Jesus

This morning, as part of my getting-organized-for-NaNoWriMo (ie procrastination with a purpose), I came across something I wrote in February 2006 - ie about 18 months ago. It was part of an application to a Christian writing organization and I was required to answer the question 'Why are you a Christian?'

Briefly explain why you are a Christian.

I am a Christian simply because I love Jesus. Without Him, life has no rhyme or reason, no purpose or point. Even at my lowest ebb, those times when faith is nothing more than a daily choice to trust in a dimly and waveringly perceived God, I would still choose Him.

What's really interesting is that despite this whole deconversion experience, my intense attraction to and interest in the person of Jesus has never disappeared completely. It's still there. And that is particularly evidenced by the fact that the NaNo book I'm going to be working on is a re-write of a book I did in 2003/2004, a book my crit partners and I called my 'Josh' book.

Back in July 2003, I sat down one day and watched the remade version of Jesus Christ Superstar. It knocked me sideways ... and into a surge of creativity. I wrote and wrote and wrote for about three months and my desire at that point was to write a story about Jesus that would make him human and accessible and attractive to the reader in the same way that the movie had made him human and accessible and attractive to me. I took that completed story to a Christian Writer's conference in April 2004 and while some editors shook their heads (What? A Jesus who doubts his calling? A Jesus who drinks beer? And drives a truck? Hoo boy ....), there were a few who liked it very much indeed. One of the literary agents asked me to send him the full ms once I was back home ...

But on my return home, life intervened and I fell into a spiritual and emotional funk and I put that story away (all 120K words of it) and never followed through. And since then, my spiritual journey has taken me a long a difficult path. I've ranted and cried and been angry and been afraid and wrestled with despair and nihilism of the worst kind.

But now. Now I find in me that same attraction to Jesus that has always been there. My beliefs at present are undefined ... I'm holding onto the mystery, continuing to read and think and explore and engage in discussion .. but I'm also going to write again. I'm going to rewrite that story bringing to it all the things that have been a part of me over the last three years. I think it was Phillip Yancey who said we write not because we have all the answers, but because we have questions that won't go away. We write to try and find those answers.

It's terrifying, but in a good way!!! I'm excited!

November

November is NaNoWriMo time - National Novel Writing Month.

Foolish dreamer that I am, I signed up again (!) so from now until the end of November, any and all blogging that happens will be on my other blog: Write On The Edge which is specifically writing-related.

If, as has happened before, I fail in my Nano efforts, I'll be back here much sooner. So wish me luck!

True Grit

This weekend, I spent a night with my parents, who are now in their mid-70s and living in a retirement village about an hour from us. My kids had gone to visit their dad and I had a sudden yen to go hang out with the old folks back home :-) I also wanted to bring them up to date on my plans for next year and its much easier to talk big things through face-to-face rather than over the phone.

And it's funny - you think you know all there is to know about your parents and then suddenly, you learn something new. Sunday morning, mom and I were talking about the past, and how we as a family nearly emigrated to Australia in 1963, when I was five. I've always known the story, about how sailing was delayed so my dad had to take a temporary job. And about how we moved to a small village an hour outside of Cape Town while we waited for the three months to pass.

But what I hadn't known was that apparently my gran (his mum) was terribly, terribly unhappy about her only son going off to Oz. And my own mum was also terribly, terribly unhappy about moving to a foreign country with two small kids and a husband with a fondness for the bottle. They were all praying that the move wouldn't happen. So when sailing was delayed, and Dad had to take a temp job, granny and grandpa started driving an hour each way to visit us every Sunday. I'm guessing they all worked really hard to persuade my dad that emigration was a bad idea.

It worked. We never went. My dad worked for that same company (and that same shitty boss) until he took a medical retirement 14 years ago at 61.

The other thing is that in his 20s, my dad was an alcoholic. He always said that when he became a Christian, God set him free from drink. But listening to my mom talk last Sunday morning, I realized it wasn't quite as simple as that.

Those first years in that lousy job must have been difficult. I'm saying this because mom told me that in those days he drank a lot. Vodka in the morning, brandy at night. Looking back now, I wonder how much of that drinking resulted from the fact that his dream had been taken away from him - no moving to Australia, no chance to do whatever it was he might have dreamed of doing over there. Instead, he found himself counting beans for a large agricultural company, working for the boss from hell, in a country town far from anywhere, with a wife and two little girls to support. Maybe he gave up, gave in to the pressure to stay in SA, pressure applied very lovingly by his own mother, father and wife. And for a man who was used to finding solace in the bottle, well - is it any surprise that he started binge-drinking again?

He also had regular attacks of the so-called Monday Morning Flu. One day, in desperation, my mom called the doctor. He came in after evening surgery. Mom was putting us kids to bed and she pointed listlessly at the bedroom, saying 'He's in there...'. The doc knew them both well and he knew what was up. That night, he put the writing on the wall for my dad. Told him that if he kept on boozing, not only would he destroy his family but he'd also probably kill himself as his liver was taking severe strain.

And my dad heard him. He stopped drinking. Just like that. Then and there. Apparently, he had one more bender in Dec of that year, but after that nothing. Mom said those early weeks and months of sobriety were hell - he eschewed any form of help, refused AA, refused counselling, refused medication. And to this day, he doesn't touch alcohol.

Now that is pretty damn amazing, I think. But the point here is that he did it alone, by sheer will power and determination. At this point, 'God' had nothing to do with it, at least from his perspective. My mum had started going to church by then, but my dad, a 'back-slidden' Christian, wanted nothing to do with it. As the years went by, he slowly started a spiritual journey of his own - reading books (including The Christian Agnostic by L D Weatherhead) and listening to church on the radio in the dark - which culminated in his eventual return to faith, some time after the birth of my youngest brother in 1969.

Later on Sunday morning, mom came to me and hugged me. "I know I talked a lot about dad and our troubles this morning," she said. "But one thing you must know is that throughout it all, we both loved our kids above everything else. You were the ones who mattered."

That story changed my mental picture of my dad a bit, not that it was a bad one to start with. Quite the contrary, in fact. And it inspires me. I may look like my mom and I share her loony sense of humor, but generally I'm a lot more like my dad - logical, analytical, intellectual, etc. And then of course there are the not-so-good traits we share, but lets not go there now. And given that no family is perfect, there are, of course, 'Issues' on all sides, some of which I know I still have to deal with.

But still. I'm proud of him. I'm proud of his grit and determination. And I'm proud to be his daughter.

New Year, New Goal, New Me ...

Following on from this post I did a ton of research and thinking about 2008 and how best to use the time we still have to wait before the emigration plans come to fruition. And the more I thought about all the options, and about the fact that next year brings with it the Dreaded 'Five-Oh' birthday, the more it seemed like a really good idea to throw caution to the wind and just go for it. Take some risks, change my life radically and see what happens!!

So, with the house sale continuing as planned, my son will be moving out to live with his dad for his first year out of school, and my daughter and I will be looking for a cost-effective rental for next year. And then - I'm enrolling in January for a post-graduate diploma course in Primary Health Care. Yep, going back to varsity at the age of 49.... woo hoo! Stellenbosch University offers an ITE course in PHC - its a combination of distance education and contact hours, as well as experiential learning hours.

Primary Health Care is (sort of) the equivalent of the US Nurse Practitioner - you learn to assess, diagnose, prescribe, treat and manage a wide range of acute and chronic health conditions. I've spent the last six months working in a pharmacy-based primary health care clinic and I learned that 1) I really love working with clients individually and sleuthing out what the problem really is - and so often its totally different to the thing that they ask for when they arrive. And 2) I really don't know enough to be sure that my assessment and 'diagnosis' are accurate. Oh, and 3) I love academics and assignments and projects and learning so taking a year out to focus on that will be just plain awesome, seeing as the last qualification I studied for was my diploma in psychiatric nursing, way back in '87! :-)

Also, my research shows that it may well be possible to do some follow on study from this course which will convert my original RN qualification into an MA. But we'll see about that. One of the best outcomes of this course, apart from the new skills, is that having this qualification will open all kinds of other employment doors for me once we get to the US. Many of my US friends have said that they far prefer seeing the NP to seeing the MD!

There are also a few other things on the cards for 2008: a weekend away with my best friend (also facing 50 soon) to learn how to paraglide! A major health and fitness revamp! Etc etc....

The road ahead is looking GOOD!

After all the grumbles ...

So enough of the ranting and grumbling. Today I came across this joke and thought it really funny!!

A hunter walking through the jungle found a huge dead dinosaur with a pygmy standing beside it. Amazed, he asked: "Did you kill that?".
The pygmy said "Yes."
The hunter asked "How could a little fella like you kill a huge beast like that?"
Said the pygmy: "I killed it with my club."
The astonished hunter asked: "How big is your club?"
The pygmy replied: "There's about 90 of us."

:-)