I haven’t seen it.

Or if I have seen it then words from various voices have popped up and said “Now you are just being prideful”. I do not do nice things or show how I care for others because I want or expect something, I just do it. After I wrote the last two posts dealing with fear of abandonment, something seemed to just leave me. A foreboding dark cloud of some sort just up and left. The lie that lingered has started to fly away and I see the sun shining down. I know that I will have other things to work through in my lifetime but once I “get” something, I get it. There is no need for me to return. I am able to see the error in my thinking and move on. I have no guilt or shame about it, it is what it is and it’s a done feeling.

I realized this with the word “soon”.

I got so angry with myself for being afraid of a simple word. But see, it wasn’t the word, it was the not knowing hidden in that word. It represented something that I did not want to face – it represented that I do not have certainty about this life. Like many of my anxious feelings, I am afraid of the unknown or the uncertainty of something. There is something truly manifesting in my thought process about these phantom fears of mine. They are smoke screens of what I am truly fearful of: I get afraid of being hurt or being in a state of confusion. Confusion causes me much pain. In my mind, I have taken these phantom fears and placed tangible fears in their place so I could hold on to something because a fear of something is far better than not knowing.

Yikes!

I can apply this to many of my fears. I have created fears or reasons so that I would no longer be in a state of confusion. Confusion makes me ill. It causes me to not be able to eat, sleep, think, and live, basically. It just puts me in a state of depression so in order for me to be able to function, I created faces to my fears to help me be able to put them away. This has caused me to have many inaccurate feelings and ideas. It has also caused me to shut down my emotions throughout the years. I do not know if others are able to do this as well, but I have to ability to turn off certain feelings so that I will not feel it anymore. But they are still stored and documented and they manifest through other means.

Anger is one that I dealt with over the last two years.

I did not allow myself to feel angry for a long time because I interpreted anger as a wrong emotion. I felt like I was judging people or that I had misunderstood them when the anger would arise. Partly this was due to me having meltdowns and freakouts throughout my life and people telling me how wrong I was for doing so. I admit that my temper was out of control in many cases, but it was mostly due to lack of understanding, and most of the time, I knew that I was being treated badly but did not know how to express it. Hence, hold it in, hold it in, hold it in, BLOW!! I experienced full-blown rage with the church people that continued to tell me that I had done something to cause Daniel’s autism. When he was not accepted, most people didn’t even acknowledge him, or me when he was with me. It made me angry and confused.

Rage stirred in my belly when I continued to see people used and abused in the name of serving the Lord.

I had seen it too often, I had seen too many people have their voices squelched, their identities destroyed for the sake of leaders’ desires, the words of the bible used to manipulate and control others. If you haven’t witnessed this in your religious (or other forms of institution) circles, great! I mean really, I think that is a wonderful thing, but it does happen and people get hurt and people become dependent on leaders and no longer rely on their instincts or the true biblical understandings. It happens and the truths of humanity in the bible become caricatures of the opinions and views of leaders. It burned rage in me that I forced down because I thought I was wrong. The rage, however, was left in me. I was unable to see clearly what had happened to me in churches but I could see it in others.

I could recognize it and call it out for others but not for myself.

I do this with a lot of things. I dealt with a lot of that rage in the last two years. I wrote about it, I thought about it, I finally saw it in my life and I dealt with it. I can finally hear a sermon and not get angry, though I get annoyed sometimes, I no longer get angry. I dealt with my triggers and allowed myself to feel that anger. I reposted something a while ago about my feelings about church and after that it was done. I thought there was a lot more, but there wasn’t. I had already typed out so much in my personal journals that I had actually been helping myself heal without knowing it. I got settled with people and I got settled with God on the topic and have since moved on into a new journey of understanding my personal experiences with God, this world and spirituality.

The same thing is happening now with love.

I had said before that I had only felt love once. It is true but evaluating it I see why it was so impactful. It was the first time I gave myself freely and didn’t work on trying to hide until I became confused. The relationship exposed things in me that I had a choice to deal with or stifle. I chose to deal with many things that it exposed in me but then out of fear, I stopped it. I began to hide away parts of me that had started to manifest, I only allowed “safe” invisible parts of me out, ones that I knew would not hurt too badly. I already started to build walls around my heart and soul, so when I met David, I had actually spent an entire year forcing myself not to feel for myself but only feel for others. I could control my feelings but not the feelings that I was overwhelmed with by others.

In a way, I had been so vulnerable that I felt I had to protect myself from feeling.

I can walk in a room and be consumed by people’s feelings, emotions, thoughts, vibrations, I don’t know how to explain it – I just feel them. If I allowed myself to feel what I felt also, it was too much. For the past two years, I have been in a safe place to deal with me. I have not allowed myself to feel love through me in a very long time. I know that it started when I had a miscarriage over 10 years ago. I was terribly hurt by people, their words and my own inability to be able to grieve properly. It started a shutdown process. I started to eliminate the shutdown, but quickly had to go back into shutdown mode for various reasons, such as being ostracized by my church, an (ex) husband who was being a complete jerk, I got laid off from my job, I lost a friendship that meant a lot to me, and started a new church. That was a few…there is a lot more. All of this happened one after another, things just piled up and I was incredibly confused by a lot of this stuff.

I had to stop feeling.

All of this awakening has been incredibly painful but SO worth it. I am discovering how much I do love. I love people, I do. I have convinced myself for years that I don’t. I like the fact that I can find good in people, even though I need to be cautious with that. I would rather see the potential and possibly motivate them to get there. Those who are mean or nasty can help change me for the better. I have a choice to be bitter and angry or not allow their issues to be mine. That is an entirely different thing than righteous indignation or standing up against injustices in the world.

I love life.

There is so much treasure in this world. There are so many great things to ponder and experience, a lifetime is not enough. I know there are terrible, horrible things that happen in this world but I also see so many triumph over the tragedy in their lives. What was meant to destroy or break a person made them stronger and a powerful voice to encourage others. My prayer for people in those detestable, wretched situations would be that they come out with their voice loud and powerful, that their hearts would not be formed into bitterness or fear but that they would see their strength, value and fearlessness in them that they survived.

They are there to talk about it and help others.

I am just writing run on sentence after run on sentence. My mind is but a whirlwind of thought and I am not sure what I am trying to say. I feel the power of loving one another today. I feel the sensation of oneness with our world and with creation. I feel something that I have not allowed myself to feel in a very long time. I feel the light of the world that does not allow darkness to consume. I feel balance. I feel, I feel! I have no idea what tomorrow holds but I am not afraid of it. I do not know how anything will play out and in a way I comforted in that thought. I actually feel the peace of not knowing. If for a moment, I felt it.

I would rather have that moment of feeling than never know of its existence.

I find this enjoyable, while others just want to go out and have a “good time”.

I had three long-term boyfriend relationships starting at around the age of 14. This first relationship is in part the reason for my obsessive behaviors I discussed in my last two posts. It is a fragile time in a person’s life anyway but this is when you begin to really start looking for answers to who you are and what you are going to be. I entered into an abusive relationship for 3 years and didn’t even know it. What he did to me caused so much confusion and loss of identity that it forced me to be in search of the “real” me.

I never thought I was being abused because I never felt like a victim.

In all three relationships, they manipulated me, not all were physically abusive but they were verbally with saying many things similar to what I titled this post. The thing is that I stood up for myself. The normal pattern was for me to shut down because I was confused, then I would be hurt and then that would manifest through rage. I was sharp with my tongue and my wit. This would make them even more angry. In my mind I figured if I could stand up for myself than I was not really being abused. I was so hard for them to control because on the one hand I seemed very fragile and insecure but on the other hand I was strong and independent.

I felt victimized but never a victim.

I still feel this way. I see people take on the “victim” identity and I think that it is a shame to be settled in such a title when we have been equipped with the ability to not stay victims. Then again I do not like to see those take the ‘warrior” mentality either because then you can never show weakness. Part of being a true warrior is recognizing limitations, not hiding from them but embracing them to make you stronger. What I am sharing now has always been me. I lost these things about myself at one point. I had people in my life many times try to not allow me to use my brain.

Not just in relationships but also in other settings, such as work and church.

My obsessive behaviors did ease as I grew older and I found that if I was not in a relationship I was much better at being myself. I may have felt alone but I was comfortable with being alone with myself. I still however, had a desire for someone to be in my life so I searched on. By the time I met my first husband I had been alone for quite some time and I was pretty confident in me in a lot of ways. I liked him because he was intelligent, loved music and had a dry sense of humor that I got. But we really were just friends, I never felt anything more than a friendship with him. Plus I was entering into a new era of my life and started going to church which changed our dynamic.

We had many differences in our beliefs and I was evolving into someone new.

By the time I met my second husband I was fully emerged into church life and being a Christian. I felt I had no idea who would make a good husband for me so I trusted my friends instead of listening to my gut. He too just wanted me to sit and be pretty. This brings me to what triggered this post and why I felt I needed to get this out. Last night I had been thinking about all of this, my life playing like a movie. I had some feelings of regret but I think regret is good and I wrote a poem about that as well. Anyway, I looked at David and I was staring at him awkwardly, with no emotion on my face, this creeps him out, (I have a gift of being able to do that when I am thinking and creep people out. lol) and I said “Thank you for loving my brain.”

He looked at me and said “I do not know how to respond to that.”

I do that often too, I say strange things that he doesn’t know how to respond to. Hee hee It was at that moment that I realized why David has helped me so much. He has allowed me to use my brain. He has encouraged it. He has even gone to great lengths to tell me that “If you didn’t use your brain, I could not respect you and I would not be able to stay with you.” I shared with him what I meant by loving my brain. He was the first person to allow me to ask my questions, listen to my rants, let me cycle and rage, laugh and cry, whatever I needed to do, to be able to let my true nature come out.

He used to get hurt or frustrated with things I would say.

Like when I called him a cry baby, I wasn’t being mean in my mind I thought I was helping him. I see the error of my ways now. I can say harsh things but not mean them in a harsh way at all. As we discussed all of this he told me that “He would rather me clear a room, making people uncomfortable and deal with the things they will not face, rather than sit and be a wallflower.” He doesn’t mean for me to be rude but to ask the questions that are hard and driven for answers. He told me that he hasn’t really done anything except encourage me to let the things that he sees in me to come out. Not let them hide but let them out freely. I think this is a reason I had no obsessive behaviors with David. I didn’t feel like I had to hide anything or try to keep parts of me hidden.

One dear person that I worked with said to me once “Angel, you need to find someone who loves you for your brain.”.

I remember that day in every detail too. My second husband had left, we were separated, when that friend (thank you, Jim) said those words, I had a flash of the entire relationship. The whole time I had been railing against the unspoken words “Just sit there and be pretty”. My relationships, many of my friends and my church that I was in, had all been telling me the same thing. Don’t use your mind, sit there and do what you are told, stop thinking for yourself. And I couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried.

I could never and will never be able to “Just sit there and be pretty.”

I am also finding the pieces of me that are new as I grow older.

When I met David I had already come to a point where I was not going to change to find a partner. I was settled on not finding one. I was fine with being me, the me I knew at that point. It was good to start a relationship like that, it wasn’t founded on insecurity because I wasn’t being someone I thought he wanted. I couldn’t accept that someone would want me for me, until I met David. First of all in the past anytime my true self would be exposed it usually wasn’t good, so I learned to only give people little doses of me. I would give the appropriate dose for the appropriate people mixed in with who I thought they wanted.

Secondly, I really didn’t know who I was.

How can you find yourself or even know who you are when you are trying so hard to fit in? When you have had others tell you who you are or should be? The things people would label me with were so confusing at times. When I would obsess about certain people, it would cause me to get sidetracked and fixated on becoming someone who was “right”. I would obsess to try to find myself. If I could figure out what they saw in me and I brought that forth, possibly that was who I was. As my mind would wander thinking about them, I would begin to have anxiety because I knew that I wasn’t completely who they thought I was. I would then feel the need to know what they were doing, when I would see them, why they were not calling when they said they would, would they stop talking to me?

Just all kinds of things.

I did this because I felt like I was losing self, I was creating my identity through their image of me. I wanted those people to live with me, so I could discover who I was. I wanted to be consumed by them so I could know what was right. This is not unique behavior, it is actually what many NT’s do as well, they take on identity of the group and the group moderates what is right and what is wrong. Since I did not naturally do this it felt odd, individualized and my obsessive behaviors seemed extreme. People who are able to adapt to a social situation are able to see what type of people are there and adjust their personality accordingly. I recognize that this does not make them liars, as I thought. I can read people’s true selves, this is different from reading people. A true self is what is actually going on inside, I have discernment for that. I do not have discernment for people’s social self.

I see things in people that are good or bad.

And here lies one of the main reasons why I have such social/relationship confusion. When what I feel/see doesn’t match with what I see/hear it causes me to doubt myself. I doubt my ability to discern motives and people. Because of this doubt I have ended up in controlling relationships and trusting wrong people at times. I have had people tell me over and over again that I was wrong about a certain person, only to discover that their own motives were completely wrong. They were trying to steer my doubts to conform with the group so they could feel “right”. My obsessive behavior and the feeling of needing to be around people stemmed from the fact that I did not feel confident in my ability to know how they felt about me. I would be confused by what I saw and their actions/words were toward me a lot of the time.

I think this has to do with my inability to know who is my friend.

When I care for someone I try to give them everything, this would be one reason why I have had so few cohering relationships. I would try to be completely translucent but I couldn’t because I felt if I was truly exposed that they would leave. It takes a lot of energy to try to find yourself. But it takes huge amounts of energy to expose yourself while trying to keep an identity of being who you think people want. Anytime I stepped out I would see how they did not want the “real me” they wanted the shell of me. My shell had all the great qualities but never showed the bad. When I realized that they only wanted the shell, it brought to life just how fragile that shell was and I would feel like a failure. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just be that and I felt like I had done something wrong. I hadn’t taken on the “right” identity.

I would feel that I wasn’t good enough to satisfy the relationship.

The whole purpose of my people consumption was to control my life. People were too unpredictable, they kept things from me, they changed or I would discover things that I never knew about them and it would throw me into a panic. I wasn’t psychotic – I just wanted my life to be predictable and I needed to know who they thought I was. It required me to know the people in my life deeply and regularly, not to manipulate and control them but to help me not have anxiety and panic attacks.

My fitting in method didn’t work.

I could fake it but I was still isolated and alone in my thoughts. I caused people to feel suffocated because of my need to know where they were and what they were doing. I seemed quite insecure and needy which is the opposite of who I am. It’s ironic as I look back that people who made me feel suffocated made me angry. I didn’t want anything to do with “needy and clingy” people. I liked my freedom and being alone. It’s funny how I did similar things but I thought that it was different because my motives were not to control them, unlike those who tried to control me. All these years of trying to fit in haven’t really helped at all. I am more comfortable now with not fitting in. The more I discover about myself the more I see that I cannot fit in without sacrificing and losing myself.

It’s baffling being able to live as a person who is confident in a lot of ways, yet full of anxiety.

For many years I the used the wrong words to describe my feelings. I am feeling released being able to find my words now. I used the wrong scripts to express myself or to try to mix with the group. I felt wrong for liking being alone and I felt wrong for thinking all of my random thoughts. The truth is I still do feel these things. I still feel the sting of rejection. I still feel the isolation as I go out into social settings. The difference now is that I am truly starting to feel alright with it. Does it come with age? Does it come with answers? Does it come with acceptance? I am sure they all play a role in this. I think a lot of it has to do with me realizing that no one ever rejected me. They couldn’t have, they didn’t know me well enough. Really no one can reject us, they can only reject parts and if that is the case what does it matter?

Those who truly care will accept us as a whole.

That was interesting to say the least.

For a long period of time we were unable to find work, David was still working on his thesis and we were networking for the coffee shop ministry. We got connected with many great people who saw the vision and supported us, not financially because we never felt that we were supposed to receive an income from the ministry. However, the owners of several local coffee shops opened their doors to us and gave us free rein on the weekends to have people come in and share their art. It was a win-win for both parties because the coffee shop would gain new customers/business and the artists would gain exposure/business. There were times that it was very frustrating having churches tell us that they did not want it to be a mix of denominations. Then there was the business of trying to “sell” us to congregations.

One pastor of a megachurch told us that he could have his 1300 young adults there every Sat., all we had to do was join a small group.

We did not feel comfortable in that church or with the proposal so we just let it drop. It was mainly how the pastor made it clear that he could influence his people to go wherever he said. Scary. So many churches loved the idea but wanted us to be under their umbrella. We felt like it was not supposed to be a part of a specific church. Finally, we got involved with an internet ministry and became a parachurch ministry under them. They brought us on to write articles for them dealing with many different topics. We met different people and were exposed to a lot of different ministries. David eventually got an adjunct position at a Christian University and we had really warmed out our welcome at his parents house. They had their own financial burdens.

It was time for us to leave but we had no money and no place to go.

Many of the people we had met stepped up and rallied around us through prayer and funds. We were able to get a horrible apartment for $200 a month with David cleaning the grounds to help with rent. We felt like it was a palace! We didn’t care about the location or the black mold it was ours and it was huge compared to the room we had been in.   We finally managed to start the coffee shop ministry and had many different artists come through. We had paintings, photography, indie Christian films that would offend a lot of Christians but the messages were great because they were painful and challenging, poets, musicians, and some speakers. It didn’t last long though, we got pregnant and I started to get very sick from the mold and the pregnancy.

David had to find more work and I was in bed the first few months of the pregnancy.

From the beginning we felt like we were supposed to start it and others were to take over. After we got pregnant I just couldn’t keep up with getting artists to come and David had to get as much work as possible. Again people rallied around us and helped us get into a much nicer apartment. We had a great experience while we did the coffee shop, we met many believers who felt like they just couldn’t step into a church building ever again and they enjoyed the freedom of being themselves. There were artists who felt like their talent was wasting away because there was no outlet for them in the Body of Christ but the ministry was giving them the outlet they longed for. There was freedom of beliefs and freedom of expression. If ever I felt the power of God it was in the moments that the artists were operating freely in their gifting and expressing themselves before man and God.

I loved when people would say things like “I never knew Christians were creative.”

Doesn’t that seem wrong? I know not everyone is a Christian but the sheer belief that we are supposed to believe in the Creator, wouldn’t it seem like we would be VERY creative? Whatever our creative outlet may be, it is not limited to the arts but what we are gifted at. Wouldn’t our inspiration come from working with the Creator and knowing Him? I am not being a snot here I am being serious. It is a question that I have thought about a lot. I digress. The owners of the coffee shop did keep it going for a while and the owners franchised to several other Christians who did keep it going in their own way. Some of the churches we met with started their own version in their buildings. I liked how for a time it brought unity to people who ordinarily would not come together, I liked how it wasn’t about one church or artist but about a community trying to express the love of Christ through their gifting and sharing it with others through love.

David and I have been church vagabonds pretty much from the beginning.

Even before I met David I would frequent various churches throughout town, I liked being exposed to different churches and people. Though I was devoted to both of my home churches while I went to them, I still was visiting friends churches as well. When we moved we never felt like we found a church home, we went to many different churches from Denominational to Pentecostal to Messianic we were all over the place. We liked it like that. After the twins were born though our life changed drastically and we ended up in seclusion for a long time. We tried to go to church on several occasions but it just didn’t work, especially since we never belonged to a church there. This would lead to the path of us going to a church here that caused so much confusion and pain.

I completely lost my identity after the kids were born, ministry had become who I was.

I really lost any sense of self trying to understand what was going on with Daniel and taking care of the babies by myself. David had to work and I had no family, no friends and no help. We lost touch with all of the connections we had before and I was starting to get very depressed. I loved being a mom but I was so tired, lonely, and would be locked up in the house all the time. Where we lived it was cold! I do not do well with cold and snow anyway but the last year we were there we had been trapped in our house several times because of blizzards. I couldn’t drive the car we had and the city we lived in kept me in constant anxiety. I had no contact with people for long periods of time. When we moved here I was desperate for any social contact.

Because of my vulnerable state, I didn’t use very good judgment.

I am naive and gullible about people’s motives anyway, but I have been especially that way in church because I thought that all Christians (actually most people) were good and nice and would never do anything mean. I still do, mostly. I felt like if there were problems than it had to be my fault. I have written about this church enough, basically I had my guard down, I was tired, lonely and desperate because of that I fell for some twisted thinking and wrong doctrine. David was trying to be as supportive as possible and had hoped that I would see for myself what was taking place.

They used scriptures to control and manipulate, not for what they are truly for.

It didn’t take long but it was long enough for me to experience spiritual abuse and to feel like I was loosing my mind. The good thing is I learned a lot, I have forgiveness and no bitterness any longer. I know that my priority in life now is to take care of my kids and just love people as best as I can. We have never been evangelists or  apologetists (I think I made that word up.) but we have always wanted to share the love of Christ and the acceptance that community is supposed to be about no matter where people are on their spiritual or non-spiritual journey. :- ) We see and experience God through the gifts and freedom to share them with others. The goodness that comes from serving one another without seeking something for ourselves, that brings us great joy. For us that is what Jesus reflects, love, acceptance and building up people to be who God intended them to be.

We do not feel obligated or guilted in sharing the message of Jesus, we just try to live it out.

(And now this movie is done, on to the next one. )

Alexa and Felix

The more I got involved in church leadership, the more I was convinced that I was destined to be single.

I was really settled on the matter, except I still felt this urge to pray for my future husband. There was the possibility of being reconciled with my ex, very slim but possible.  I did feel like someone was missing. I would feel led to pray and would even start out my prayer journals with “Lord I do not know why I am even praying about this but I feel like I should pray for my future husband.”  My life was full of work, leadership classes, serving, small group, small group training, prayer ministry, outreach, and my cats. I was pretty content mentally with my church life but my work life was sucking life right out of me. I think with all of the social situations between work and church it was just too much. But I would get energized by helping people. I got wired and excited from learning and training. I was exhausted and excited. I truly thought I could be a single woman pastor. Though my leaders said that it may be quite a challenge, they never hindered me.

By the time I was getting pretty settled with being alone and felt fully recovered from my failed marriages, David appeared.

The first time I saw him, I had no idea who he was but he was at his car, it was a cold winter night and I caught a glimpse of him out of  the corner of my eye. I could only see him from a distance and I felt like I was supposed to pray for him to go inside. Where? I had no idea just to go inside and so I prayed. I then went on my way to small group, within a few minutes there was a knock on the door and it was him. I didn’t like that at all, what was that all about? He was new to the group and I was not expecting anyone new. One of the girls invited him and everyone was interested in what he had to say. I didn’t have a bad feeling about him I was just confused by the whole thing and thrown because he was new. As he talked he shared about being in graduate school and how he was going to work in The Netherlands after his dissertation and I don’t know it all went “wah wah wah wah wah” in my head because I felt like I was supposed to ask him “Is that the plan God has for you?”.

There was no way I was going to ask this stranger a question like that.

Instead I rudely blurted out “What brought you to this church anyway?” Everyone looked at me funny and he just stared for a moment and then said “Well, I felt like I was supposed to go there and just wait.” He shared his story which was scarily similar to mine. By this time I was confused by him and he thought I was too aggressive I guess is a good word, he didn’t know what to think of me. But he has referred to me as “the interrogator” and tells people how I interrogated him the first night I met him. The next week the group was supposed to meet at my apartment, he called to tell me that he was going out-of-town and wouldn’t make it. We were having a good conversation and I realized that I was still talking to him, then abruptly said “Ok, I have to go, hope you have a good trip.” and I got off the phone.

While he was away I felt that I was supposed to pray for him several times.

He was visiting his mom and he had been around several different Christian places and people. It was more of a charismatic kind of feel and he was what is called “prophesied over“. One of the men prophesied about his wife to be. He gave some pretty detailed information and then later said “I think you know her already”. David didn’t have a clue to what he was talking about, I didn’t even cross his mind. When he came back I felt like I was supposed to talk to him, so after service one evening I went over, very reluctantly to talk to him. He ended up asking me to go for coffee and I said yes because I knew that I was supposed to ask him the original question that I DID NOT want to ask. I didn’t think it was a date or anything and either did he, but it was funny that I got a water instead of coffee. I had to work the next morning so I couldn’t have coffee, I confused him.

Finally, we were talking and I knew that first I had to tell him that I was still married so he would not get the wrong impression.

I told him and he was confused. I had been separated for over a year but I still did not feel like I was supposed to date anyone, until the divorce was final. If I was to date at all. I never really “dated” anyway, I found someone and stuck with them. During the year of my separation, my ex had said that he was filing for divorce, then he dragged it on and messed with me, then he had no contact with me for several months. I didn’t pursue anything because I had no desire to, it didn’t matter. Anyway David was understanding and said  he didn’t know what to think so we could just be friends and see what this is all about. I finally blurted out the question “So is it God’s plan for you to go to The Netherlands?”. He facepalmed and said “I don’t know.” Apparently he had been contemplating a lot the last few months before I met him.

We continued to be friends and hang out.

Neither of us knew what “we” were all about but we just felt right together. I prayed for God to do something if David and I were truly  meant to be together. I was seriously going to stop seeing him, even as friends. After several months of no contact with my ex, he left me a message on my phone and said “Yeah, it’s been long enough let’s get this taken care of, what do we need to do?” By the end of the next week we were divorced. David and I felt like we were supposed to be together. We discovered that we only lived three minutes away from each, in the same apartment complex. We would both stare up at the sky at night talking to God and asking about the phantom space in our heart that we wanted to go away. (Not even knowing that we were right around the corner from each other.) If we were not meant to be with anyone then please take it away, was our prayer.

David finally had to make a decision about The Netherlands.

I would have gone with him but he did not feel like that was what he was supposed to do. He gave up a pretty incredible research position with a top scientist in The Netherlands. Both of us have had our moments of questioning whether or not that was the right thing to do. We always conclude that it was for him. We felt led to pack up our stuff and move to another state to start a coffee shop ministry. With in a few months we packed up, moved out across country and were married. It started us on a journey that has been exciting, scary, challenging, complete bliss, joyful, and full of all kinds of adventures ever since. We are always growing and ever learning from each other and about each other.

We really enjoy the fact that we are together all the time but we also have our own space.

There was a lot that we dealt with in the beginning of our marriage but we have always laughed. We make each other laugh and we are just plain silly a lot of the times which saves us from taking ourselves seriously. For me the biggest thing is that I genuinely enjoy David’s company. There are very rare moments when I just want to be left alone now and that says a lot for him. In past relationships I just would get to a point of wanting them to go away. The way they would eat, talk, smell, act whatever would just make me so upset but I have not had that with David. We have been honest with each other from the beginning. David is David and if there is one thing I can say about him it is that he will be brutally honest with you. You never have to question his integrity. Those are some pretty important factors to me in a relationship. We were also both in a place in our lives where we didn’t place priority on a relationship. David is divorced too and we both were not wanting to go through a bad relationship again.

I am very thankful that we found each other and I do thank God for orchestrating the events.

Next I will be writing about our ministry life the good, the not so good, but mainly the good! (I have all of these posts in chronological order in my head and I have to write them because it is like a movie playing over and over that I need to get out.)

I told him that he really needed to pray for our marriage because I had a crush on another guy at work.

Oh, yes I did. I told him that not because I was acting on my feelings but because I was seeking help in the situation. I told my pastor, who in turn told others in the name of “prayer” and the rumors started flying that I was cheating. I later found out that my ex had told some leaders as well that I was cheating. It was a mess. By that time he had already left, dumping all of my belongings out all over the house and taking whatever he could that he said belonged to him. I felt completely violated and devastated. I am admitting, I got to a point to where I couldn’t stand the sight of him. I had many meltdowns and tantrums because he was a liar and he threw my sensory issues beyond any other thing in the world. At times his presence hurt my flesh.

For a while when he was still there, I wouldn’t come home until wee hours of the morning.

I just couldn’t, I would rather sit with friends or my car alone than go home to him. I will say we both did things wrong but sometimes I feel like I did the biggest wrong by not listening to myself or God and I caused both of us to suffer needlessly. It did not help that in the beginning of our marriage I had a miscarriage, it really made things much worse. He left and caused me lingering problems for quite a while. But the story does not end there. There is the failed relationship of my church family.

I had several very hurtful things happen to me during this time.

I had some people pull me into a room and tell me that people were saying that I had cheated, I went off. I asked them who said it, why did people believe it, even if it was true who had the right to gossip about?? It was discovered the link being the pastor during a prayer meeting. I do not think it was his intention but it was hurtful. I had one of the elders wives corner me in the corridor of the church and say loudly “GOD HATES DIVORCE! You better do something to fix your marriage!” I just looked at her and said “You can’t make people change.” She then replied “Well God can change them and every marriage can be fixed.” I replied with “You cannot know what goes on in every marriage.” and I left. They had asked me to step down for a while serving, I felt they were right and I had no problem doing so.

The day was soon approaching though when I was to return to teaching the kids.

It was the day before I was to return to class, I had asked for the curriculum a week in advance and no one gave it to me or would talk to me. I got a call from the pastor (he was a new pastor than the youth interim) at work telling me to please come to church after work because he wanted to talk to me. I felt like I was in serious trouble. I went after work and the pastor and head elder sat me down and told me that the elders had voted and they decided that I could no longer teach the children. I understood and sobbed for days. They told me that they felt my character wasn’t good at that time to be around the children and that it would be too confusing for the kids. Side note here: The day before one of my friends had seen my ex with a girl going to the bank. It could have been nothing but it didn’t seem to be nothing to her when she saw them. I really don’t know, but it is interesting that my character was being judged.

No one ever talked to the kids about the situation and I was not allowed to, even though they all asked.

The very next Sunday was a final blow to me. The new pastor’s son had recently graduated seminary and was a youth pastor. He started going to the church because he had to move in with his parents. His wife had found another man and left him. That Sunday he got up talked about his divorce and then it was announced by the head elder that he would be the new youth pastor starting immediately. I still don’t even know how to take all of that. I asked why it was ok for him and not me; I was told that he was open and honest about it so that probably made a difference. I WAS OPEN AND HONEST! I told the pastor right away when things were wrong and that I needed prayer and that my marriage was failing. It still doesn’t make sense. I was never angry, I am still not but I was hurt. No one absolutely no one asked me anything except that small group of people.

I felt like I was  wearing a giant red “A” on my clothes.

I stayed for a while longer but then I felt led to go to another church. The new church helped me recover. They were very accepting and they built me up. They encouraged my challenging questions and they even let me rant about inconsistencies with the scriptures that I felt I saw. I feel like the Lord really led me to a place of healing and it also helped me to not become bitter and angry at all churches. That was my first church experience as an adult. My first church experience as a new Believer. My first church experience with groups of church people. It was not a good one and unfortunately it was not the last. It feels good to write this out. I have held on to it for so long for fear of people thinking that I am bitter or hateful. I am not, I am sad by the experience. I am sad that people can go to church their entire life and never get the message of Christ. I wish the message wouldn’t get lost in experiences like this.

I know that I am not the only one and that makes it even harder for me to bear.

I felt like in order for me to understand my faith that I needed to go to church.

One morning I felt led to turn on the radio, I flipped through the channels and at the end of some sermon, which I had missed completely; the preacher went into how to accept Jesus into your heart. I fell to my knees and just felt like that was what I needed to do. I sobbed for an hour, nothing in particular coming to mind, except for, I felt accepted. Accepted and at peace for the first time in my life. I became obsessive about learning the scriptures and studying all about what the Bible meant. I heard in my inner being, I guess that is the best way to describe it, to get baptized. No one told me this; I read it in the scriptures. I was baptized by my father at his church, that became mine too.

I had conflicting feelings the entire time I was there.

First of all, when I arrived the pastor of over 13 years just got removed because it was discovered that he and the secretary were having an affair. The youth pastor had just taken over as the interim and there were a lot of emotions flying that I didn’t know how to process. My dad was a church leader at the time, until my second sister got pregnant at the age of 15 years old. Everyone was forgiving, with very condemning comments when my first sister had gotten pregnant, but after my second sister did, well….it was too much. My dad stepped down. I quickly got involved and started serving in children’s ministry. My first husband would not go to church with me; he was Catholic and felt very uncomfortable in a Non-Denominational church. We had a lot more problems after I became a Christian and started studying. His family did not appreciate my history lessons about the Catholic Church and they did not like my many questions about their faith.

I wasn’t trying to be rude; I genuinely wanted to know about their faith and beliefs.

Eventually we came to terms that our marriage was not going to work no matter how much counseling we did, I was obsessed with my faith and he was not. We just couldn’t get past it. The church was very accepting of me during this time, because he was Catholic and they felt that his faith was wrong anyway. Those are not my views, that was what the church felt. I was beyond devastated. The Christian faith made it clear that divorce was wrong; I personally never wanted to get a divorce because of my family history of multiple divorces and the pain that it causes. I felt like a failure and a horrible Christian. I carried the burden of him getting a divorce because he was Catholic and no one in his family had gotten divorces, there was just a lot.

The church made it clear that it was ok because they felt that he had abandoned me.

They needed that to make it ok. The children at church never even knew I was married because I was always alone so they had no problem with me to continue serving. I then found my second husband, whom I despised from day one. I never liked him, I thought he was a fake and a phony and I told him so. A lot. I went against my gut and I listened to all of the church people tell me that he was such a great guy, “he is so spiritual”, a “real man of God” and so and so on. I knew that he lied to me while we were dating and I called him on it every time. He would ask me “How do you know this stuff?”  I wish I would have listened to my feelings that told me to get away from him. I will give you one example of how I feel God was trying to make it very clear that I was right in my judgment, but did not trust it.

It was New Years Eve weekend and he had made plans to go to his hometown.

I begged him not to go. I just knew something bad was going to happen. He told me “I have to go; it’s like the ending of my previous life. It’s symbolic.” He went and I was praying the second he got on the road. I was up all night, that New Years Eve, I wrote it all down in my prayer journal. I saw like a vision of what he was doing throughout the evening. When he came back, I told him that I knew he had cheated on me and that I saw all of the things he had done. He claimed that they did not happen and that I made it up. I described the girl. He still denied it. After a few months he did something similar and the same thing happened though I did not see him cheat but I did see him with a girl.

He finally broke down, confessed all.

I had been right about everything. I then felt like it wasn’t about me, it was about him and God. I led him into prayer and he rededicated is life to Christ. Then after that he asked me to marry him. I said I don’t know. Later that day I was working alone, my heart was broken because I had been right and I didn’t know what to do. I heard my name being called, like in the air and I looked up. I saw like a vision  and I heard, “I would not give you someone who would hurt you.”(Not audibly, it’s hard to explain) I understood what that meant because after all of my failed relationships (with the exception of my first husband), the common thread was they lied, they cheated, and they did drugs, and was abusive to some extent. I ran to my ex and told him what had happened and I told him how I felt like that meant we were not to be together.

He said “No, I think that means that before, if I did not rededicate to Christ. Now that I have changed you know I won’t hurt you.”

I was very confused, I talked to my Christian friends and they all said what he had said. I assumed that I was wrong. I thought “Well maybe it is possible that he was the wrong guy before but now that he has accepted Jesus, maybe he is the right guy.” I didn’t trust my gut with my first marriage and I didn’t with my second. In my first marriage I made the decision based on never wanting a divorce. Since he was Catholic, I really believed we would never get a divorce. The difference about him and my second ex-husband was that I genuinely liked him as a person. He is now remarried and very happy and I was so happy to discover that. My second husband I married because everyone else told that he was right for me and since I couldn’t trust my judgment on relationships, I believed them.

Our marriage was built upon distrust and my overall dislike for him as a person.

More to come….

Personal Note: When I talk of hearing voices or seeing visions, I am not really sure how to explain it properly. It could be a variety of things going on. I have intense dreams as well that have given me clear direction, so scientifically it could be my brain telling me the right thing to do. Spiritually it could be how I experience God.  I have gone over mental reasons and do not fall under the criteria for any of the mental disorders that I have read. For me I am comfortable with both the reasons being science and God.

We had miscommunication about Daniel and I consumed myself in serving at church.

I was also directly under the woman pastor’s leadership, in several ministries. I now know I was trying to escape what was going on at home. Women would call our house all hours of the day and say that we needed to pray or that “things” were going on that needed to be discussed. It would disrupt our entire household and cause chaos. Daniel and I both do not do well with ringing phones. David was trying to do work in an open room and I was spending my days full of anxiety trying to keep two, three yr olds and a 1 yr old quiet so David could work.

We really didn’t have time to talk about Daniel anyway, but then I started taking Daniel to therapy on a regular basis as well.

We didn’t really have time to discuss how either of us were feeling. I was in constant action mode. Try to do everything to keep Daniel at peace, try to do everything to keep peace in church, try to do everything to keep peace with my mom. Since we had just moved here my mom and I were trying to figure out our relationship. We had not lived near each other in about 10 years and our past experience was not a good script to go by. She also refused to believe that Daniel was on the autism spectrum at that time. Everyone in church was praying for healing and I was in the middle not knowing what to believe. Do I believe the doctors, do I believe the websites, do I believe the church people who said it wasn’t of God, do I believe David that he will grow out of it? So many questions and I was full of fear and misunderstandings.

I now know what David meant by “He will grow out of it”.

He doesn’t mean that this will all go away. He means that we help Daniel achieve success through helping him help himself. He means we need to educate ourselves and implement those things that will help Daniel. He means look into all kinds of resources and see which are the best fit and try them. Use the things that work, find Daniel’s special interests and use that as a tool. He means that Daniel will grow out of a lot of the behaviors that can hurt him or us if we understand how to help him. Not that he will grow out of autism. Had I understood what he meant then, I think I would not have felt so alone and disconnected from my husband. I would not have felt so fearful and hopeless. We actually were thinking the same things but with the outside distractions and constant chaos, we couldn’t communicate.

There were many distractions going on.

David was trying to work, we lost a lot of our income which caused a huge stress on him. The jobs he did have were extremely intense and consuming. We had additional medical bills that we had not expected. David lost work because of me being gone so much taking Daniel to therapy. The fact that our kids were so young is enough to take energy out of a relationship, no matter how wonderful they are, they take a lot of time and energy. Even though I felt that David was a great husband and father, the church atmosphere made it feel as if he was not a good spiritual leader. In prayer meetings, the women would complain about their husbands and I would always chime in how David doesn’t do that. Of course they assumed I was lying, I didn’t understand this until later. Why on earth would I lie about that? It didn’t even occur to me to lie about David. Whatever. We would end up talking me down off the ledge after every prayer meeting, not only because of what they said about their husbands but because they would bring up all of this weird theology.

I couldn’t keep mouth shut and would blurt out things, like the actual context of the scripture and the pastor would go off on me.

We spent what little energy we had on exposing the false information, how some people were bullies and the wrong understandings of the Bible teachings instead of on our marriage and kids. David has never told me what to do or think, he knows that I wouldn’t handle that well anyway, but he is not that kind of person. He does give me little bits of information and he knows that I will automatically go into research mode. That is what I did with autism, with church, with marriages, with whatever else that would pop in my head during that time to try to bring clarity and peace to our life. I should have paid attention to my kids, they never wanted to go to that church. Daniel hated it. He would have complete meltdowns before we would go and then he would have to leave class if I wasn’t in there. Many times even when I was in there. This church was a huge distraction to my faith, my marriage, my family and the focus I needed to put on learning how to help Daniel.

We decided that our marriage, unity and full support for each other had to take precedence over all other things.

I eliminated people who caused division in my marriage, we decided that the church we were in was not the best for us, we decided to discuss Daniel’s needs together. We decided that no matter what we would tell each other what we were thinking and if we did not understand one another we would find the best means of communication to help us to understand. We decided that if we were unable to have words to express ourselves then we would tell the other person and give each other the time to be able to gather the right words. David explained to me that I sound like I am yelling when we discuss things, I explained to him that I had no idea what he is talking about because I do not yell. Those kinds of things make a huge difference. I had no idea that I get louder and louder when I am discussing something. So now we know and I am more aware of it and it has become another one of our jokes.

That time was the breaking point for all of us and we knew something had to change.

When we left, I had what felt like a huge chain around me lift. While there David and I were constantly battling slides of truth, false information, and hidden agendas. The problem here was that I just wanted to help and my “help trump card” would kick in and override what I knew was going on. I can easily get sucked in if I see people in need or if church leaders make me feel like I am failing as a Christian. I do not believe this anymore, though there are times when it still comes up and I have to fight the words. We wasted precious time on nonsense and gossip and it brought division to our marriage because that is not who we are or what we do. Another form of escape for me is to obsess about people to try to figure them out. I have learned to stop that too.

Within in a couple of weeks we actually saw huge changes in Daniel.

We both believe that the constant stress and chaos that I was maintaining, Daniel was feeling and responding to. Ariel and Joshua did too but Daniel’s was much more apparent. We quickly regained our peace with each other, our kids and now after two years or so, I am finally getting some clarity with my relationship with God again. Some of our other family members have become more accepting in many ways, since I have shared and tried to bring awareness to what autism really is about. My mom has had a tremendous amount of healing for herself and understanding, she has changed a lot too.

If we had not stopped to take control of our miscommunication we would not have survived, at least not well.

We are now very protective of our time, our family, who and what we allow to be apart of it. Not in a freaky way but we are very cautious of how we do things now. We are open to new things and try but if we feel that oppressive or divisive feel, we do not stick around that place or people long. It is just not worth it to sacrifice our marriage or kids for the sake of making people feel good. The majority of time those people don’t even care if we are around or not. Besides David and I are the kind of people who usually say the wrong thing and make the situations very awkward or uncomfortable. It’s our gift.

Another job that was perfect for me involved antique toys.

My work performance and need for funds got me promoted at that job as well. Before I was promoted though, I was in charge of restoring vintage Barbies, Action Figures and their accessories. Since I had already been a Barbie collector I had a vast knowledge of the history Barbie and already owned many collector books about her. I easily went into the action figure mode because action figures ROCK! I basically did this Toy Story 2-Fixing Woody. I had storage boxes full of body parts to fix G.I. Joes and put Barbie bodies together according to their correct lot numbers. I recreated full sets of vintage collections. I then described them and prepared them for resell. It was so fun, I mainly worked alone and I was good at it. They changed my position and I no longer liked my job. That was also the place where the people had given me such a hard time about my beliefs, I wrote about in my post A Bit of Work History.

Now my all time favorite job ever!

I worked as an online web sales person for a small computer sales company. We built customized computers and sold editing software, digital cameras, video and audio editing software, basically all kinds of awesome, super-cool computer software and solutions. It was a small business of about 25 employees. My job consisted of handling all of the online sales, processing, and international sales. Mostly my job was data entry and I loved it!! Most days I was left alone with my headphones on and just processed orders and answered emails. I also really liked all of the employees, I cannot think of any of them that I had a problem with.

That is rare.

All of the people were nice, funny, smart, open-minded and very accepting and respectful of my quirks and of my beliefs even if they did not believe the same way I did. I loved that on any given day people were having serious conversations about any topic but also that we all had a lot of fun. I could dance and sing or pray or be grumpy, have a meltdown and everyone was forgiving and just let me be me. I enjoyed the fact that they all were themselves as well and I learned so much from each person. They all opened my eyes in some way and for that I am so grateful to have had a job experience like that. After the 9/11 attacks the business was not doing very well and they had to downsize, eventually selling the company a couple years later.

I was very sad when that job ended.

There are other volunteer jobs that I did that I was very good at too. My first church I had ever been involved with had a wonderful library that no one cared about. I asked if I could organize it and run it and the pastor said yes. I found so many great things hidden away in there about the history of the church and of the town. I made a section in one of the rooms displaying what I had found. I was so excited. It has so many great resources that no one used and I tried to get people in there to study and take advantage of this huge library. I thought that surely if they knew that all of this information and free resources about the Bible, other religions, study guides, lexicons, great reads from authors like C.S.Lewis and media resources, that they would come running. They didn’t but I used it and I kept it organized and spent many hours alone in there being very happy.

I also enjoyed working as a volunteer in one of my other churches in the book store.

I really liked sharing great resources with others. If they asked me about a topic or which translation of the bible I would suggest, I was happy. I got to share the information I knew and felt like I was very helpful with guiding them in the direction they were looking for. People would come in asking about music or if I had any suggestions for worship cd’s and that would get me going. The reason it was so great for me was because it was people asking me about my special interest and they WANTED to know what I had to say. It worked out perfect except for those times that I talked and talked and then the person would try to be polite but let me know that they HAD to go. I still enjoyed it immensely.

And currently I have the best fitting job being a stay at home mom. I enjoy that most days.

Ariel and Joshua can be heard across town singing as loud as possible while in our car.

Daniel likes to listen, rock back and forth and smile. He will sing sometimes. I find it interesting that he doesn’t sing as much as he used to, his singing is how we knew that he could talk. He wouldn’t say words but he wanted me to play music 24/7 in his bedroom and every cd I played he had memorized. He memorized the words and tune to every song, in the order on each cd. One set was this 365 song, 8 cd set. He would play in his room, with his spinning gears and sing. I knew that he hummed but I had not actually heard him sing until one day. I heard singing coming from his room, peaked around the corner and he was singing the words.

I didn’t want to disturb him but I paid more attention to his singing.

Since I have always made up songs anyway, I started making up songs about everything and singing them to Daniel. I would sing about eating, taking a bath, changing a diaper, brushing teeth, whatever we were doing I sang a song about it. I still do this and we still sing certain songs that were crafted during that time, my favorite is the chant I would sing when Daniel got upset with me “Mommy is annoy–ING”. This chant was accompanied with some sort of silly dance that made him laugh, it still works. I am not sure why he has stopped singing like he used to but you can tell that he still knows the words to all of the songs that were played for a year in his room. He will ask for them to be put on in the car and if I start it on the wrong song he will say “That’s not right”. As he listens he just rocks back and forth and smiles.

All three of the kids love music and it is a big part of our life.

Though I play no instruments, well I can do a little guitar but not much, I still love all kinds of music. Music has been a huge part of my life. My mom has always played many different types of music and my dad is a self-taught musician, since I can remember he has been teaching himself to play various instruments. He plays the keyboards, piano, guitar, drums, any percussions really, he sings. I would watch him practice in his basement when I was little, teaching himself entire Rock Operas. He always had a dream of creating a Rock Opera. He and my mom saw the premier of Tommy in Britain and he was in love. He rarely plays any secular music anymore, he now leads worship at his church. I think he could probably come up with a pretty great Rock Opera though.

Both sides of my family love music.

I feel that is probably why me dancing and singing was encouraged or at least it was my label. Family members labeled me as the “dancer” since it was my special interest. Every family member I can think of has a special interest and then it became their label. There are many stories about me dancing but one of the family favorites is when I had to be dropped off at my dad’s work, I was about 6 or 7 yrs old, my dad was very busy. He was the manager of a fast food restaurant at the time and the drive thru was out of control. It was pretty normal for me to have to entertain myself or work, while I waited for my parents to finish work. On this day for some reason I decided that the people in the drive thru area needed to be entertained while they waited.

My dad was extremely stressed and he was short an employee so he was running the drive thru.

My dad was pleased that people were not getting angry because they had to wait, he also kept hearing people laughing and saying things like “that is so cute”.  Finally, he decided to look outside to see what was going on. When he opened the back door he saw me dancing and singing next to the menu. I had been entertaining all of the customers while they waited. I have a vague memory of this but I do remember being out there feeling so happy that people were happy. I still do this, not to this existent….most of the time.

I had this same freedom when I first started going to church. 

I was so excited when I first started going to church, being surrounded by music that was full of joy and so peaceful to me. I had not been brought up in church, so I did what came natural. I remember the first time I was in a worship service, I had my eyes closed, my hands raised and danced to the swirl like visions that were in my mind. I seemed to just know the songs and had no need to read the words, my body flowed to the music and I just sang to God. I just did it. It was only after this that I felt wrong. I discovered that people say “worship God freely” but  they actually mean do it in a way that does not make them feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t really stop, it is very hard for me not to just flow with music. Just to be clear, I wasn’t dancing down isles, hitting people or being seriously out of control.

I have been in churches where freedom of worship styles is encouraged.

I have also become aware that I can be distracting so I learned to find a happy medium at most churches. It has been a bit confusing for me to understand the rules for church, every church is different even if they are the same denomination. The church we are going to now is a lot more conservative than what I have been in, in the past, so I find myself feeling anxious and clasping my arms together so I will not move my arms or hands and also leaning on the seats in front of me so I will not move as much. When we get out of church though I am running and jumping with the kids the second we get out the doors. I can worship at home, I am fine with that. However, I still dance and sing like a fool in stores or in my car. In stores this is how I stim, it is the only way I can survive in the store. It helps me stay focused and ignore all of the sensory stuff.

Throughout my life people have thought that I was seeking attention or just being obnoxious because of this.

I do not like having attention. It makes me feel very uncomfortable and I do like being unseen. It’s a catch 22, I dance and sing without thinking about it and that causes me to receive attention. :-/ These things are just natural to me though. When I was a child my dad would take me to the grocery at wee hours of the night, we would sing and dance the whole time together. My mom and I spent a large amount of time at home dancing and singing, even though I drove her nuts sometimes out in public, she never told me to stop. Unless I was way out of control.

I do the same things with our kids.

David thinks its awesome. He doesn’t have that freedom and wishes that he had. Things in his life as a child just made him self-conscious about singing or dancing. He loves it too and sometimes we get him going with us but not always. I have never meant to be a distraction and wish church leaders had not used that word to me because it made me feel awful about worshiping freely in church. I don’t let it affect me like it used to though and in past churches I have had people thank me for being so free because it helped them to be free as well. If anything that is what I would want for people, if they feel like dancing or singing, to just have that freedom to do it whether at home, at church, in a store, or where ever as long as it is not harmful to others or to the point of being so distracting its irritating.

I am aware enough of my surrounding to not do that….most of the time.