goodness is coming
problems will go away
like the prayer
take away my difficulties
that their absence
may show forth
your presence
its a confidence
I didn’t have before
that things will be ok
because you will make sure
they are ok
never had a thought like that before
I didn’t know I needed it but I did.
When you told me that,
not only do I feel you in the church
but other places too.
And you made it so.
What now, what now
What now, What now?
I quit my counseling job. It was part-time. The way I was billing I was not supposed to be counseling because I am not a resident in counseling. I have a hard time thinking that the person that hired me does not know that yet she hired me to do it anyway. I did not confront her on it I just quit. I think should I have not quit? Did I quit for the wrong reason? Should I have stayed? There will be some who won’t get the kind of care they could have if I was there. There could have been trouble with the lady there too since my gut says she’s a blamer. She blamed me for something that was not my responsibility and an office manager did the same thing on another occassion. I think my antenae went up and said danger danger. Thus my action and decision. I am hopefully done with employers who are quick to blame. I need to trust myself. Ok Salvador trust that you made the best decision for yourself and your own well being. My psych dr. said I seemed to be doing better than that last time I saw him. So that seems to confirm the decision too. ok now higher power I want to be done thinking about this.
Shalom ya’ll.
I feel drawn into the quiet this evening. Today I didn’t have much motivation to work so I started reading a book. His presence being subtle but real. The anxiety and the question dying down. I think this is my answer. I was told my solution is spiritual by a psychiatrist when in the hospital after I tried to go home. I think he’s right. I knew he was right but of course my mind needs to complicate things, think about them. This is as close to home as it gets for me and also the music that moves my heart. I need the confidence that this place is right around the corner not far. That in quietness and trust is my strength. I can’t really have the TV on for very long anyway. The simplicity of this has been hard to find and I am still finding. It’s nice to let the questions die down. He doesn’t give answers. And they come back but if he is the answer (such a cliche, I know) but if he is the answer maybe they will die down. Do I need therapy? Did I do the right thing quitting that job? What to do about medicine? They aren’t grabbing me. Who the fuck cares! lol. It doesn’t matter. That is what I heard him say, it doesn’t matter. I think it doesn’t matter will get bigger and the other stuff will get smaller until the other stuff is no more and all that’s left is it doesn’t matter.
Shalom ya’ll
Salvador
Listening to God. Today someone called me and said she lost her keys and wondered if I would go to the church and look around. So I did. I looked all over and when I got in the sanctuary looking I decided to linger. My mind was troubled about something so I stayed. A big quiet room like that is where I feel closest to my higher power and it was wonderful to be with him like that for a while. And I ask myself why I don’t do it more. One of my thoughts is, what if I like it so much one day I just don’t want to leave and decide I’m going to go off and be a monk somewhere. I don’t know how that sounds but it is my blog and I can say whatever I want. 🙂 If you have never tasted of his sweetness in the quiet I highly recommend it. All it takes is a desire for that. At least that is how it has been for me. It was 8 years before I ever did but it was worth the wait. Some people who decide they want that don’t have to wait that long, so I hear and that has been my limited experience in helping others with it. Anyway, I don’t think I will become a monk. I think he has stuff for me to do in helping others. I don’t have a partner either and wonder about that too. I guess if I did she would need to really like the quiet like I do. I didn’t find the ladies keys and my mind is less troubled. It hasn’t always worked like that. I have spent time with him that way and came out just as troubled as I was when I went in but the goal was not to be less troubled but to just be with him and I think he likes that. I think I will start doing that more and see what happens and not worry about becoming a monk.
Now that I’m not counseling the question is what do I do with that time? At least now, I don’t wake up thinking I have to be real productive today because the church pays me to be busy. So I need to find plenty of stuff to do to be busy and earn my keep. I have a counselor and a mentor kind of guy that I talk to. The counselor helped me a lot with that kind of anxiety. I would wake up in the morning really anxious and didn’t know why. Turns out I am a people pleaser, come by it honestly haven’t lived with narcissists most of my life. They will give you a bad case of people pleasing and other shit you really don’t want to suffer with but will as long as it takes to get over it. So I am in recovery from people pleasing and don’t wake up anxious like I did before. The mentor guy has helped me with what it means to be called as a pastor to a church, Presbyterian, anyway and what that means for how I spend my time.
So, now that I have time I can spend more time in doing things like listening to God. That will be the next post.
I have a degree in Marriage and Family therapy and I love doing counseling. Recently along with my job as a pastor I was hired to do counseling for a local agency. I started taking clients and was liking what I was doing. It went south pretty quickly though. I missed a couple appointments and the director sent me an email saying she wanted to talk but did it in a pretty blaming sort of way. That was a red flag for me. So I did some checking and turns out I should not have been doing counseling according to the laws? or rules or whatever of Louisiana. People with master’s degrees can do counseling only if they are a resident in counseling and there is one other designation both of which I do not have. So I tendered my resignation and quit. What if I get sued and I’m not supposed to be doing counseling in the first place. It is a disappointment. I am left wondering why honestly if I have those skills can I not use them. I can with people in my church but it is small and most of these folks are not the go and talk about your problems types.
I have really been listening lately. Just talked to someone on the phone today. It was her birthday and I didn’t know it. That has happened to me before. I was able to help her identify a negative voice that is telling her that things won’t work if she tries them and shared some stuff from my life. My counselor helped me start doing this. After suffering so much I had great anxiety that things would just blow up in my face. She helped me to start trusting my intuition and for me that is where God speaks in my life. I was thinking too that I like the quiet because I feel closer to my higher power. I have thought that before but I am starting to trust that that is true and that also in the quiet I can “hear” about what to do next and stuff. I was thinking that today about the quiet and then I read in Dailey Reflections and it was talking about how we need a 24 hour faith. I don’t think that that was a coincidence either. Today has really been encouraging. I recently went for ketamine therapy and that has helped with my depression so I think that is part of it too. Anyway that’s what I got for today.
Shalom,
Salvador
In quietness and trust is your strength. the prophet Isaiah
I believe that and it is time to put that more into practice. I moved several months ago and the time I was spending in the quiet got messed up. It’s time to change that. This will help me with the stress I think. I am considering ketamine therapy for depression. I am a little on the fence right now as I have and am going to make some changes that could make things better like the quiet. In the quiet I can hear things like this problem may be bigger that you but not bigger than Me. Alcohol was bigger than me but not bigger than my higher power I came to learn. Ketamine therapy is something to consider if you have tried a million things like me with partial results. It has a 70% success rate across the board. That is good for a depression intervention. It works quickly too. No waiting for a month to see if it is going to make a difference. Ketamine clinics are all over the place I am learning. One problem I am having is getting providers to give me their diagnostic code and the specific treatment I would be getting. That is what my insurance says that need to tell me if they will cover it and if it is approved they will reimburse at 80%. I was surprised they covered the treatment. But of course I expect things to be hard, learning to not do that as much. I could do it and then submit and hope they pay. I may have to take that chance. I don’t have 2500 sitting in the bank so I would have to get loans and put things on credit cards. That is what I am not sure I can afford to do as I have a truck on its last legs. But where there is a will there is a way so I will keep after it and start spending more time in the quiet in the mean time and no I don’t think I want to do that because of depression. I am closest to my higher power in the quiet and he is a source of strength I need right now. Don’t stop fighting depression warriors! For me I have to fight.
Shalom ya’ll,
Salvador
It’s been a while since I wrote one of these. The nature of progress. Not long ago my doctor found a testosterone deficiency and has treated me for that. I told him I was still feeling depressed but he instead normalized how I was feeling. Mistake on his part. Rule number 1. Listen to your patient!
I increased the dose of one of my medicines to a more therapeutic dosage. About a week later I can feel a difference. I am able to stop thinking about things easier than I could before and the day today even though with big inconveniences seemed to go smoother in my psyche anyway. I wanted to write this down as sort of a baseline incase I started feeling worse again I can come back and read this and read what I thought was going better. Depression is tricky to me. For me its not always easy to tell if my symptoms are depression symptoms or something else. For me it is best to listen to myself and trust what I think as doctors do not always do that. Over the years if I had listened to the doctor everytime they told me something I might be dead now. People telling me I am barking up the wrong tree when what I needed was to keep trying to find the reason for why I feel the way I do. I just thought of something and I lost it so. Concentration has definitely improved but that may continue to improve as well. So if you are a mental health warrior working on feeling better yourself, keep at it and if others are not listening to you listen to yourself and don’t give up.
Disclaimer: I am not recommending changing medication dosages without consulting your doctor.
Shalom Ya’ll,
Salvador
I don’t always know
what to do in and with this world
or in it
some things i need to learn i suppose
and to try not to get too anxious doing it
but my heart knows him
he gives my heart songs to sing
when I am getting anxious
don’t always know when it will sing
but it has for a couple years now
emotions come from another world
there’s nothing to say then
questions can wait for another time
Hey folks, its been a while since I have been on here. I have moved to Louisiana and pastoring a small church there or here as the case may be. So far so good. There was some apprehension. Will I have the same trouble I was having before with preaching. So far I have not. Did I say those words? Yes I did. So far it has been different and better. I am still a little hesitant to embrace that truth as really being true. For most of my career before it was a struggle then I decided to quit. Now I am back. Probably not the career path that most people take, but this has been my road, not an easy one, but it has been my road.
One thing has been troubling me lately. I am single. Do I look for a partner or not? After reading a book almost two years ago my spiritual life changed for the better and in a way that I did not even know that it could. I have written about that. Almost two years later that reality is still real. Some parts of it have changed. There does not seem to be as strong of a sense of God’s presence like there seemed to be before but that may be moving that has unsettled me and maybe I am not quit settled yet. Not sure. But the change in personal worship has stuck. Wanting to and being moved emotionally when I do. I have a feeling that will be part of my life until I go to the next one and there worship in a way that what I know now will pale in comparison. That is what I believe anyway. Back to being single. Is there room for someone else. Maybe that is my question. I have a feeling I am overthinking this but that is what I am doing. Part of me would like that. Living with narcissists is not like having a partner or a parent who know what real love is like other people do and that has been my experience so far. Both parents and my one partner. So having a partner who does would be nice. Someone may say to me man you have to you have to. My higher power is loving but it may help to have someone in my life with that kind of love with skin on. I saw the movie the Aeronauts and I think that movie stirred this up in me. The song at the end and all that. I have a feeling that if someone comes along who I am attracted to or may want to get to know I may move in that direction. I don’t have a sense that my higher power is forbidding it. But not sure I am getting the green light either. I have prayed, make that decision more clear. Thanks for letting me share.
Salvador
