Patchwork quilt

As I mentioned in a previous post, I felt like God told me that 2016 would be like a kaleidoscope for me. In another post, I wrote about how God had shown me that the year 2016 was going to be what the year 2000 was supposed to have been for me. (I turned 40 this year, but in many ways I was reliving age 24 all over again... minus the trip to the psych hospital and minus everything in my life being taken away from me.)

I also felt like He said that my 2016 would be like a patchwork quilt. I've never made a quilt, but from what I understand, doing so is a lot of work. There are individual squares of material that you need to spend time collecting and sewing together. I think many quilts are actually crafted together by groups of people (e.g., quilting bees) rather than just one person. But the end product is a beautiful decoration (especially if you hang it on the wall like a work of art) full of memories and can keep you warm for years to come.

And that's what 2016 was for me. It was little mini-seasons all collected and organized into one sturdy, memorable life-lesson covering that I will be able to refer back to for the rest of my life. I would like to highlight a few of them here.

 

1) My cat got very sick and died. 2016 has been notorious for being the year that many beloved celebrities died. With all due respect, forget them. I lost someone more precious to me that any stupid celebrity. I'm tearing up again just typing this. Macho was a part of me, and I was a part of him -- not in an unhealthy way but in the way that maybe you would feel if your child, your brother, your best friend, and your roommate were rolled up into one person and was suddenly gone.

I think maybe Macho's illness(es) and his death actually take up more than one patch on my quilt, because they affected me pretty much all year long. Here in this post, I've displayed a photo that I took on January 30th. He was in a lot of pain because he was unable to urinate. I snapped the photo with my phone after he had crawled into my lap, and I hope being there comforted him at least a little bit. This was the last picture that I took of him before, um, they surgically removed the part of his body that had enabled him to pee like a boy.

This surgery bought him about six months of life. Living with him was very messy after that, but it was worth every penny.

Even though he's been gone for a long time, my soul is still adjusting to not having him. Sometimes when I leave for work in the mornings, I still find myself praying for my "cats." Sometimes when I'm going about my day, I still think up little songs to sing to Macho, and then I remember that he's gone.

But I still have Choochie. If you think I grieved hard after Macho's death, I think I may grieve even harder when it's time for Choochie to go. (I may even have to take like a week off from work. Gosh.)

2) Choochie found a new voice. Macho was my spokescat, so after he left us, my home became a much quieter place. Choochie had to make all kinds of adjustments: She got to eat in a different room, I had to start social-grooming her, and nobody was around to meow for her anymore.

Now she has an adorable little trill-meow. It's kind of a girly flirtatious meow that she whips out when she wants to snuggle with me. Of course she has me wrapped around her little paw-finger.

So, now that she has me all to herself, she's insisted on sleeping on my pillow every night. Our new routine is that she will crawl halfway inside the covers and perch her hind feet on my bicep while she snuggles next to me. That is how we sleep now. And we both lived happily ever after.

3) I moved to a new apartment. This took up multiple patches on my quilt, if not determined the entire color scheme of the quilt. (I'm planning to write more about this.) I'm still surrounded by some boxes as I type this, but so far this has been a very good change for me and Choochie.

4) I'm leading in two different places at church now. After God had told me that 2016 was going to be like 2000, and after the worship department at my church announced that we choir people could evaluate/audition for other worship teams at my church, I had a hunch that I would get chosen. (In 2000, I was on a worship team, in addition to being a small-group leader.)

It's a tremendous honor to be on the worship platform at all -- whether it's in the choir or someplace else. I don't deserve to be there. But maybe that's why I'm there: God can rub in the enemy's face his failure to destroy my life. Maybe God's like, "Yep, she's like a cockroach. She doesn't die easily." Heh.

Wait. Since I'm a leader and people pay attention to what I say and do, maybe I should behave on my blog. Um... I am so blessed. That's what I'm supposed to say, right? Heh.

5) The emotional turmoil swirled around in my insides. I've learned that rejection is like my kryptonite. Anytime I feel rejected, overlooked, ignored, or overtly not-chosen, it kind of turns me into an emotional 9-year-old and ruins my day. I'm still working on that (because it's not supposed to ruin my day).

In 2000, leading up to my suicide attempt, I truly had a living hell inside my head. It was a series of bad choices, a couple of years of fighting depression, a lifetime-lie that Christians weren't supposed to feel that way, and a raging anger toward God... I think all of that was stuffed deeply inside me, and it fed the demons. But what I didn't know was that I could pour out my heart -- and all of the anger and the junk inside it -- to God and that doing so would create a safe place for me. (See Psalm 62:8.)

In 2016, God basically told me that anytime I emotionally work my way through a ruined day, it insults Him anytime I don't talk to Him about it. When He told me that, it wasn't like in a condemning or shaming way; it was sort of as if I had accidentally insulted a spouse or a deep friend who actually wants to be there for me. I'm sorry, Lord. I don't want to insult You. If You want my crap, You got it. Seriously.

That's how I finally learned to be un-depressed in the first place all those years ago: Pour out my heart to God, receive His love, rinse and repeat.

"For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, lest the righteous reach out their hands to iniquity." (Psalm 125:3)

I remember back in 2000 when I was struggling with depression, God put this Bible verse on my heart. In 2016, He showed me that the scepter in this verse (at least for me) isn't like a cute little king's scepter; it's more like a walking stick. It works sort of like a shepherd's crook. In other words (at least for me), a scepter of wickedness in my promised land would sort of be like this huge crook of iniquity saying, "I know you want to follow God and His ways, but you're doomed to follow me and my ways instead. Drown yourself in your own filth yet again, because you can't help it."

Nope. God doesn't want that. And neither do I. Any iniquity, any propensity toward sin in my life -- whether it's depression, lust, religion, dishonesty, pride, etc. -- isn't welcome in my territory. Any trespassers will be taken captive, prosecuted, and condemned to death. Heh.

And I won't be able to do that alone. If I don't let God help me, I'm toast. I know that.

So, I think I touched on the major highlights of my 2016. I've felt like God has said that my 2017 will be a year of rest. After all I've been through, I sure am looking forward to getting some rest!