Welcome

Dear Friends,
I am starting a new blog today because I want to create a new life for myself and I need to write it as I go. Life happens in imagination. For example, recently someone said to me, "wow, it must be nice to have four or five guys interested in you," or something like that. Hmm. It should be nice, shouldn't it? But it isn't. Not for me. Not in my imagination.

In my imagination it is a burden and a disappointment. I don't know what to do with these men. I'm quite sure I'm messing with all of them in ways I shouldn't, yet I mean no harm. I'm just lonely and reaching out however I can, making it up as I go along.

I want to keep a positive tone to this blog. I am hoping that the title will remind me every day that I am creating my own life in my imagination and what I imagine is being reflected back to me in all my interactions throughout the day.

So, I begin with a data dump ~ not positive at all. But I want to take a good look at what I have been thinking up for myself so I can evaluate it and make intentional changes. This life is really precious and I have so much to give. It would be a real shame to skip the work necessary to move into the great love of my life and bring fulfillment to myself and another. Remaining broken in my relationships is a poor choice. I want to make a better one.

What has been going through my mind is this:

1. I'm lonely. There is no one on this earth who understands me or really cares. Okay, I know that is not true, or not more true for me than for others. Let me try again. I have designed a life that is so fractured that nobody can know me the way I want to be known. Anyway, I'm lonely and I feel it every day. This I must face, experience, learn from, and move beyond. Loneliness is not to be feared or to be conquered, but neither is it to be wallowed in day after day after day. Time to find a positive direction.

2. I don't know how to have a relationship with a man. I don't know how to meet men responsibly. I don't know how to set good boundaries in the first emails and phone calls. I don't know how to carry myself on a first date. I don't know how to date several men at once and just leave it at dating. I don't know if I want to learn how to do that, but I do know what I am doing now is not working for me.

3. I have chosen a career path that has been the great blessing of my life and also my un-doing. There is no way I can do what I need to do with this blog without naming that career, so I'll tell you: Christian ministry. There it is. I wrote it and my stomach churned. I have such an attraction and such a revulsion to ministry that I cannot stay away and cannot get comfortable. This is a deep source of my loneliness. Oh goddess goodness graciousness, how I would love to be in relationship with a man who can understand, really understand my complicated feelings about this issue and still love me. I expect to write a good deal about my experiences in seminary, with my church, and my struggle to accept or reject my chosen path.

4. I'm sick. I've been on full time Social Security Disability for eleven years because I have narcolepsy. I don't think I'll write much about this, but it is a factor in everything else in my life. Briefly, it is a neurological condition that primarily functions as a sleep disorder. I do not have any stage 4 sleep (deep sleep). Nobody knows why or what to do about it. Therefore, I am almost always tired, sometimes profoundly exhausted. I have the kind of narcolepsy that is complicated by cataplexy. That means I experience random paralysis. The way I understand it, some portion of my body, or my whole body, just decides it is asleep. So, my leg can go out from under me. Or I can get double vision. Or I can just collapse. Or my speech might slur. On and on. I suppose the possible manifestations are nearly infinite. My most common experiences with narcolepsy are persistent fatigue, with episodes of paralysis in one or both legs, some slurred speech or difficulty forming words verbally, or whole body collapse. The whole body collapse is not total and is not completely sudden, though it happens rapidly. So! The good news is I still have my driver's license. If an episode comes on while I am driving, I have to go immediately to a safe place and rest, but I do have control of the car long enough to do that. If it gets worse as I age I could lose my license. Enough said about that.

Finally, I chose the name "Mary Poppins" for my pseudonym for this blog because I want to remember to go fly a kite and to jump into chalk drawings and ride carousels in my life. I have a tendency to take myself too seriously. I need to lighten up.

I'd like to leave this blog open, but already in this post I have given enough information about myself to be recognizable to people who know me. I mean, how many single woman pastors do you know who are in seminary and have narcolepsy? But, how can I write what I need to write if those factors are not openly discussed? So, let's try this. I'll leave it open for a while because I really think the chances are quite small that someone I know will happen upon this blog. If you do know me, please extend me the courtesy of telling me you've been here and understand that I'd prefer you keep my anonymity. Everyone else, welcome. Please leave a comment, and let's see if we can make a little community. Okay?

Imagine a good life!
Mary