I wrote this July 11, 2009 on my facebook page:

Today has been a painful day. The aches in my body have hit what I hope is a peak, where the act of standing and sitting is sometimes too much. I have fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition where aches and pain come about for apparently no reason at all. I think it’s just one manifestation of something deeper within me, something that causes everything to be in overload all the time – like my emotions in the form of depression/bipolar II, my intestines in the form of IBS, in my sinuses in the form of year-round allergies.

For the first half of the day, I felt pretty sorry for myself. I’d gone about 3 months without a flare, and I thought they were done, like all the hard work I’ve put in in the last three months since my hospitalization was starting to manifest in good health. I mean, I’ve been eating well, exercising regularly, have even gotten to within 5 pounds of my pre-pregnancy (before Ahmir!) weight. I’ve been trying so hard to get better, and this setback threatened to be more than I could handle.

But as I walked through the bookstore this afternoon, trying to distract my mind from the pain, it came to me that I AM NOT MY PAIN. I need to say it again: I AM NOT MY PAIN. I am not the stiffness in my neck, the electric shocks in my arms, the soreness in my legs. I am not the suffering attached to the pain, the feeling of self-pity, guilt, and shame.

I had to remind myself of who I really am, beneath, because, and in spite of, the pain. Beneath my pain I am a child of God, made in the image of the Truth, perfect in my imperfection. I have a purpose in this life that is there with or without pain. I am rooted and established in Love. Because of my pain I am (learning) patience, compassion, empathy, and insight. I know some things that others do not because I have experienced this pain and lived to tell about it. I know what It means to feel pain and am able to comfort those who also feel pain. In spite of the pain I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, and a friend. I strive very hard to be good in all those roles, and know that most times I am giving all that I can to those relationships. I am multi-talented – I write, I sing, I draw, I paint, I photograph. And I do them well. I am an excellent student who will be an excellent scholar, an academic who can cross disciplinary boundaries with grace and ease. Pain can’t take any of those things away from me.

But I get angry sometimes too. I love God, I fear God, and sometimes I am so angry with God because I can’t understand. I can’t understand why I am in this pain, when I see people out there doing dirt but living happy, pain-free lives. And then I remember that in ALL things, God works for my good. ALL things. So while this pain is, well, painful, the lessons and blessings from it will be greater than I can ever imagine. Without this pain, maybe I wouldn’t have the compassion that I admire in myself. Without this pain, maybe I wouldn’t be learning the lesson of the importance of self-care, and not giving all of me away without first taking some of me for myself. Without this pain, I wouldn’t be cultivating this relationship with God that I didn’t have before.

And if I am not my pain, who am I? I’m a friend that likes to get Fraiche frozen yogurt on a daily basis (even though it’s $5 a pop). I’m a mother that enjoys taking pictures of her kids and going to the beach. I’m a wife that enjoys laughing with (and at) her husband. I love me a glass of Chardonnay, but even more a Gin and Tonic. I’m a vegetarian who sometimes has a taste for some In-and-Out Burger and some achee and saltfish. I like reality TV, and am especially amused at Wipeout. I’m a bit vain and paint my toenails weekly, keep my nails femininely long, am obsessed with my hair and just bought an eyebrow pencil and brush. I thought Twilight was okay (I just finished New Moon and think I’ma take a weeks-long break before starting book 3). I don’t always like to shower but do it because it’s considered good hygiene (and my husband badgers me about it). I like candy.

And all of that is much more important to me than this pain.

P.S. I tagged you not for any particular reason except that I thought maybe you’d like to know me a little better. If not, sorry. And I’d like to say that I won’t be obsessively checking to see if anyone comments, but that would be a lie. But please don’t let that compel you to respond. That’s my issue, not yours.

I feel like I’ve been MIA lately, in that so much is going on in the news and in my life and I haavent been my opiniontes self, at least not in uber-public forums such as this. But things are getting nutty and I feel drawn back in. From Iran to MJ to BET to Honduras to hip-hop to disability and bipolarity to parenting and religion, I’m in all these places trying to make sense of it all.

A few thoughts to get me started: BET might just be the worse thing out there for black people today. I’m in favor of renaming it Bamboozled Exploitation Television. Just downright shameful. Micheal Jackson is the greatest entertainer ever. No qualifications neccessary. He never wanted not to be black, but rather be accepted by all. We need to be watching the reaction to what’s happening in Iran. There was a coup in Honduras, reminiscint of Haiti. Again, watch. Hip-hop makes me sick. From now on, I’m caring about me, as both black and woman. If you are not for me, you are against me. That’s a warning to everyone. Mental illness is as much a disability as physical illness. I’m glad my university gets it. Do diagnoses really matter at the end of the day? I just want to be better, but Much of my recovery will depend on me. Makes life a little less fun, but a whole lot more worth living. In church yesterday, pastor preached a out understanding your true self on God’s eyes. I am coming to know that I am rooted and established in love that surpasses knowledge, and that gem of truth is what takes me through each day.

Have a wonderfully blessed day!

I don’t know if I can survive in this business. As an update to a previous post, my ASA submission was actually accepted, so I’ll be presenting in a regular session. But while this is good news, the feedback I received has my heart racing and my stomach all upset and I don’t know if I can deal with this for the rest of my career as a sociologist. The first review was not so bad, suggesting that I add something to the paper to further contextualize it. Fine. But the second review, while stating that the paper is well done, boils down to saying that I’m not saying anything new. Which, in a way, I agree with. I don’t think much of anything in sociology is saying anything new. But what I think I’m doing is conceptualizing something that we already know to 1) broaden the concept as it’s been used in the past and 2) give us a new way of understanding not just the phenomenon I use as an empirical example, but also other parallel phenomena.

Ok, now that I’ve written that out I feel a little better in that I have a response to the critique. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Oh man, this is going to be the death of me. Please tell me this gets easier (even if it doesn’t, I need to be talked off of the ledge.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about priorities lately, and I’m sure you’ve noticed my lack of posting lately. As I haven’t been writing (or reading in the blogoshere for that matter) I’ve found, much to my surprise, that I really don’t have all this free time left over. Blogging takes time, but I used to think it was time I had. But I was wrong. I really don’t have time to blog, if I also want to do things like eat and sleep, and not multitask while I’m doing them (well of course not while sleeping, blogging actually took sleeping time.) I don’t want to delete the blog, as I’d like to share some things, but I’m coming to the realization that it must be sporadic, at times like now where I’m just waiting for a child to fall asleep. On mothers day. *sigh* I’m a bit of an exhibitionist, if I’m brave enough to admit it – I like to put myself out there, it keeps me honest and in the present- so I will be twittering. Follow me if you like

When I think of The Rest, the first thought that comes to mind is “what remains,” “leftover,” as in “…and all the rest.” It was only today, as I talked to my doctor, that I realized the fallacy in my thinking. I was talking about how my energy shifted from last week’s hype-ness to this week’s lethargy. She replied that with all I’d been through lately, she wasn’t surprised that my body needed a lot of rest.

Rest for me has always come once everything was done, which meant that I often don’t get a lot of it. But of course the body is a bit more intelligent than the mind, and inevitably my body knocks me on my behind to the point where The Rest is no longer what remains or what is leftover after more important things are done, but primary, what gets done before all else. The Rest becomes as important as Doing, Thinking, and Planning, if not more so.

I’ve learned (or better yet, am *hopefully* learning) that The Rest does not take kindly to being an afterthought. The Rest for me is like gas in my car – it *can* run on fumes, but it’s not very happy doing so. It shakes a bit, sputters, and everything is just working so hard just to get up that hill that would be child’s play on a full tank. I know people who never let their tank get to less than a 1/4 full. They never run out of gas.

I’m trying to commit being done with relegating My Rest to The Rest, i.e. what’s leftover. Rather than taking The Rest only when I have nothing left, My Rest needs to come before the sputter, before the “doing too much” feeling creeps up, before the gas is gone. The thrill of seeing how low the tank can go, how long I can drive with the light on, how much further past ‘E’ the gauge can go, that thrill no longer excites me. I used to feel proud that my car could go another 70 miles once the light came on. No more.

I have to Rest what I’ve got before I don’t have it anymore.

I was listening to NPR this evening, and I heard a word that I like a lot: cacophony. Webster (well, okay, not Webster, but dictionary.com) defines cacophony as:

ca⋅coph⋅o⋅ny/kəˈkɒfəni/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kuh-kof-uh-nee]

1.	harsh discordance of sound; dissonance: a cacophony of hoots, cackles, and wails.

2.	a discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds: the cacophony produced by city traffic at midday.

3.           Music. frequent use of discords of a harshness and relationship difficult to understand.

I don’t like cacophony, but I like the sound of the word.

Speaking of which, I do have a favorite word whose meaning I really like: serendipity.

ser⋅en⋅dip⋅i⋅ty /ˌsɛrənˈdɪpɪti/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ser-uhn-dip-i-tee]

1.	an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.

2.           good fortune; luck: the serendipity of getting the first job she applied for.

Who wouldn’t like that? Do you have a favorite word?

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while, especially as Black History Month bled into Women’s History Month. As I think about my own intersection, convergence, or crashing together of my blackness and my womaness, my questions and examinations of my identity as a black woman are part of a spiritual crisis that I am going through right now.

I’ve been going to a different church these past two weeks, partly to absorb and feel out their African-centeredness to see if it’s for me, but also to get away from some patriarchal issues I was/am having with my usual church. And I’ve been reading a lot of books – Katie’s Cannon, Moses, Man of the Mountain, and Diary of a Lost Black Girl, to name a few. And I follow The Kitchen Table. And the news. And all of it has me utterly confused about my place as a black woman, in America, in the world, and in my God’s kingdom. Now of course I have other issues, like depression and fibromyalgia, that are also weighing heavy on my heart. But it’s hard to describe them here because they are so deep I can hardly stand to speak them aloud for myself.

A large part of it all is a feeling that Jesus has somehow forgotten about me, despite my loyalty. Although He promised not to give me more than I can bear, I can’t shake the feeling of permanency, like I can handle this now/today, but I don’t think I can bear it for a lifetime. That despite all my blessings, for I have many including a strong and loving husband and two beautiful children, I feel slighted that I don’t also have peace of body and peace of mind. That I would give it up, be stupid and ugly if I could at least feel content. I don’t even need happiness, but I can certainly do without agitation and despair.

And that’s selfish, I know. I know that there are people in much worse positions than I. But I also wonder, as many of the above books allude to, if it’s simpy the black woman’s burden to bear. Are we really just de mules uh de world, as Zora Neale Hurston wrote, destined to carry the load given by the white man to the black man to bear, who then caste it to the black woman? Is it simply a coincidence that the attack on Rhianna and the sugarcoating of Chris Brown’s behavior comes at such an intersecting time? Is my current state of examination and crisis really just the embodiment of the transition from black to woman’s history? Are we, as black women, destined to a life of both internal and external violence and exploitation?

…to any longer feel bad about my financial situation. I have zero dollars in my bank account, mostly due to poor planning on my part for not taking into account the bureaucratic ineptitude of a certain university financial office. We will probably owe the IRS a shit-load of money this year, due to not understanding the fellowship and stipend tax rules or realizing that I could pay the taxes during the year. But even if I did consider this current situation my fault, I think I would still refuse to feel bad. Why is it that we place such high values on people “living within their means” instead of questioning the consumer culture that drives most of our taste? Should I feel bad for desiring a Starbucks latte simply because I may not be able to afford it? Should I more harshly judged for purchasing such drink than a rich(er) person who can afford it?

…to feel bad about what my children DON’T have rather than focusing on what they DO have. For example, not having the specific foods they want for breakfast. Due to the above money situation, the grocery store has not yet been visited. Therefore the beloved oatmeal is not available for consumption this morning, and the last beloved banana had to be split and shared. But there are other things to eat, including yogurt, Cheerios, and crackers. There is waffles and juice. My heart aches that the kids can’t have exactly what they want, and I know that I’ve created an expectation, but damn, a little disappointment now and again cannot hurt that much.

…to feel bad about my “brand” of motherhood. My kids watch TV, and don’t get a bath every night. Breakfast is not always hot cereal, but rather cold stuff. The kitchen and bathroom floors are dirty, and clothes remain unfolded for days. We don’t make our beds. We slap hands and butts every now and again. I yell and fuss. Many nights, I leave the house to do my work, and my kids are aware that I’m leaving. I enjoy spending time without my kids. I have no desire to be a stay-at-home mom even if I could be. I hate living in the suburbs. Doing well in my career means a lot to me, working for social justice means a lot to me, and I want to see all kids have opportunities in life, which means that I may not do exactly what’s best for my kids if it also means that it disadvantages some other kid, especially if they are black or brown. But God entrusted these kids to me, to raise them as I see fit.

I’m “irresponsible” with money because I have average tastes and below average money, I don’t give my kids what they want all the time, even if their requests for oatmeal are perfectly reasonable, and I sometimes place social equality above giving my kids all of me by devoting time to the cause rather than to them. But I’m the mama they have, so everyone just has to deal.

1. Where is the place for women and feminism in the modern church? Where is the place for black women, as de mules uh de world, in the modern church? The church I attend will be having guest speakers for the month of March to celebrate 20 years of the senior pastor being a part of the church. But not one of those speakers are women. In fact, I’ve noticed that whenever there are women giving talks, they are always aimed at other women. So men can tell women about living a Christ-like life, but women can’t do the same for men? Even more profoundly for me – what does it mean, if anything, that Jesus was a man? As I woman, can I ever be like Jesus?

2. Where is the place for social justice activism amongst diversity in the modern church? During the 10th annual State of the Black Union that aired this weekend*, there definitely seemed to be a call to the Black church to revive its roots of social activism. But again, the church I attend is known for it’s diversity, and with that diversity comes a call to be neutral on most political issues. No candidates are endorsed, no police shootings/profiling is declared to be wrong, we didn’t even participate in the National Day of Service b/c that would have been seen as supporting a political candidate. I guess we can’t talk about white privilege or black oppression when the church is as diverse as it is, and the church thrives by building membership, but it strikes me as false to court a diverse membership at the expense of not championing for what is right and using our power as a church to do so. Diversity doesn’t mean that all is right in the world, and I want to be a part of a church that understands that.

3. Am I an African in America or an African-American? I attended an African-centered church today, and  I was moved by the attention to drawing on a history that begins long before the slave trade. I loved that my children, although still young, could soak up some sense of their history, even only through osmosis. But it also got me to thinking – am I am African? While my history is irretrievably shaped by the slave trade, to be an African-American gives half of who I am to people who tried to destroy me, who considered me less than human. And many people say, “Well, our lives today are better than what they would have been had we all stayed in Africa,” but according to what standards? Personally, my bank account is empty b/c I’m a consumerist American, having been indoctrinated into the religion of money. My spiritual account is running low, and I obsess daily about building positive self-esteem in my children in a society that denigrates them. Had I been in Africa, perhaps I would lack that ever presence sense of inferiority that has been hardwired into us over centuries. So perhaps I will start to think of myself as an African in America, remembering that my history did not begin here as an oppressed people, but was rather interrupted.

That’s what’s been on my mind today – any thoughts?

* You can watch both parts at the links above.