Tag: finding peace

#66 – Pies, C-PTSD, and Learning How To Move Forward

It’s been a complicated week. I had plans to start blogging every day, to clean my house in one day not over several to prepare for hosting Thanksgiving. I also thought my pie crust would roll out with ease. Nothing went to plan.

It started with the couch breaking. One evening we noticed the leg fell off the mid-support but instead of buying a new one (Have you seen the price of couches lately? Yikes. Dubious quality to boot.) we opted to fix it. Improve it really. That was a bump in the road, the couch is stronger, and we have storage, but then we hit a pothole.

It’s like our rescue rabbit Mia unbonded to us. She became irritable and aggressive and would thrash around her room. She bites at us, growls at us, and won’t let us do normal things like sweep out her area. This whole situation is discouraging because how will we be able to properly care for her if she won’t let us? I never experienced this with my previous rabbit, Midnight, or with my family dog, Sully.

I was thrown into a murky mental pool. I have some deep memories from childhood of my dad that terrify me when loud outbursts happen. How could this happen? This rabbit I was so excited to adopt and give a loving home, was suddenly a source of triggering panic.

Cleaning ground to a halt. Kyle’s woodworking is uncertain. Walking through the office and living room tense, uncertain, scary, as the furball held us in her grip of territorial fury. She began to destroy the floor filling me with despair.

Every little part of preparing for the holiday felt treacherous as the C-PTSD clouded me from the reality of the tasks in front of me to the mountains of my mind. The craggy, inhospitable rock that has been too high to climb. I didn’t expect this random experience to cause such pain and confusion in my mind.

But the clock kept moving forward and things still needed to be done. This holiday we looked toward with joy could not become a thing we wanted to run from. It was our first holiday here.

Living as a human can be so tough. We are all broken and have hidden scars that can be reopened in the blink of an eye. What has been the most challenging part of this week has been where I find my pauses to take a breath. Finding opportunities in the chaos to recenter instead of giving up.

Making those pies was one of those moments of joy in the center of the storm. Cutting the Crisco into the flour is rhythmic. Feeling the sand become dough, stimming. Rolling out the crust and having it fall apart, is tragic! Finding the inspiration to make the difficult crust mold into the pie tin anyway, is a victory!

Seeing the smiles the pumpkin and apple pie brought to my family filled me with warmth. Yesterday, was a wonderful day. Yes because the food was delicious, but more so for the reminder that what makes the day special is being next to my loved ones and reflecting on the year and what blessings we received despite the chaos of life.

I hope you know that you are loved, dear reader and that you remember not to give up!

The Scarcity Mindset of Red vs Blue

It’s been a wild ride here in the United States, as everyone around the world has probably followed. As a U.S. resident the opinions, the reactions, and the culture have been like nothing I have seen before. Truly surprising. What has surprised me the most has been the personal ethics and scarecity mindsets I have observed, from my fellow Americans sharing on social media.

The Roar of Social Media

For a land of opportunity and abundance, there are certainly a lot of conflicting opinions on that statement. Some people are quite in touch with the struggles of inflation and the economy and others are participating in conspicuous consumption. Some are lamenting in blue and some are gloating in red, others are calling for retrospection and unity, but one thing has been the common thread – it’s a bigger knot of problems than I ever expected, and untangling this is going to take more time than I think most people are willing to give it.

There is impatience and aggression. A celebration of nastiness on every level that I am shocked by. How long has this nasty edge been living under the surface waiting for us to notice its venom? How does the simple act of Patrick Ta’s eyeshadow being priced at $42 become a hotbed of elitism and premeditated nastiness towards complete strangers on the internet? It’s bizarre and I can only guess it has nothing to do with eyeshadow and more with a deep level of dissatisfaction in our current world.

Loss of Gentleness

I saw increasing pressure from political ads this year to be afraid of what lurks in the blue and the red. The election is over yet I am still getting ads targeting this fear and exploiting our peace for the sake of agenda. It is maddening and disheartening to me that we are allowing our peace to be stolen. Especially the peace of those most vulnerable in society.

I’m observing responses from people I follow who are letting their fear isolate them. I saw a call to clear out friends lists “to control what you can” like burning bridges is healthy advice for all situations. It can be, but it can also lead to a lot of pain and loneliness. Acting on emotions is a shifting sand. When your emotions change how can your choices be healthy and stable in the long run? There is more chance of self-sabotage than true desire.

I have been a bridge burner and when I look back at what fueled my decisions, it was not a healthy mindset. It was one deep in crisis allowing the self-destructive nature to keep me from moving forward. I’m also not writing this to judge anyone. I’m writing this from a place of concern to keep others from making the same mistakes as me. Mistakes that I wish I could take back.

One thing I have taken from these last few weeks is the importance of gentleness and patience. We are fully capable of living in a community with others who disagree with us if we choose to be gracious to one another and respect healthy boundaries. Not playing on each others’ fear or looking for fights. That’s just plain mean and not how you maintain relationships. That has been the number one thing I have noticed through this 2024 election cycle, is the lack of focus on America being one community and learning how to work with each other in our differences.

Truth and Realignment

I’m not saying my culture needs to let bullies keep bullying or evil take root for the sake of peace. I think we need to kick bad out and leave room for the good and the truth to flourish. What I am saying is that I think we need to pause, take a breath, and be willing to try reconciling. If it’s bad and causes more pain, okay, then we stop and reevaluate, but I don’t think it would be.

I think my fellow citizens are weary and lonely. We need each other to embrace our differences to see that we have more common ground than we have let agendas tell us we do.

Thinking purple instead of red and blue would be a good start. Abandoning the scarcity mindset would also be a healthy move toward letting go of fear. Especially as believers, there is nothing to fear if we fully surrender to God.

This has just been on my heart lately, dear reader, and I hope I haven’t offended you. I’ve been feeling creatively off from the sheer amount of negativity being spread. It is draining as an HSP neurodivergent introvert who seeks to spread kindness and love yet can’t fix the pain of people in my community. I wish I could and maybe this post is at least a safe space to ponder and start new conversations? I’m trying to focus on the positive.

We will also be back to our regularly scheduled programming of sewing, knitting, art, Bible Study, and K-pop content soon. This just felt too important to ignore.

Thank you for taking time with me today. I hope you know that you are loved and worthy. Until next time 🫶

#63 – Apple Picking

We did something incredibly comforting this past weekend that gave us both a small delight. We went apple picking at our favorite orchard – Heagy’s Orchard in Northwestern Pennsylvania. It was the first time going back in four years and everything felt shinier, and happier, like the slump of the 2020s had shed and the area we used to haunt had come back to life, and so did I.

The interesting thing is I think now we instinctively felt like it was apple season at Heagy’s Orchard because these photos were taken on the same weekend, years apart, picking the same varieties of apples. None of it was planned. The pictures of my husband in the yellow plaid are from our first fall in Meadville in 2019, taken on Sept 5. The ones of me in a flannel and him in a hoodie are from Sept 7, 2020. And the first grouping, above, is from this past weekend, Sept 7, 2024.

How weird is that? I didn’t know we had a family tradition, him and I, but apparently we do and it was special to go back after such a long hiatus. Leaving Meadville-Erie area, a place that became home to us both after feeling like nowhere was home no matter how far we moved or how hard we tried in familiar places, was such a relief. Having to leave our home under the unfortunate circumstances of a dangerous living situation sucked.

It was frustrating that it was because drug dealers moved into the bottom unit of the house we were renting, with a considerable amount of domestic violence going on with them too, and the police doing little to nothing about it, which was despicable! There was so much pain and suffering in that situation. It only got worse when it became a squatting situation, the air was tense, and there was a gun. Not something you want to mess with. But not being able to fix the situation was a heartbreak that I shoved down in a box, to be left until I was ready.

Our new neighborhood in our new town where we lived from 2021 to the beginning of 2024, was like a high-strung Bailey Downs from Orphan Black, it never felt like home and so I had to keep that box shut and therefore couldn’t go to Erie or Meadville without feeling this rogue frustration, that until I returned there this past weekend, I couldn’t figure out why I was so frustrated and scared of the big emotion, But now I understand, it was a lack of acceptance compounded with the confusion of the dumpster fire that was 2020.

It was a lot of change in quick succession and my neurodivergent brain didn’t know what to do with in the moment, so I shut down. I was afraid I made a mistake leaving although I felt isolated and lonely after 2020, moving closer to family felt like oxygen. I’m glad in buying a house we are still able to go back up to the Meadville and Erie areas, because I realized I’m not done with that area, I just needed to be done with that living situation, and in turn, I really needed to get out of that suburban hell I fled to afterward to go back and see the place that made me feel home again.

The nature is just too pretty to be away from it for too long. There are these incredible ridges that stretch out in every direction. Fields, forests, creeks, ponds, marshes, and the closer you get to the lake it gets flatter until the big blue horizon meets you. It’s incredible. Is there a place or a tradition that helped you feel at home again after going through a tough time?

Blacksmithing – Micah 4:3

At the beginning of this blog I was reading through sections of the Bible that I did not know as well as passages that are taught quite frequently and I was letting God lead me in the process. This was my goal in 2023, and in 2024 I’m still doing that albeit a bit more chaotically than last year. I blame the move, but honestly, my focus has been all over the place except on my devotions since we moved which I am not proud of. Because of this I have been hopping around the Bible I was in Proverbs and then I was in Mark and now I’m sporadically reading through the minor prophets. I read through Jonah and now I’m back in Micah.

There was something that stuck out to me again as I read Micah chapter four yesterday but for a different reason than my reading in 2023. In 2023, verse three stood out to me because of the promise of peace, this time it was the historical process that caused me to stop and ponder.

He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore;

Micah 4:3 ESV

I was watching an I Like to Make Stuff video recently where Bob constructed a forge, followed by another video where he forges his own machete from a piece of steel. The process was fascinating! It is such a different medium from the fiber crafts I do because the material requires more persuading than scissors, stitches, or thread to be transformed. It requires heat to allow the material to be pliable, but you can’t form it unless you have a hammer to beat the metal into the form you desire. It can take many attempts of heating and hammering to get a crude shape. This doesn’t take into account the angle grinder or sanding to adjust the shape, plus the tempering of the metal through heating and dipping the blade to make it stronger. It’s a complicated process to make something.

This verse about ‘beating swords into plowshares’ and ‘spears into pruning hooks’ well depending on how expertly these weapons were made this is a lot of craftsmanship to be destroyed, and not reformed in one beat of the hammer. This would be a process. These would be precious resources that would need to be heated in the forge, hammered into shape, and reinforced with tempering. It would be a full transformation and would require work and commitment, so full submission to God’s will and full trust that you’re not going to need that carefully crafted weaponry or I think you would hold on to it. Because there was no Amazon 2-day to get more materials or a replacement sword or spear if you changed your mind. This was it.

Because we’ve lost this technology in our modern culture to other means, this picture of blacksmithing seems like an insignificant detail but I think it has a lot of weight to the meaning of the larger message in Micah 4 and the book in general. This was a full 180-degree shift from war to planting, something you only do if you have hope for the future and stability because you have to be there to tend to the crops and harvest at a later time. You are committed to the process.

I think it is also important that the weapons are not just laid down and cast away, instead, they are reshaped and forged by fire to reveal their new life as necessary tools in the kingdom. They had a past of different goals, but are shaped by a refining fire to become a new thing and serve a new purpose. For being an Old Testament book this surely has New Testament significance, as this is what being a new creation in Christ through repentance and salvation looks like. You are not cast away for a new thing, you are transformed for a new form and a new function.

Like a blacksmith with a forge and a hammer, the Christian life transforms us from one thing to another for a new purpose. Even if our former life was filled with contradictions to the one we are living now, that forge of refining fire changes everything.

#58 – My Favorite Summer Weather

As I was thinking about this post this scene from Miss Congeniality popped into my head because I feel like what I am about to write sounds a bit like Rhode Island and that’s okay because it gives me a good laugh.

There is this amazing breeze today, fresh, clean, not humid air that I haven’t felt in over a month, and yet on these days I feel like I’m in a portal of memory. One of my favorite things about living in Pennsylvania and a climate with four seasons is that the weather changes. Quite often actually. We get cold fronts that scream across Ohio and things change in a few hours and I love it. Especially in the height of summer, when I’m burnt out on the bright sun, humidity, and heat waves. We get one of those cold fronts, like we did yesterday and the humidity clears, the sky changes and the leaves turn over and instead of storming it looks like fall.

It feels like fall in the middle of July! Instead of dangerous storms, we get gentle rain. The clouds in their kaleidoscope gray and purple changes the light to that spooky vibe of a cozy Halloween movie. It refreshes me.

It brings me back to some of my favorite summer memories. Such as the feeling of being 17 at my summer job at Geneva College on their Paint Crew, after a stretch of painting in muggy, non-air-conditioned dorms, when finally a storm breaks through and the cold front brings this melodic rain and I watch it from inside Memorial Hall. The lighting is so spooky, it’s hard to see what I’m cutting in but I feel alive in the cool breeze. I can’t wait to walk home in the rain!

The breeze coming through the windows of my home today reminded me of the sweetness of the summer air that I used to smell at my friend Cailee’s house as a kid. They always had the windows open in the summer. As I walked into my bedroom to grab a pair of socks, I could swear I was on the second-floor landing about the help Cailee clean her room again before she got grounded. Four Harry Potter books were strewn across the floor, the first movie had just come out. Like magic, I’m 8 years old again.

What’s your ideal calendar date? Is there a certain moment from summer or a change in the weather that transports back to childhood?

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#55 – Where I’ve Been

On April 27, 2024, I was thrown a massive curve ball that set life in a bit of a tail spin that to be honest I’m not sure if I have still recovered from mentally. It was a lot!

In March I contacted my landlord to renew our lease for the next year, I like to do it two months ahead of the renewal date to make things go smoothly. In writing, she said yes, great. I thought, wonderful! Everything is settled for another year. At this point it was our third year living in the house and we were quite settled in, our landlord seemed pretty chill, and the house felt like home. I had set up a studio finally in one of the spare bedrooms, Kyle had a woodshop in the garage, everything was organized just right and the place gave me such a sense of normalcy where other rentals had not.

Shuffling the Deck

In April, my landlord had acted a little weird. She never followed up to sign a lease, which she is incredibly type A so I thought maybe she was busy? Then she asked if we wanted to buy the house, without any context if this was a serious request or a passing fancy. It was not the first time she asked, she did that in our first year and followed with she had no plans to sell. Odd, right? Well, on April 27 at 8pm she announced to me that she was not renewing our lease and we had three days to decide if we were buying the house from her at $210k USD or she was putting in on the market immediately, even though we had one more month on our lease.

We were flabbergasted to be honest. What? What! How did we get here? And who is this new pushy person trying to rip the rug out from under me? We took the three days to pray and consider if this was even possible, could we really afford that much? And why was the price so high for this small house, on a small yard that honestly needed some TLC after years of being used as a rental not a cared for home.

I think as humans we crave security, steadiness. The day before I felt incredibly steady. We had a place to live that was safe, with running water, heat, electricity, privacy. It wasn’t ours but as a steady tennant that paid rent and took care of it, I really didn’t see why they would want to lose that? I was clearly playing checkers when she was playing chess.

We decided to move forward with buying it in hopes that if we walked forward in faith that God would provide. Either the door would continue to close or it would slam shut. But another door would open. It may not be what I wanted but it would be according to His plan and He would provide an alternative. I clung to that as my stomach filled with butterflies that never really left. All month long.

Fact Check

That Monday I began the intimidating and confusing process of applying for a mortgage, and after what happened with taxes this year that became a little tricky. Those new tax penatlies for not filing quarterly had took a bite out of the downpayment we had been saving for and it was looking grim. I think those pre-approval forms are grim and confusing even if you are planning to do this, it’s just endless numbers, questions, terms, word vomit of legalese and bank jargon. With my head spinning as Rocket Mortgage said nada, my friend suggested I check out my bank and this is where things began turning around!

Irony of irony, I was matched with mortgage officer who grew up in the town the rental was in and he was friendly, knowledgeable and began to kick the tires on these unexpected shenanigans from the landlord. I learned it was going to be tight but possible if we wanted to buy it but that $210k was a ridiculous amount for what the house was and I was recommended by the bank to proceed with caution because on their end the math was not mathing on that price.

Things got a bit more interesting when the landlord began laying out the terms of how this was going to go. It began with stating that we were not using a realtor but a settlement company she knew with a number that didn’t work when I tried to call them. Next there was the timeline. She wanted me to write up a sellers agreement, until I began requesting an inspection and contingencies in case the value wasn’t as high as she insisted it was. She was giving us a deal you know, at $210k USD. It was a steal! She could get way more if she wasn’t doing this favor out of the kindness of her heart!

There was also the interesting niggle of the hand money, a concept I learned about this process which is where the buyer gives 1% of the list price to be held by the real estate company until closing. After the sale is final, the seller receives the money but not before. The landlord insisted that I give her a check for $5k USD to hold the house made out to her. Um, sketchy. Very sketchy. I told her several times that I couldn’t make contact with the settlement company and she wouldn’t give me the accurate contact info. Oh so sketchy.

But that’s not the end of the suspcious behavior. When I inquired what would happen if closing took longer than the lease, she promised she would never kick me and my husband out, we would just pay rent until the closing, pro-rated of course. This is where things changed though. I raised concerns over not being able to make contact with the settlement company, along with things about the house I knew were broken that the landlord had dodged fixing over the years. With her permission I had an inspection done, which she was quite disgruntled about when he found $40k plus of things that needed to be fixed that were now on the record. She began to get aggressive with me. I raised the need for things to be put in writing because under Pennsylvania law landlords are required to give a tenant 60 days written notice to figure everything out before a landlord can sell or remove a tenant. This enraged her, and she told me I was lying and her lease was above the law.

An hour later she showed up at the house and threw documents at our door which were quite interesting. There were some things that are not up to code in the house that she had acknowledged in the past and yet she seemed to get a very sudden case of amnesia. She gave us a “sellers agreement” that was just a disclosure saying that there was nothing wrong with the house, specifically lying about things she knew were broken. She signed and dated it. Next was a piece of paper saying that we were buying the house and were paying them rent for June until we closed on the 30th. This was also signed and dated.

We were told in an attached note to sign, date, and write a check that either she could hand deliver to the settlement or we could drop them off to the company (that I couldn’t make contact with) telling me of course she would get me the number. By this point, it was beginning to feel like harassment. From April 27 to this point it had been fortnight of her calling me and texting me almost daily with nagging about getting this settled as quick as possible or else. It was incredibly unprofessional and rude. I felt like a child instead of being respected as an adult with responsibilities and work I had to do. This lady’s only job is landlording and she had all day to contact me which was really frustrating because everything in my life was beginning to revolve around her wants and demands so that she could move to Florida, asap with a big chunk of my change in her pocket.

Door Shutting

Thankfully, I began to learn more about this situation from friends who are professionals in the real estate business and people in the community. I learned this house she bought with cash in 2010 for $105k that she flipped into a rental. Her number was $210k because she wanted to double her money plus a little extra from her $5k finder’s fee. There was no mortgage so all rent was icing on the cake. In the three years we rented from her, where she raised the rent, plus the hefty security deposit, she made $36,400 off us alone. This is where I could clearly see what made her tick. Greed. Because we could have easily done a rent to own, or figured this out in January, but the element of surprise was going to make her more money like a shakedown.

At this point it was pretty clear that any negotiation or talk was useless. This was a fools errand that I wanted no part of. Thankfully there was a new door opening a very exciting new door. But one part of it still remained, how would we transition from this place to our new home without drama? This ate me up for weeks. I am quite scared of confrontation and pushy people. My dad is a narcissist and uses the same tactics. Each conversation with her felt like it ripping up old wounds causing me emotional distress. My appetite was gone and restful sleep drifting beyond my reach.

But as all foolish people do, give them enough time and they will self destruct. That she did. On May 22, we received some very expensive mail. Mail from a lawyer on her behalf pressuring us to buy the house immediately, to pay her rent for June, and to send her the hand money. If not we had to get out on May 31. Even though the lease said we could continue paying her rent until we figured something out. She sent us four copies of that letter with postage at $8 USD a pop, I’d assume his hourly fee is quite steep as well. It was petty and it made us feel incredibly defeated. How were we going to do this when our new home would be settled in June? Do I need a lawyer? I knew she had no real power here because of PA tenant laws but this was beyond what I was comfortable with.

Sometimes the cost of standing your ground is too much for the mental toll it will take. I had stood my ground with my dad, and other narcists but this time there was too much at stake for someone who is who she is. Nothing was going to change her mind, it would only get worse. It makes me sad when peacemaking is not possible. I really think we could have had a different outcome here and brought this chapter to a close with mutual respect in place. I truly thought she was a nice person for most of our time renting. It was shocking to see how it all changed overnight.

Was she seriously going to make us move everything into a storage unit for a few days instead of working with us? The answer was yes. So we moved it all with the help of family and the provision of God we got it all done before May 31. I’m not even sure how we got it all done!

Now as I write this I am still waiting for my new house to close, but I sit here in the safety of family who generously gave us a place to crash until we can move in. I don’t know where I would be without people who love me and I hope that I will have the chance to pay it forward in the future.

Love Makes the World Go Round

What can I take away from this wild month? Well I’d say it has proved to me things I already knew were true. Money is the root of all evil. Foolish behavior and greed are good friends. Impatience and haste get us no where. Wisdom and love are worth more than money. Community is what makes life rich. God never drops us, His faithfulness prevails over the plans of man. Family and friendship are priceless. The United States house crisis is real and without God’s provision this story would have a different ending, which has made my commitment to donating to Light of Life even stronger in my mind because no one should fall through the cracks in the system because of someone else’s greed.

I’m sorry this was a bit of a long winded one, it was a long, chaotic story that I have been wanting to talk about since it started but didn’t feel comfortable until l was out of there. I hope wherever you are you know that you are loved, worthy, and have more value than all the gold in the world. ❤

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