "Perfect Storm" as Mikel called it when we wrote about what has happened to my family this year on the 2nd page of the Fundraiser - another blessing) - that it all has to mean something, some HUGE thing that will make this thing and that thing actually perfect. 

I disagree with that thought, i think if things on earth were perfect? I wouldn't so much be on earth any more. Perfection is boring. Character is not (!!!) and i hope that mine has grown and is growing and will grow. I admit i wish and hope that it doesn't always take such drastic things to shape me into who i will someday be. But i am listening. To God. always. To wise & fun ("wise" sounded way too stuffy for the people i am thinking of !) I am thankful for even bad advice, because it has all come from places of love, places motivated by absolutely wanting the best for me.

From all of me to all of you, i hope your Non-Labor day (ironic name for most people!) was spiffy. Go do something that makes you happy - and if i can suggest here, i absolutely think your "something" won't be a huge thing. Go eat a tomato off a vine or go play on the swings. Take funny pix with your friends or your kids or all of 'em.  And keep taking care of one another - we cannot "do" this life alone. We were not meant to.

:) - al

(Today is also my parents' anniversary, & i think it would mean  a lot if you guys said hi to them. Thank you!!) 

                            

Gratitude. Gratitudeosityness (I can only do so many non-silly blog titles!)

Hello everyone, i hope you made it safely through the week and are now doing your "FRIDAY FRIDAY!" dance. And that you are video-recording it and putting on YouTube, because I totally want to see that  ;-)

I haven't been Gettin' Bloggy Wit' It much lately - i am a person who likes to write, has been complimented on my writing and told i should write books. But i can't take credit for the times when my writing is good - it just flows through me. I try to force it, it shows. And no one deserves THAT happening to their eyes.

(except maybe her, she looks drama queeny)

Remember i did say i write like i talk, and i talk a LOT. A lot and very rambly, bless the hearts of the people who put up with that. (MikelLaPorteahem)

But today i have an assignment! Yay! It looks like some help (hopehope) is coming for this whole i lost my home/mold in parents home/i left out dad-had-a-heart-attack/ i can't live at my parents' house because mold gives me asthma attacks that ...ugh well, you know. Or you can know, just go back a few Blogs.

I like helping. It makes my face happy. But something i have learned is that being a gracious and grateful receiver of help or gifts is important too. Otherwise, we rob others of the chance to have happy faces. Ohhh yeah, making some sense now!  One of my family members takes the default  "You shouldn't have!" response to new lows. Unwraps a gift, looks at it like its poison, says with no irony, "You shouldn't have", and then the gift is never seen again.

Which really sucks when you're 7. Or 37. 

So... i'm trying to be a gracious grateful gift (ooh i love alliteration!!) receiver, and in this case, the givers need my help too. My friends Mikel and Sheila are raising funds for me, and for my family, and have linked this blog to the fundraising site which i will add here too:

Amy Lynn Hunt Housing Fund

I just prayed about all of this, and how ... how if it took all of this to help me remember that every day we have on this earth is a gift and that i need to live it in such a way? Cool. I am very, very interested or obsessed or whatever adjective works here about using bad things to make good ones happen. I don't believe there was no reason for me to get this stupid, stupid illness when i was majoring in Youth Ministry, hoping to go Do Good in the world. I don't believe this is happening so one of my friends who is an atheist can (this is way funnier when i say it,all dramaticky) "WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, AMY LYNN? HAHAHA!" And i am not saying i am anything but clueless about why all of this current tough stuff is working. But i do know one thing. This world? It doesn't suck. Life doesn't suck. Nightmare things happen, and people STEP UP. And it knocks me out. Every time. And i promised God and i promise all of you that i will remember this - that each day is a gift. Not in a "you have to wake up like Mary Sunshine with a cartoon bird on your shoulder" thing, because that's not real life. But just knowing 

Well, Rich always says it better:

Hello old friends 
There's really nothing new to say 
But the old, old story bears repeating 
And the plain old truth grows dearer every day 
When you find something worth believing 
Well, that's a joy that nothin' could take away 

And so we meet again 
After all these many years 
Did we sow the seeds we're reaping 
Now that the harvest calls us here 
It seems that love blooms out of season 
And much joy can blossom from many tears 

So old friends you must forget what you had to forgive 
And let love be stronger than the feelings 
That rage and run beneath the bridge 
Knowin' morning follows evening 
Makes each new day come as a gift 

(Hello Old Friends written by Rich Mullins, Copyright 1992 - Edward Grant, Inc. 


Thank you Rich, and thank you  everyone who is helping. Who has helped, who will. Because we really all need each other so very much! 

Rest.

I woke up today after an extra long (Thank you brain!) sleep, and got up, fed kitties (I'm at my parents' house for a few hours, so i'm armed with my new inhaler and enjoying the breeze on the deck), fed myself, talked to my brother and his very sweet friend. Then i checked my e-mail; i knew there would be mail from one of my best buds who is helping do a fundraiser for me and my family, that he had sent me mail, so i looked that over, closed the mail.

Then i felt it. IT. The panic that  "OHMYGOSH! I'm not working on this mold crisis! I have to! I can't play FarmVille when there is trouble in life!" And quite possibly a little, "Shame on me". 

But suddenly, i just felt somewhere inside me this phrase: "The Discipline of Rest". I obviously wasn't thinking about rest, so i knew it came from somewhere else. I Googled the phrase, and there is a LOT of stuff about rest - just letting oneself slow down, chill, take a breath, whatever that means for you. So i am doing that. Well, trying. It really is a discipline! We all feel like we are what we do, that perhaps our worth can be found only in our work. 

I believe that when God created this world, and gave Himself a day of rest, that wasn't because "Whew! Coming up with that many kinds of bugs was just exhausting!". I believe it was a model for us. I also believe, and i know many of you don't and that's fine, but I believe that God is kind. (why else would he make kittens? duh!) :) And i think resting is important. 

Which is why that's my whole blog for today. If you need me, i'll be playing silly games on FaceBook. Which is hard, i feel my heart racing in that panic my Mom has been in for the past few weeks. So i am giving myself, and YOU, if you'd like, permission to take a break. Have a rest. 

I thought this was really interesting as i looked for this phrase, i recommend checking it out, especially if you are having a hard time just letting yourself rest:

The Four Disciplines of the Heart

Who Me, Denial? Oh Please, And HEY I have the BEST joke to tell you!

... yikes. I realized in a whole enormous woosh of feelings tonight that while i have talked and thought a lot about how much my Dad is in denial about things (my asthma, mold in the house), i have been too. And "I have had to", which is why denial was built into us, so we go from one stage of loss to the other and not get slammed by all of it at once.

 And while i hope to keep this blog light-hearted, because there really is enough to be sad about in the world, i also respect real-ness, & hope to be that as well. Authentic.  My favorite people, the people who have had the most POSITIVE influence in my life are not people who have their act completely together. (Or who i think has their act together. :))  I  had a conversation with a friend recently about some private, "heart things" and this person had to sort of pull me back  more than once when i would go for the joke - which i did over & over -  instead of talking about this thing i have to be vague about here (another story for another day, possibly). Joking and laughing is wonderful, but so is a really good, honest, cards-on-the-table talk with a person i love & respect. 

My friend was not this fancy. And yes that was silly, but that is who i am. I'm a  li'l silly. 


So i need to talk a bit about loss & how we - i - handle it, and maybe someone who reads this some day will relate and not feel so terribly alone. I am feeling so terribly alone right now and it is really eating away at me. I don't want that for anyone else. 

Backing up a bit -  so what happened to make me suddenly so self-aware that i too hail from Denialville?  What happened tonight to make me aware that I had not yet really grieved the loss of my home was that I saw it. I was at Google Maps, looking for a link a friend had sent and realized it was near my (This is so hard, do i just soldier through?) - it was close to where i used to live. Then i did something that turned out to not be very smart - i zoomed in. And that function of Google Maps that i usually find so novel and fun slapped me in the face. I could see my roof. My next-door neighbor's tree, the one that hung over my patio and made it impossible to keep clean. I sat here on this bed in this house that is not mine and put my hand over my mouth as i cried. Then i said, out loud, through my tears, "That is my patio! That is where (all of the cats, if i write their names right now it will be too much for me) they lived! The ones i had to leave behind!! Dammit, i miss them and i worry for them!! And this was not fair!!" My Mom always said it was so interesting that i seemed to have "come out of the womb loving cats". And i do. I have a lot of cool cat stories and i'll share them later. But right now i just need a little Memorial or something. Because when your home is gone, when it stops being a part of your life, it in a sense, dies. And there are no rules for how to grieve any loss but the loss of humans. Not that i know of. 

So i think i will figure out what those might be, and i'll share them if & when i do.  I resisted loving my house for a long, long time and the ugly irony - and i am so sorry Mom, if you are reading this, but it's just true - i had just finally felt like that place was mine maybe days before she told me the bad news. And i know it breaks my Mom's heart too, I know. But this is my loss, and I need to deal with it. I'll let you guys know what i find as i think about this facet of how life has changed and is changing, OK? But please know that you are absolutely allowed to cry if you lose something you put your heart into.  If you have lost a dream, even a secret one, if you lost ... your thick hair or your ability to run as fast as you used to be able to or... whatever it was.  Grieve it, and then walk on, because (I will resist the very powerful urge to hit you with a platitude here) life is full of change. This we know for sure. 

:)

al


PS - reading this again? That helped so much. I felt the vise that held my heart so tightly let loose a bit. I enjoyed remembering. I'm not "all fixed" now, but i am better. Writing is good stuff. 

What the heck is going on here?

I have way too many thoughts in my head right now. For one, why am I typing in brown? And what is this font? And should I just leave it, it seems to want to be here.  And now you see why i feed so many stray cats! (ED - woohoo, Georgia again! But i like it brown, so ta dahh)

For those of you who don't know What The Heck is Going on Here, you get the short version today! You're welcome, here to help. And i'm in pain today, which does help with brevity.   I lived in a very sweet townhouse for two years which my awesome mom paid for - she gave up her Social Security money (ow, that's hard to type. Once i told her i was really wrestling with accepting such a gift. When asked why, i said "I don't know if i'm worth it" or something that now seems lame, especially in the face of "I'm your MOM. This is what Moms do. You're welcome")

sorry, i write like i talk. 

So after almost two years of living with my Dandy Lions Kate and Buffy in our own happy house, my Mom told me that we just couldn't afford my apartment any more  and she and my dad needed me to "come home". I was in a world of denial about this,  was convinced that something would happen at the 11th Hour to save my house, especially since my parents' house wasn't a great place for me to be (MORE on this later. I promise). But i realized i needed to do this and not have a cruddy attitude about it, because - well - that is what Daughters do. Unless you're of the Veruca Salt variety.

Yikes. PRO side of my not getting to have kids: Not having that kid. 


So we packed up my house. It really was a house, a home. I'm an excellent bargain hunter and had found this sleeper hit tucked away in an apartment complex behind a Sonic. 1200 square feet, fenced in patio, endless amounts of stray cats who needed feeding... for very little rent. (I love how everyone makes the same sound when i tell them how little it was!) It had its down sides, but it was mine and i'm shutting up now because i miss it so much. 

But my dad had had a heart attack, and i learned that his medications 1) weren't covered by insurance and 2) were about the price of my rent.  Not even Veruca would withhold heart attack meds from her Dad. And my Mom worked really hard to make the side of the house i would live in look apartmenty, even going to Claremore to pick up my Grandmother's Breakfront so I could still have my dishes. Which was quite a dishy thing to do.  She knew how hard i had worked in those 2 years to get strong and be independent, and how afraid I was of ending up back in bed at my parents' house for the rest of my life. 


So i slept  the first night there and was awakened very early the next day... My boxes were there.

:(

What happened NEXT? This blog, which is only a day old, is about to become something else, because instead of just telling you what happens day by day on this Journey, i needed to back up and explain why i am now in a friend of my Mom's son's house, grateful but missing my Kitty Girls terribly and more things that will make enormous amounts of sense soon.  Again, long story short, but my parents' house, especially the side i was in, is full of mold.  Reeks of the stuff, which is what i now imagine Hell smells like. Mold and dust are my two worst allergies. I had a college class in a basement (Mikel, you know what i'm talking about) and walked out every day with a massive headache. I figured back then it was just my seething dislike of that school. But now - ohyeahmold. 


Sorry, i seem to keep defaulting to the Very Long Version.


The mold (and the dust) was too much for my system and i had just a MASSIVE asthma attack. I thought i had had one before, but this scared me to death. And not much health-wise scares me. It ticks me off, but i know i won't actually die from it.  Keep in mind that i have been chronically ill for 20 years and have had pretty much every part of my body betray me at one point or another. We can start with the A's. Anemia, Arthritis, Asthma.... you get the picture. 


I have to say something here that i will just say once, but it has to be said. I don't talk about health stuff to gain pity, unless i expressly say "I really need some pity today". It's just about educating and helping you guys know what is up. EXplaining, not COMplaining.

More later as i have been sitting on this one fer-ever trying to make it all perfecty. And  that's just silly :)

I have to have a title too? I haven't even had breakfast.

I used to do this with much confidence and it just flowed - Le Blogging that is. But I have read so many good ones (and some that worry me a "loot" about our public school and home schooling systems (srsly, y is dat OK?), i have become very intimidated. 

But now i think i have something to say, because as weird as my life has always tended to be, it just got weirder in the last 6 weeks. An all kinds of no fun weird. But maybe people will want to follow how in the heck

                                  Amy Lynn Becomes Homeless!

I promise to not Debby Downer you; if you're reading this you more than likely already know i can't ever wallow for too long (It's sooo boring, and self-indulgence is gross). But i am scared and broken and feeling utterly forsaken in this moment as i sit on a bed in a house that belongs to someone who was a stranger until the day i arrived, special food and humidifier in tow. uh-oh, spello moment!). I miss my cats. I am surprised by the things i don't miss. And for a while i had a pretty impressive tan. But today is tough. I'll tell you why later as my claw-shaped hand just gave me the non-literal finger.

:)

al

3 August 2012

11.03AM

That is the face of a Brave Little Toaster! - Xander, some episode of Buffy the Slayer.