Still Mourning

When my niece died Saturday before last, I felt gut-punched. Initially, on hearing the news from my brother, I felt dizzy and nauseous and I think I cried. I remember feeling as if I was hearing words that did not make sense. 

"This is bad news. This is sit-down news."

I'd expected it to be bad news. No one - not even family shows up unexpectedly at 3:30 in the morning with anything but bad news. And in a way, I'd been expecting something to happen. I hadn't been able to sleep and had been sitting up all night, feeling restless and waiting - for something. You know that feeling? So when my brother and my sister-in-law walked into the apartment (my SIL was carrying pastries from Hyvee with a couple of disposable plates resting on the lid), I knew I would hear something not-good.

"Gabby passed."

What? I saw my brother's mouth moving and I heard the words but it all felt surreal. For a minute, I was thinking that I could not have heard Gabby's name before the word "passed" and I tried to think of what "passed" could mean.

I think that I repeated it in my head ("Gabby passed") trying to do what one of my other nieces later said: "Make it make sense". And I couldn't.

And I think I cried - maybe wailed, maybe whimpered - and then I had to stop and try to process whether or not I was awake or asleep. Dreaming a nightmare or having some kind of auditory hallucination.

"Gabby passed".

Still today, I keep hearing those words in my brother's voice. I keep trying to "make it make sense". And I just can't. Every time I close my eyes, I see Gabby. Laughing Gabby, loud Gabby, mad, happy, sad, hurt Gabby. I see her as she looked during one of the few FaceTime (?) chats we had. I see her walking across the stage at her high school graduation (with me and her mother and marveling and laughing as she strutted up to get her diploma in super high-heeled shoes). I see her looking serious and mischievous and playful. I can even remember how she looked the day she and her twin brother were born, sleeping in the little NICU incubators next to each other.

Her brother seems to be handling this better than I am. Or he is doing what I am doing and pretending to be handling it because if he lets go even a little bit he will not be able to pull himself back together. 

Gabby.

I love everyone in my family - even the ones I don't like a whole lot - but Gabby was special. Gabby was the one I have been closest to since her mother (my sister) died. When My sister died, I had my best friend and Gabby. When my best friend died, I had Gabby. And now Gabby is gone. I, the biggest loner/hermit ever, feel so alone without Gabby in this world.

Gabby is the one who I gossiped with. I wouldn't know half of what goes on in this family of ours if it were not for Gabby. Gabby and I talked usually several times a month - sometimes a week - and we didn't have short phone calls. We had those long calls, just being on the phone as she worked and I cleaned or cooked. Sometimes, we irritated each other. Sometimes, one of us didn't want to start one of those calls because we didn't want to spend hours on the phone! Sometimes we got mad at each other and ignored one another. Until the mad spell was over.

Gabby was my "buddy niece". She always returned texts and she always called back. She was not just my niece, she was my friend. I think I am just now realizing that. And I don't think that anyone else in my family realizes that either. It's weird, but Gabby and I had a bond that might surprise some of our family. And because I don't want to make anyone else feel sadder than they already do, I try to hold it in. They can't make it better. Only God can.

She was only 36 years old. And I have sinned by questioning God. I've asked why not take me? Why not take someone who didn't love life as much as Gabby did. Then I repent. God knows what we don't. He has His plans and His reasons. And He did not take Gabby until she had salvation.

But it still hurts so much. I cry or hold back tears so much that I go hoarse. It's hard to enjoy anything - sleep, food, a pretty day.

For a few hours, I was mad at myself that Gabby and I hadn't talked for a while. I'd had COVID and she'd started a part-time job (she had plans that needed a lot of money), and so we hadn't had one of our long chats for a long time. But the thing is, if she was still here, we wouldn't do anything different. Because we don't know the future. 

One thing that I said to another family member after Gabby died is that we need to be careful about our words and actions. What we do to and say to someone could be that last thing. But that's not realistic, is it? We do and say and live and love and laugh and are human. 

I am praying for God to heal this sadness. I know that Gabby would not want me to be feeling this sad for this long. She would want me to be happy again. But she was such a big part of that joy. So for now, I am still mourning and waiting for better days.

Peace

--Free

Yoga IS a Religion (IMO)

This is just a short post to clarify why I don't practice Yoga.

Recently, when I was posting on FreeBeingFree about how I was dealing with my depression, I mentioned these non-Yoga stretching exercises. The ones I found are perfect for me - especially the nighttime stretch I've been doing.

Many people debate whether or not Yoga is a religion. Most of those people would probably agree with the following:

And while there is a lot of debate about whether or not Yoga is a religion, what matters to me as a Christian is that almost everyone agrees with the following:

Yoga (/ˈjoʊɡə/ (listen);^[1] Sanskrit: योग, lit. 'yoke' or 'union' pronounced [joːɡɐ]) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciousness untouched by the mind (Chitta) and mundane suffering (Duḥkha). There is a wide variety of schools of yoga, practices, and goals^[2] in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism,^[3][4][5] and traditional and modern yoga is practiced worldwide.^{[6] (source)}

And,

It is a philosophy and a spiritual practice and many people with different religious beliefs find it is a complement to their faith. (Source) [my emphasis]

My Christianity is the only spiritual practice I need. And any other spiritual practice is forbidden to me as we Christians are not to mix the sacred with the profane.

Anyway, I know that will offend a lot of the people who practice Yoga (a "spiritual practice", mind you) apart from Eastern religions and faiths. There are churches that provide Yoga classes. That baffles me And even if in doubt, shouldn't we as Christians, just abstain from the practice?

So I wanted to clarify why I was so excited to find stretching exercises that don't include anything that could glorify other gods and religions.

There are many other stretching exercises offered by Caitlin Englebert on her YouTube channel. 

Peace

--Free

(Willingly) Lured, Lied to & Deceived

The title of this post should be more like "Entertainment and Social Media Are Going To Kill Us". You all do know that I have a problem with being over-wordy though. I am working on that. Anyway...

 I was just looking at the trailer for an upcoming documentary about a certain actor. The "celebrity" has been under fire for being sexually seedy and potentially/allegedly dangerous. The rumors about this person have apparently been around for a while. People not in the entertainment industry (aka "fans") are shocked and titillated and cannot wait to see this documentary. I myself am interested. 

Here's the thing. By believing in the illusion of celebrity and all that seems to glitter within that world, we allow ourselves to be deceived. We accept the deception - when it's called entertainment - to be part of our lives. We feel connected to the actors rather than the characters they portray. We let the stories portrayed color our perception of the people playing the roles. The attractive or smart or kind or loving person on that screen probably has zero in common with the actor. The better the actor, the more we buy the lies. The lies are only supposed to be entertainment, people.

She's already physically attractive.
I don't get it.

This creates problems in our lives. For years, I myself had trouble appreciating some of the people in my everyday life. That new person at work who was slightly shy and awkward wasn't anything like the cutely shy, sweetly awkward, and photogenically loveable character played by ~fill in the blank~ in that one movie or TV show. My boss was just a jerk and not the jerk that was just charming enough to make me want to eventually fall in love with him. My life was not like the ones portrayed in the movies. I was not going to speed through the highs, lows, and serious complications the way a fictional character does. My problems are never solved within a 30-minute episode (minus 10 minutes of commercials). When I hurt someone in real life, there was no sequel lined up where I could fix everything and undo any damage.

Life is life and "art" is art. Art might imitate life but it should never be the other way around. We don't have scriptwriters, a makeup crew, and perfect lighting in our real lives. We don't often get second-chance "retakes".

I was talking with one of my brothers the other day and he mentioned something about some young "influencer" who'd died in a very unnecessary way. He or she had fallen to their death while trying to take a selfie while balanced on a cliff (or something along those lines). When I hung up the phone and looked up the story, I ended up going down a rabbit hole, looking at other similar stories.

What is happening to us as humans? There is a whole generation of young (and not so young) people who are risking their physical and mental health to be internet famous. The term "Influencer" now bothers me so much.

Six or seven years ago, when I started doing product reviews, I joined sites like Influenster, Tomoson, She Speaks, and Buzz Agent. I did it to get free and "first-look" products. Now I mostly do my reviews on Amazon and Walmart. The other sites have gotten outflanked by the Instagram nation of serious influencers. These are the pros at garnering Likes, Follows, Shares, and so on. It has gone from people just trying to score free and discounted products to multi-million dollar opportunities.

Remember YouTube back in the day? When people were posting videos about side hobbies and random life events? Those days are gone, children. These days, some people base their entire livelihood on their video changes. It's all about sponsors, monetization, and fighting like junkyard dogs to hold your place among the big-money earners.

It must be in human nature to make a mile out of every inch. Movies and television - meant, I think anyway, for pure entertainment - have turned into some sort of instrument of mass social programming. Many of us base the way we act, dress, love, make love, parent, etcetera based on the make-believe world of the flickering screens. Social media outlets - meant, I think anyway - to connect us have become instruments for division. It's not about how to keep in touch with the people we know and love or how to help each other. It's more about how to look like we're "living our best life" and who's prettier or richer or sexier or smarter or more powerful? 

We are building our own destruction. We are putting up walls instead of tearing them down. We are doing more harm than good. By trying to appear to be the best, we are becoming the worst.

The thing about progress (if that is what it's called) is that curiosity pushes us forward and selfishness won't let us go backward. We have such a problem with being content. We see contentment as complacency and complacency as laziness. And look where we are.

Peace

--Free