What is this wall? The bricks of it are worry, anxiety, indecisiveness, and pessimism. How do I manifest this? The biggest brick is that of worry. I worry much less now than I did in the past, but still it is a major part of my life. Most of my decisions are made to minimize worry (or change) – many to the detriment of what I need to do. Combine this worry and my natural sense of pessimism fuels one of my major problems – hypochondriaism. I am guessing that much of the pain that I have felt in the past two or three months have been fueled by this sense of worry and pessimism (and a dose of stress, to be sure). It is this pessimism that leads me to think the worst of any possible situation. Even now, I have been thinking of the worst case scenario from my last procedure and have been planning on what I should do now – before I have any clue of how it went. This leads to a downward spiral that never seems to end.

Worry, anxiety, and indecisiveness fuel another of my life’s battles – that of work. I’ll be honest and say that I dislike work. I like most of the people and some of the things that I do, but in general, work has been more drudgery than a positive experience. Worry and anxiety play a big role in this matter – worry in that I fear the unknown and anxiety in that I won’t be able to fit in or have enough knowledge in whatever new endeavors I may follow. My current job has been my first “real” job (by “real”, I’m discounting jobs that I had either in or before college) and fear not having the safety or security of a job has kept me chained.

But now back to this wall that interferes with so much of life. There is a root solution to this, and it is one that I find incredibly difficult. It is a matter of “faith”. It is clear that my worry and anxiety is fueled by my limited faith (Matthew 8:26 – “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?”). I have had this confirmed in a discussion a few months ago with a friend who told me that I was probably the strongest Christian he knew who had so little faith. That comment stung then and now, but it is true. This is a prime area that I need to focus on – by letting go and having faith.

At the Easter sermon I attended yesterday, one of the things we were to do is to fill out a card describing our own personal “brick wall” and that the pastor would pray to help us overcome this obstacle. Any guesses on what my card mentioned? Helping me to extend my faith and learn to let go and give my life completely to God. With more faith, my struggles with worry (Matthew 6:27-29 “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?” or 1 Peter 5:7 – “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.”), anxiety (Phillipians 4:6-7 – “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”), or pessimism (Matthew 19:26 – “With God, all things are possible.”) should be overcome.

Part of my struggles with faith has been discerning what I should do. I have asked for guidance, but my ears aren’t attuned to hear the words of the Lord. I have only heard the words of the Lord in times of extreme stress in my life and I have heeded the guidance. I pray for guidance, but I’m oblivious to many of the cues. Others have told me they see the direction I am to go, but I am still blind and deaf. This is an area of my life that I must tackle and attune my ears and heart toward God.

Pray for me. Pray that my faith is strengthened and that I learn to be attuned towards the will of God. Thank you.

• Live Life in the Present and with No Regrets
• Keep Up With Exercise and Being More Active
• Learn How to Relax and Not Stress

These may seem to be simple and to most people would be fairly trivial.  For me, they seem almost insurmountable.  I’ll describe below why I need to conquer these resolutions and how I intend to do so.

Live Life in the Present with No Regrets

This will be the hardest for me to accomplish.  I tend to live my life looking towards the past.  Thus, I let past events and mistakes haunt me.  In some ways, this explains my extreme introversion as I’m not comfortable in ever letting my guard down in fear of having to relive past regrets.  It was much more comfortable to isolate myself into the world of my own making.  Living this way is no way to exist.  I acknowledge this and thus why I want to do something to resolve this.  However, I am my own worst enemy.

How do I wish to tackle this problem?  One tact I have recently adopted is “I don’t care what you think of me and what I am doing”.  This isn’t the best way to tackle this because I need to have some awareness of how I am seen or percieved of by others.  I’m using this tact to help boost my self-esteem.  After I boost my self-esteem, I’m hoping that it will encourage me to be more open.  Another thing I am trying to change is to convince myself  not to always equate every new experience to some bad memory from the past.  This behavior is causing me to retract from society and back into my shell.  Tackling this will help me live my life with no regrets.

I have been actively working on this area and I hope that some of the changes I made are showing progress.  Attending the “Live Life Like You Were Dying” sermon series at a local church this past fall has also helped give me new insights on how to live life everyday in the present and with a sense of purpose.  Also, I feel that following the second and third resolutions will help me in solving this one as they also would do more in increasing my self-worth and extroversion.

Keep Up With Exercise and Being More Active

I’m actually somewhat successful with the first half of this, but am extremely lacking on the second half of this resolution.  Ever since the event of 2008, I have made it point to exercise in some form or fashion.  I’m still starting slowly as I don’t want to jeopardize myself too much.  I started by doing short walk.  Over time, I progressed to longer walks and even some short hikes.  I now regularly do 3 to 4 mile walks with my puppy around the neighborhood and on a monthly basis take the puppy to do some of the local hikes on trails around time (I mean to do this more, but the holidays and allergies have been a detriment to me).  I want to continue to do this, and start adding some bike rides of the areas (my rear end does not like the bike seat yet…).  Also, when I finish cleaning, painting, and install flooring into my old bedroom, I want to put a treadmill and a stationery bike into it along with my existing weight set.

Now for the second half of this resolution – the getting more active – has two sides.  One side of the getting more active is to do more things – like camping, taking trips, etc.  Most of these things I will discuss in the third resolution.  The second (and more important) side is to actually “get out and do stuff”.  At the same church that had the “Live Life Like You Were Dying”, they had a pre-Christmas message on loneliness that hit home to me.  One principle that he stressed to us was to not turn down invitations to get out and do things.  I’m known for living in my cave and not socializing with others.  This has to stop.  I’m much better at it now that I used to be, but I need to do MUCH MUCH MORE in this regards.  And even right now, I’m still ignoring an active invite, so it still is something I need to do much more work on.  Thus far, I have been relying on others to help me with this.  I still will need this help, but I also need to be more willing to try more activities.

Thus, if you have an activity you would like me to do and if it is something I would find morally or ethically acceptable, don’t take no from me as an answer.

Learn How to Relax and Not Stress

This one would definitely seem easy to most people.  I don’t relax.  I don’t turn off.  I’m serious 24 hours a day.  What I consider enjoyable most people would think of as a form of work.  I definitely need work here.  The lack of relaxation and the stress I put on myself both from work, personal issues, and from past regrets weighs heavily on my life.

How do I do this one?  I’m hoping in going out and doing things will teach me how to relax.  I’m outdoors much more now than I have been in ages.  This has helped to relieve some stress, but it’s only a start.  That’s one of the reasons why I want to go camping, travel to places, etc.  I just need to motivate myself to just go out and do them.  For now, I’m going to go do these things myself.  Eventually, I need to find people to go do these things with.  For now, it’s just important to go do them…

What do I want to do?  This is a long list:

• Go Camping at Bastrop State Park (I have the Parks Pass)
• Go to the Coast (Rockport)
• Go to Enchanted Rock
• Geocache
• Do the Austin Hike/Bike Trails
• Finally go Tubing for the first time of my life…
• Get in the car, pick a direction, and just drive until I find something to do…

Seems easy, doesn’t it…  Ha…  Wish me luck.

P.S., What did I want for Christmas?

• Absolution – Something no person on earth can give me, but what I already have.
• Assurance – See absolution Above
• Forgiveness – I am striving to forgive anyone who has aggrieved me over the years and all I want from others is their forgiveness for any and everything I may have done.  I don’t always perceive when I wrong someone and I’m sorry for that…

This weekend posed new problems – of which I don’t need more of.  On top of everything I must deal with on the house and the property, I now “function” as a home for a family of skunks.  I ended up trapping five of them yesterday and I have at least two left to trap.  Fortunately, Rudy (my puppy) finally could get his rabies shot last Friday, but the fact that skunks are so close makes me nervous.  Alas, the two remaining skunks apparently are smarter than the five I trapped yesterday since they have avoided the cage like the plague.  Hopefully they will be trapped tomorrow and I can feel safe leaving Rudy outside when I’m not around.

This same weekend also saw me miss my continuing education opportunity up in Austin, get stuck behind an accident on IH 35 north of Buda that shut the interstate down for hours (I didn’t wait – I got off the highway and followed the back roads to get to Austin).  Installing a motion light took hours when it should have only taken a few minutes.  You get the point.

This week also is (hopefully) my last stressful week at work.  We have been working on DFIRM protests and appeals for the past ninety days.  The deadline for these appeals/protests/etc are due at the close of business on Wednesday.  So the next three days are going to suck, but I will be taking off Thursday and now that we are on ten hour days (starting tomorrow), we will have Friday(s) off.  Now I just will need to wait out the next round of comings and goings at the office.  The housing bubble has now hit San Antonio with a vengeance.  Not like the 80′s or California today, but still very bad.  I’ve been expecting this the past two years as I like to keep track of real estate for possible future investment opportunities, but we haven’t hit the bottom and we won’t hit the bottom yet due to the mortgage bailout. 

Enough depressing talk, though this isn’t much better.

Today, when I went to church (went to an evening service due to the skunk problem above), I picked up one of the Celebrate Recovery – Codependency brochure.  This seems very much like what is definately wrong with me:  Assume responsibility for others;  Guilt; Difficulty expressing feelings; afraid of being hurt/rejected by others; minimize/deny how you feel; put others (opinions, feelings, needs, or desires) before your own; judge everything harshly;etc…  I did realize this was a problem – I know I was codependent with my mother.  However most literature about codependency refers to some sort of abuse – chemical, physical, etc.  This wasn’t my situation.  So I haven’t been able to use the common reference materials to fight codependency.  Even now, I still am wandering around aimlessly trying to find a new target to attach myself to.  This is dangerous and disasterous for me.  I know I must overcome.  Aarrgghh..  Why can’t life be simpler.

On that same vein, I need to learn how to make relationships.  I’m afraid to do so.  I’ve been afraid for most of my life.  The few that I have had have been wonderful, but not made to last.  I know that I am still in the beginning of the grieving process.  This will limit me to some point and I need to be careful of what relationships I do make as I would be more “vulnerable” than I would otherwise be.  However, loneliness and depression will follow if I don’t tackle this problem.  I want to live in a comfort zone.  I mustn’t do so.

Well, enough for this post for now.  I’ll post back letter and make sure you keep me in your prayers. 

-Jeffrey