Writing Through Emotional Upheaval by Pamela Mytroen

     Our family took a hit in March and yet I was required to continue writing blogs, articles, and to edit pieces. At first I told my husband that I would never write again. (Picture the Drama Queen). Anxiety made it impossible for me to sleep or focus. But after a few days I was able to sit down and concentrate on a piece that needed editing. I found that if I compartmentalized, I could carry on. Now, when I write, I set a timer and I block out those relentless questions of what the future holds. "If I want to dwell on it later, I can," I tell myself. While this may not be the best approach to dealing with stress, it is working for me.

     There are still times when the situation flares up and pulls me down, and I must confess that I just can't get my focus to write. This is not something that is going to go away; I will likely be wading through it for years. Somehow I need to learn perseverance and push through. There are deadlines to meet and people waiting for my words. I can't just give up.

     I recently read the autobiography of Marina NeMat, "Prisoner of Tehran" (Penguin Canada, 2007). It was a difficult season of writing for her as it meant re-opening memories that she had wanted to seal off forever. But she wrote it so that the world might see what goes on at Evin Prison in Iran. She wanted the truth to be told.

"Prisoner of Tehran". A memoir by Marina Nemat. 

     Shortly after she and her husband immigrated to Canada, she met an Iranian friend at a dinner party in Toronto and by coincidence discovered that they had been imprisoned together in Evin. After a few phone calls back and forth, and talks about their time as political prisoners, Marina's new friend said she didn't want to talk to her anymore. "I can't do it. It's too hard. It's too painful," she said, her voice choked by tears. Marina understood and didn't argue, but it was this type of silence that had held her captive. "She had made her choice--and I had made mine" (page 4).  Marina felt that her own story needed to be told. She continued to write about the atrocities she endured and survived. Some of the emotions she experienced were shame, guilt, fear, and deep sorrow as she unlocked the carefully guarded memories, yet she carried on and finished writing her story so that the world might know the truth.

     How do you persevere through life's interruptions? What techniques do you use to write under the heavy cloak of emotional turmoil?

Pamela Mytroen

My sweet grand-daughter born in April with Mama watching closely in the background!

   

     

God With Us - Lawrence

(This was first published on my website as a meditation in December 2007.)
Once more the Christian year rolls round to the last few days of Advent. We repeat the oft-told tale of God-with-us in a child’s body. The tale is oft-told but each year different as we change and grow in spirit. Our interpretation of God-with-us matures; we have a new understanding of the meaning of God’s life and light in us from the one we had a Christmas ago. God is the same—it is we who are different—changed by life’s events, our willingness to go the extra mile, love the extra measure, laugh the extra joy, and cry the extra sorrow.
These gifts, unwrapped, are the gifts of the Universe, the Divine gifts, the gifts born from struggle, freely accepted and freely given again. Though darkness may come in one way or another, yet light shines ever more brightly upon us and in us because spiritual maturity and light cannot die but must grow more strongly in the shadows where someone lights the Divine candle.
Pain that one endures knowing that its outcome will result in a cure is easy to bear. When the outcome of one’s pain or burden is not known or is uncertain, it is more difficult to bear. When one is willing to endure pain in faith that God has a good purpose in mind for the growth of one’s soul, it is worth the uncertainty of physical cure. To think that one has been chosen to witness to God’s love in endurance is a great honour.
Mary bore Christ two thousand years and more ago, not knowing what the outcome would be. She endured humility at the Virgin Birth, willingly accepting God’s request to bring the God-child into the world for human good. Let us bear our burdens with this same simple faith in God’s love.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:3-10

Protective Love - Mann

Steaming water surrounds me like a covering as I slid into the hot tub, causing me to hold my breath until my body adjusts to the heat. I settle into the 100-degree temperature feeling tension wash away with every breath. I sink in, down, deep, until I feel the seat beneath me. I close my eyes – time seems to stop. When I look out beyond my space, blackness forms a protective backdrop. The night is still – biting cold – minus 18 degrees.

Ice particles in the fresh snow across the patio sparkle like diamonds: fade and dazzle, surprise and fool me. Stars dance in the sky, brightly proclaiming their home in the hemisphere. Frozen ice-laden branches form a protective canopy over me. Birds are absent, unlike the early morning when they fight over their place at the feeder, eager to show their authority and establish their territory. The ground hog, bravely crawling around the edge of his burrow only yesterday, has gone back to sleep, in the wake of today’s snowstorm. And Herbie, my four-year-old goldfish, snuggled in his covering of leaves and muck at the bottom of his ice roofed pond, sleeps under six feet of snow. My eyes search the darkness, a peaceful quiet fills the night and my work begins.

I move my arm and leg back and forth, round and round in the intense heat of the water knowing that I am taking liberties, aware that I would not have the same mobility, had it not been for the water. Extreme pain, tightness and spasms caused by a recent fall, yields to the hot fluid’s power and weightlessness. Fear of aggravating bruised areas and further insulting my bones and muscles, I carefully go through the motions again - and again. Soon, I feel at one with the water and the night, and a peaceful quiet fills me and my work is finished.

I hesitantly leave my incubator and step into the cold snow, aware of how I have insulated my body. Unlike some of my grandchildren, who might like to roll in the snow, I leave my sanctuary and the quiet night, to go quickly indoors. For an hour after my indulgence, I feel the heat of the water that had wrapped me. And as I move under flannelette layers to sleep, I think how God gives us a covering of peace, comforts us in the most trying times of our life, saturates us with love and confidence and envelopes our hurts and wounds. God insulates us in the challenges of life, long after we are aware.

Donna Mann

Finding Hope in the Midst of the Pain - Lindquist

This morning, the headline on the Toronto Star's front page tells of the first local homicide of 2007. A woman named Jean Springer who was shot as she answered her front door on New Year's day. Jean, who according to the Star was known to her friends as "Auntie Jeannie," was in her 60's. She was preparing dinner for her family when she answered the door.

A man has been arrested. But a woman's life is gone, and a family is devastated.

According to the Star, "Toronto Mayor David Miller said the shooting 'is a very sobering reminder we simply have to get the guns off our streets.'"

But the most chilling part of the story is that Jean Springer was not a gang member or a nasty person, but a wife, mother, neighbour, and church leader. The Star quotes a neighbour as saying, "Jean realized the way to change people was through a relationship with God, which is why she chose the church as her arena to effect change in her community."

I hate to see 2007 start this way, but unfortunately, it's a continuation of the past year. Throughout 2006, as I read the many sad and frightening headlines announcing wars and rumours of wars, poverty, shootings, disease, and all the other terrible things people do to other people, I often felt overwhelmed by the inexplicable cruelty of people toward other people - even their own family members. I frequently was shocked by how little value some people place on life.

And yet I know that God sees everything. And I believe, as Jean did, that the best way to change our world is by helping people come to a genuine, growing relationship with God. That, and only that, will get the guns off the street.

And I know there is hope even in the midst of the pain.

This Christmas, a non-writer I'm mentoring gave me a set of sticky notes that have on them the following saying by Martin Luther: "If you want to change the world, pick up your pen."

That phrase reminded me of the words Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote back in 1864, in his carol, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day."

And in despair I bowed my head.
There is no peace on earth, I said,
For hate is strong and mocks the song
of peace on earth, good will to men.
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.

What a privilege to be able to write words that could impact a complete stranger nearly 150 years after they were written! And the words are just as true today as they were in 1864. God still sees everything, and he will prevail. All is not as it seems.

And what a privilege we writers have today, to send out words God can use. We may never know who will read them and be influenced by them, but we can trust God to see that they accomplish the work he has for them.

And there is so much work still to be done, by everyone else who knows the living God. But if we each do our part, even in the midst of anger and hatred and destruction, we will see change for the better. And one day, the guns will be put down.

God's blessings on you for this new year. May you find the hope that God brings.

N. J.

Article in the Toronto Star.
Complete words to "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" here.