Thursday Thoughts - Seasonally Confused

This thought has really been going through my head a lot for the past few weeks.  Because when I think about it, sometimes I feel like I am truly Seasonally Confused.  I have been contemplating whether I should write about this or not, and after a hilarious group text discussion with my friends from high school about when one should start with all the Christmas (after Halloween or after Thanksgiving?) I knew that was a sign that I needed to write today's "Thursday Thoughts" series on this.

Me on Sunday 11/1/2020

So, this is obviously a selfie of me.   I took this selfie on Sunday with my Sunday outfit on.  A new dress that I bought on clearance...that had no sleeves with a 3/4 sleeve cover up.  And that is where part of my confusion about seasons begins.  Because while everyone is saying we have "sweater weather" I am still going to work in short sleeved shirts (and feeling fine!).  When I preached, I routinely wore dressy tank tops or sleeveless dresses no matter what the weather was outside because I always got so warm!  Even at church now, on the 2 days I stood in front of people singing I wore a sleeveless dress with a light coverup because it was cold outside but I knew at some point I might start to overheat.  I have always been like this.

I am still wearing my "summer shoes" to work, church, and other places.  They are so comfortable and are good "no sock shoes" but are still acceptable for work because my toes are not exposed.  Only one really cold day did I wear my warmer shoes with socks to work.  A few times I have worn sneakers on a weekend with short socks.   Even though it is November, I refuse to stop wearing these comfortable shoes because my feet are still fine.

And don't get me started on music.  I listen to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra year-round.  Yes, they have a few albums that are not Christmas-based, but that is the type of music they are known for.  So, it is not out of character to hear me listening to Christmas Canon or Wizards of Winter or Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 at any point in the year, even in August!  Currently in my car I am doing a regular rotation of organ versions of songs heard around Holy Week like Faure's The Palms, All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name (Diadem version!), and Christ the Lord is Risen today.  I also recently added Advent and Christmas music including O Come All Ye Faithful and Angels We Have Heard on High.

So I have learned that I am Seasonally Confused.  And that is just a part of who I am.

Merging is a New Journey - My Church Family

 "Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing." - 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NRSV)

 We are almost at a year from when we had the official vote to accept the merger agreement.  Though that was not the start of the process (it began many months prior to this) it was the beginning of "the end" so to speak.  There were bumps in the road, most notably the stoppage of all in-person worship services in mid-March which led to us postponing our official merger service until July.

Anastasia and I at our first official service at PUMC

Before July I had been attending worship most Sundays via YouTube or Zoom at PUMC, and even though some of the names seemed familiar, I felt welcomed but a bit of a disconnect.  Once we merged, most Sundays I have been attending in-person worship, started to recognize mask-covered faces and voices, felt welcomed, but there was still a disconnect.

This past week PUMC had their Charge Conference via Zoom, and for the first time I looked at a screen full of faces and saw My Church Family.  Not the congregation members I was merged into.  Not people who I sort of knew from here or there.  My Church Family.

I don't know how the rest of the people from Wappingers are feeling.  But I can honestly say, something has changed in the last few weeks that made me feel like I was part of PUMC and not someone who simply came in from a merger.

It is strange, though, because I am normally a very introverted person.  Talking to people I don't really know is not something I like to do.  I'd rather stand back and observe.  Or stand with a group and observe and listen.  Or admire from afar.  When I took the selfie above with my niece, I fully expected to be away from things for awhile.

Yet, here I am now...seeing My Church Family at a church meeting.  Learning more about people in My Church Family.  Being in a small group with some people from My Church Family.  Singing and worshiping with My Church Family.  Opening my mouth and not being afraid to say things that are slightly embarrassing to people in My Church Family.  Just being me with My Church Family.

It obviously has taken a long time for me to get to this point.  Maybe it would have been shorter had we not been in a pandemic which caused such strangeness even after the completion of the merger.  I know there will still be new paths for me to follow in this journey, so I hesitate to say that this series is over.  But I feel like I am in a good place now.  (And soon I might begin on my project to put this series together as one person's thoughts on the process for others who went through, or are going through or will be going through the same thing.)

Thursday Thoughts - Why Am I so Nervous All The Time?

 That is a good question.

And one I don't have an answer for.  But maybe writing about it will help me through it.

Lately I have found that I am constantly nervous.  Like that feeling in your stomach when you are anxious, worried, scared, or excited about something.  It doesn't seem to be centered on any one thing, at least not all the time.  And no, I do not think it is COVID-related.

Like today, I was driving in to work and I felt it in the pit of my stomach.  Same thing happened yesterday.  Nothing nerve-wracking is going on at work and my job is my job so there really is nothing to be nervous about.

Okay, so Sunday should be a fun day (providing musical assistance in 2 church services, in person and live stream) and maybe I am just getting overly nervous ahead of time?

But what has become a problem for at least the last month is my new overnight habit.

I typically wake up at some point overnight to get a drink of water.  It used to be that I would wake up, drink some water, turn over, and fall right back to sleep.

But not now!  I wake up, get a drink of water, turn over, and stay awake with varying thoughts running through my head for at least an hour before I get to sleep.  One night this happened at 6am and by 6:30am I gave up and just got up to start my day.  Last night this happened to me twice in the night.

I really wish I could figure out what is going on in my head or my heart or wherever that is making me feel like this all the time.

I suppose, though, the alternative would be me in a constant state of crying which would be bad for so many reasons (more headaches, constantly feeling tired from it, and just in general not being a good thing).  Though I would get the look below from Sparkle who is starting to learn empathy when it comes to me being upset.  (She hasn't figured out migraine days yet.)

How Sparkle looks at me when I'm upset.

So there is this week's Thursday Thought.  

Please know these are my personal feelings and I am sorry if I am not living up to the perfect, problem-free, happy-to-look-like-me-and-being-alone person that I have been expected to be in the past.  I am human after all, striving to be better every day with God's help.

Merging is a New Journey - Sometimes, I feel.....

 "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."  -Jeremiah 29:11 (NRSV) 

 
When those of us left at Wappingers UMC started to really pray and seek God's guidance on the position we were in and what we should do, it was a very strange time.  I honestly can't speak about anyone else's thoughts, but I can speak of my own.

I was frustrated.  I was upset.  I was angry.  I was sad.  Not at anyone in particular, except myself.

Not that I am the be-all and end-all to anything (because I am far from it), but I felt as a leader within my own local congregation...not to mention also involved at the district and conference levels, I should have done better for my local congregation.  

So I become mad at myself.  I become angry at myself.  I become upset at myself.  Because, though I don't know what I could have done, I feel like maybe there was something I could have done.  I feel like a failure.

Please do not think I am seeking pity, because I am not.  I am slowly feeling like I am getting back into praising God the way I used to.  I am slowly getting back into the swing of being a church member and helping where I can.

But while I also sometimes feel frustrated, upset, angry, sad, and like a failure...I also feel invigorated, excited, joyful, happy, nervous, scared, and probably other emotions I can't think of right now.

It is a very strange position to be in...all these varied mixed feelings.

But this verse from Jeremiah has given me a new view.  Yes, I read it and consider it about myself and my own personal life.  But I also see it from the perspective as someone who has gone through a church merger.  Hope is an important thing to have when one is dealing with a merger.  There is hope that everyone is okay with the decision.  Hope that each part of the process goes well.  Hope that you can adjust.  Hope that you can find new life and purpose.  Hope for the future.

So I may continue to struggle with these feelings, as anyone would in the same position.  But each week my hope grows and gets renewed.

Starting a new thing (first online worship at PUMC, March 2020)

Thursday Thoughts - My 3 Master's (aka why I was a crazy loon)

 So, I guess you could say I am starting a new series that I guess I am starting on this Thursday so I called it Thursday Thoughts.  It has nothing to do with my Merging is a New Journey series, which I expect will continue as I experience new/familiar things, though maybe not as frequently.

Sometimes I have these dreams about being with faceless people - I can't identify who they are - but I am doing normal things with them, or what would have been considered normal in the past, like walking through a mall or sitting in a park or going to a movie or having a cup of coffee.

The most recent dream of a faceless person was sitting outside of a coffee shop, drinking coffee, and talking to this person about my 3 Master's Degrees.

The sign my sister had made for my recent graduation

So, the faceless person asks the question that winds up being on everyone's mind, "Why 3 Master's Degrees?"

My answer to the faceless person is very different from what I used to answer other people when they asked the same question.  My answer used to be "because I thought it would help me be better in my job" and "because I want to do something different in my life."  And I still believe what I have learned will benefit me in my job.

But here is what I say to the faceless person.  "I was trying to prove to myself that I am smart too."

About 3 years ago I wrote about my time as someone who was engaged.  I'm not sure many people read that blog entry.  I'm not sure many people have read much of what I have been writing about lately either.  But anyway, I wrote about some of the reasons why I wound up ending the engagement.  One of the reasons was related to knowledge.

The guy I was engaged to was smart.  I like smart people.  I like people who know about something so well that I can learn from them.  Or I can enjoy something about them.  I could watch musicians play for hours.  I like watching friends and others play video games that I would lose a life within 5 seconds.  And when I don't have a migraine, I like to watch the games my niece plays on the tablet from time to time and the house designs she makes in her games.

But I don't like when I am made to feel stupid by those same people.  And my ex-fiance made me feel stupid any time he spouted off information and it was even worse when I started to talk about something I knew a bit about but...you know...he just HAD to know more than I did on the subject.

So in a subtle way, in addition to trying to better myself for my job and maybe be able to do something else in my life, I was also unknowingly trying to prove that I was smart too and that I could be more than just someone in a job with a Bachelor's degree that had nothing to do with what she was doing as an employed person.  Okay, so maybe I wasn't as smart as my ex going for a doctorate in applied mathematics.  But, I managed to get through 3 Master's Degrees with a pretty good GPA, and that is good enough for me.

Merging is a New Journey - Revived (and Music is my Obsession)

 I just looked and I have been writing these blog entries since February, 8 months.  And I know I just wrote an entry last week.  But participating in the Laity Sunday service yesterday really got to me in a way I totally did not expect.

My vocal warmup 10/18/2020

My iPod playing all 1,000+ songs in a random manner happened upon this particular song as I headed to church on Sunday. It was a good song to have a vocal warmup to with my planned early morning solo.  It was the first time I really belted out a song before I had properly woken up, before I had consumed my morning coffee, and certainly before the afternoon.  I tend to sing in the car, sometimes, on my drive home from places but never in the morning.  For no reason other than I usually am still in the process of waking up and I don't really feel like singing then.

So I get to church and go over some last-minute things and pray together before the service started.  And then I participated in the service.  By the postlude several things had happened:

1) I felt like a member of the congregation who did things for church, not just someone who was sitting and enjoying worship week after week.  I thought I had wanted to remain "dormant" and "resting" for longer, but that was no longer the case.

2) I had sung a solo in front of a bunch of people, some of whom I have gotten to know over the past few months, some of whom I remember the top half of faces from seeing them week after week, and some I had no idea who they were.  Yes, I was nervous. But I got through it.

3) I wanted to jump and dance to the music that was being shared.  Every so often that would happen with particular hymns.  But I haven't experienced it in awhile, until yesterday.

4) I have become obsessed with music.

I want to explain the last statement a bit.

I have always loved music.  I remember learning songs with whatever the children's choir was called at the Presbyterian church in Wappingers where we went before we started attending Wappingers UMC.  Music was always my favorite class in school from elementary school right through high school.  I sang in school choruses and played in band.  My love of music eventually grew to enjoying movie soundtracks, with John Williams as my first favorite composer.  Music classes gave me interest in my favorite movie musicals (Fiddler on the Roof) and large music performances such as Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio.  Church choir, as I got older, introduced me to John Rutter's Requiem, the entirety of Handel's Messiah (not just the Hallelujah Chorus), and Vivaldi's Gloria.

But at some point, there was this disconnect between music and what it did to me.  But that disconnect has been repaired.  I suddenly now have a reinvigorated love of music, that I was singing in the car this morning on my way to work.  I am singing songs with lyrics or musical parts of instrumental songs.  And not quietly.  Loudly.  Music is my obsession.

I do not know what is in my future for continued involvement at church.  But I am eagerly looking forward to whatever lies ahead.  Especially if it is music-based.

Merging is a New Journey - A Different Laity Sunday & Becoming Involved

 

A song from my iPod

Famous last words: I will NOT be doing anything for Laity Sunday this year except sitting back and watching everyone else!

Seriously.  I said that.  Ask my sister!

Guess what is NOT happening this Laity Sunday?

For those who don't know, Laity Sunday is something that has been done in the United Methodist Church for many years, going back originally to 1928 and a day set aside called "Laymen's Day" and then renamed in 1972 as Laity Sunday to recognize the work and mission of all of the people in the church and what they did not just within the 4 building walls but outside of those walls as well.

And, some of you may know that organizing and usually preaching on Laity Sunday has been one of my responsibilities for more years than I can remember.  Last year took a lot out of me because it was the last one at Wappingers, and even though I had a script to follow at the end I stopped using it and wound up anointing everyone who was there.  It drained me physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  So I was really looking forward to not doing ANYTHING this year.

So we move now into becoming involved.  Church was able to start up small groups again, so I reached out and was placed in a small group that meets every other Tuesday evening.  We are reading through a study book and discussing it.  The group is such a blessing and they welcomed me with open air arms (because we can't really have open arms for hugs).  And the first week I attended we talked about singing and being involved in choir (when singing in groups was allowed).

So....even though I wanted to take a break...I will now be participating in Laity Sunday.  Along with many other people. 

Last night we had rehearsal time.  And though many people's faces (or half faces) were familiar as I attended virtual worship and later in-person worship, I felt not like an outsider looking in but rather a true part of the congregation.  (Though I was VERY nervous before I had to rehearse what I was doing!)  Someone who is starting to get involved in more than just the worship experience.  

So why a picture of the song "Beautiful Ending" by BarlowGirl?  I sang this pretty loudly in my car on the way home from work on Friday, while I was tired and just not feeling right as a reaction from my flu shot the day before.  But the song has been a bit of an ear worm since Friday (along with Save the Child from Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio) and an encouragement for me.

It will be a very different Laity Sunday for me this coming Sunday.  But I am looking forward to it.  And I am also looking forward to being more involved in the coming months and years with my new church family.