Tag: Random

Sensitive

On By SimonneBraden2 Comments

It’s taken me years to admit this, but here goes.

I am sensitive.

To people. To emotions. To spiritual stuff.

The scientist in me rules with logic, head over heart, in all things. I grew up in a very rational household and I mostly ignored my sensitive nature. I wrote it off as coincidence or being overly emotional about something and thus refuting logic.

“There’s a perfectly logical explanation for this!” This was the line I’d always use. Even our emotions are simply the result of chemicals in the brain between receptors and transmitters.

As I grew older, I grew more sensitive. I’m really uncomfortable with where I am now. I’m mostly sensitive to people – so much so that the zombie movies my husband watches with babies crying and people being tortured – I have to leave the room, put on headphones, and try to focus elsewhere. It upsets me too much.

It happens often, but I had trained myself to ignore it. When my friend David introduced me to his future wife, within 5 seconds of meeting her, I didn’t like her. She smiled and was kind – I had no reason to dislike her. But I just didn’t. I never said anything because there was nothing concrete to say. Fast forward a few years, she ordered me to never contact her family and ended up leaving David for a man she met on the internet. She was a super rat of the highest order.

I’ve had feelings about marriages too, some marriages I knew wouldn’t last. Again, I kept my mouth shut because there was no hard facts I could put in a Power Point presentation. Some of the marriages imploded with casualties; others are still intact, and if their social media feeds are any indication, they’re happy. But I don’t know how they really are without the filters. I’m not infallible by any means. And marriage is hard at times.

A learned man started coming to our church. He frightened me. Everyone thought he was the bees knees, but something told me to stay away, so I kept my distance. Soon he was making outrageous accusations (due to mental illness) about certain members of our church, which of course were false. He eventually left, but the damage was done. One of the homeless guys that comes to our church just shook his head. “I told y’all that guy was nothing but trouble.” I knew it too. But I stayed silent. No one asked me.

When we bought our house, I didn’t like it at all and the guest room especially bothered me. Whenever I walked in there, it was heavy. There was a weight on my chest and I didn’t want to be in there. I think sometime bad happened in there. My husband never felt anything. I told my pastor about it and he came over to bless the house. Since then, whatever was there is gone.

When I get feelings about things, they come to me. I can’t seek them out. I don’t have the gift of prophecy, but a friend once said I have the gift of discernment. I have a nose for sniffing out fake people; within a few minutes of meeting someone, I can get a pretty good read on who they are.

In the psychological world, I am considered an empath. I mirror those around me.

I knew my husband was in a lot of pain the other night, as he slept. I asked him about it in the morning, since he never mentioned it to me, and he was stunned I knew.

I don’t know why the Lord equipped me with this wacky gift. I’m not sure how to use it and sometimes sharing it can cause others pain. But I have a feeling (oh the puns!) that this skill set is being fined tuned and will somehow be useful in the days to come.

It happened again earlier this summer: my sister and her husband were trying for a baby. I knew it at once: “You’ll get pregnant right away,” I told her. And she did. First try. My mom is worrying about losing the baby in the first trimester. I assured her it will be carried to term.

I just have this feeling.

Shelter in a Storm

On By SimonneBraden1 Comment

I knew it as I sat in a church service 1,000 miles away from home, listening to a sermon so dry it sucked the humidity out of the room.

Wilmington was getting a hurricane and we would take in people who had no place to go. This “radial hospitality” stuff Walking Tall Wilmington talks about has taken root in my head, y’all.

I got the call 2 days before the storm hit from my contact. “I have a couple who needs shelter, can you take them?” A friend vouched for their character. The window for us to evacuate had closed and we were at the mercy of Florence as well. Least we could do is offer what we had to these strangers.

Marianne and her husband Joe arrived in time for dinner with all their earthly possessions in their arms. They were my age. I treated them as I would any other house guest, except for the whole “Please take a shower and then we’ll get your laundry started” part.

And so, my husband and I have been co-habitating with a couple who otherwise lives on the streets. They don’t drink, try to stay away from the “typical homeless people,” and chain smoked. Even in my house, they moved silently from room to room. It’s a skill they need to remain undetected sleeping illegally in parks, in the lee of a building, or wherever they can find. Wilmington has laws about these things.

Joe and Marianne have kids who are living with relatives. CPS got involved through lies from another relative, according to them. They’re trying to reunite the family, but that has proven to be an uphill battle, as they lost their car several months ago. Marianne is also pregnant. She shrugged when I inquired about how the baby would be when its no longer getting nicotine after birth. This isn’t her first baby to be born with a cigarette habit. My infertile heart gulped and nodded. Nothing I said or did would change this addiction, yet my heart was so sad.

We lost power the next day during the worst of the storm. My husband managed to keep our household running with hot coffee and eggs for breakfast, courtesy of his Sterno stoves. We ate cold left over spaghetti one night and dined like kings the next with pork chops on the grill, bread, and green beans. We all got on well until the cigarettes ran out and withdrawal set in. My husband ended up running them out to several stores when the storm calmed – all which were closed because we were experiencing a hurricane – until they found one that was open. My husband smokes a few once in a blue moon and understood the need from his 12 pack years. He even lit up a couple of times with them on my deck. The smoke didn’t start to waft into the house until a few days later and it started to bother me. As long as I live, I will never understand smoking.

While my husband focused on food, I cleaned and made sure everyone had tea. We drank loads of tea. Two sugar bowls were emptied and filled: I thought I had a sweet tooth until I met them! I love my sweet tea, but they made it a supersaturated solution. We played games, walked through the neighborhood, watched YouTube videos – laughing with tears streaming down our faces – and had great dinner conversations. Most of the time we did our thing and they did theirs. We took turns praying at every meal and there were often tears in their eyes. I think they carry more burdens than I can comprehend in the short time we spent with them.

Joe and Marianne left when the storm did. We dropped them off at their requested location – so many power lines and trees down, massive flooding – driving around was like a video game. I half expected to see zombies it was so bad.

We hugged them good-bye. They have my phone number. I told them to call if they needed help. They’re sleeping rough tonight, while I am here at the house. My empath heart wants to fix it all.

And I can’t.

Please pray they can pull their lives together and for the baby to be born healthy.

A Tale of 2 Phone Calls

On By SimonneBradenLeave a comment

Lately, I keep getting woken up by the past.

Tale #1
Rrrrrttt. Rrrrrttt.

My phone was blowing up on vibrate.

Rrrrttt. Rrrrrttt.

It was 6am. No one ever calls with good news at 6am.

Rrrrttt. Rrrrttt.

I opened one eye, my brain still foggy from the dream of a machine at work that looked like it was destroyed by a tornado. I glanced at my phone. 2 missed calls and a few text messages from Phoebe. “I need to get away. I need to think. Alex is still with the girl. Can I come to your house today? Do you have plans?”

Whoa. This just got serious. “Give me a minute to wake up and I’ll call,” I texted back. Five minutes later, I’m pacing in the backyard, talking with Phoebe. She was surprisingly calm when I spoke with her, despite the fact she had caught her husband with another woman a few days earlier.

Phoebe flipped the script and left on the lam – Alex’s modus operandi. She disappeared without an explanation, en route to the airport for my house. I sent her a picture of my credit card so she could book her plane tickets without detection, promising to write me a check when she landed. A few hours later, I picked her up at the airport. Ironically, I had cleaned the entire house the day prior for no reason. “The Lord knew,” she said. This is also why I keep my guest room in a constant state of readiness. You never know who the Lord will send your way with a moment’s notice.

Phoebe looked the same, as if 12 years hadn’t slipped by, and we picked up right where we left off. We spent time at the beach, ate good food, sipped wine, and discussed her situation extensively. For 3 days I watched her oscillate between a confident Christian woman who was going to contact a divorce attorney to a puddle of sadness and despair, longing for her marriage to made whole again. I was glad to share my home with her, thankful that she was eating and sleeping – something she hadn’t done much of since the blow up.

An ending has yet to be written. But that dream though: all of us work in the same health care department, and I wonder if that shattered machine in the dream means what I think it does. So much prayer. So much.

Tale #2
The other morning I woke up to a group message from the old church I attended in college. They’re hosting a homecoming for the youth group – the whole lot of us were invited for a picnic. Everyone was replying – people I hadn’t thought about in years appeared on my phone – even Jacob and Hannah are attending. This ought to be interesting.

A private message from Ruth was there too – the reception is one week after we were suppose to go on one of our epic adventures – and we decided to table the adventure in favor of the meet-up. Over the years, we had mused about “getting the band back together” and what it would be like to do a reunion. And now, we have that chance. We’ve booked a hotel room and we are each other’s date for the “bring your family” event. She’s like a sister, so it works. My husband had a gig anyway.

I am ecstatic to be back in my college town, especially with Ruth, to walk down memory lane together, in addition to making new memories. My only concern is that John’s last post was in my college town and I could run into him, if he’s still there. We haven’t stayed in contact and I have no desire to change that status. Nonetheless, I am really looking forward to seeing everyone again and hopefully making some new friendship connections with the old church crew.

These sort of things usually come in 3’s, so I’m a bit pensive of the next way the past will pop into my present.

Come what may.

A fissure in time seems unlikely.

Right?

 

Ruth

On By SimonneBraden5 Comments

I met Ruth when I accidentally showed up at the wrong college ministry freshman year (I ended up staying). We looked alike, too, which sometimes caused people to mistake us for sisters. We always found this hilarious.

In college we hung out a bit – the occasional coffee or swimming at the indoor pool in the university recreation center. We’d tread water in the deep end and chat.

Ruth was my polar opposite back then: in my days of too many boys and too much alcohol, she was on the straight and narrow. She would have been aghast that I would ever entertain the thought of getting drunk or was not a virgin – so I just left out those parts of my life.

Nonetheless, we found common ground, and the many memories of this college Bible group have Ruth in them and we stayed close. One night, she was discussing how after graduation she was going to live with her brother for several months who was living in Europe. I was jealous of her upcoming adventure, not to mention I had a slight crush on her gorgeous older brother. And that’s when she said it:

“You should come for a visit!” Oh my goodness, that was too good to pass up!

The three of us spent a week traveling around England with no particular plan, just wherever the trains happened to take us that morning. I loved it!

This trip cemented our status as lifelong friends, in what was supposed to be a friendship that faded away with college life. Ruth became one of my closest confidants in my adult life. The days of editing my life for her ears had long since passed. She knew everything. In time we had grown up: I cleaned up my act and Ruth realized the world was not as black and white as she thought it to be.

We kept each other in the loop about our various romantic escapades, struggles, and joys – as singles and as wives. We also shared the hardship of infertility. Our stories were night and day different, but both of our homes remained silent without children.

A few years ago, we decided to restart our adventures by meeting halfway between our homes, as we live quite a distance apart. Our adventures have spanned a near-death experience in West Virginian mountains and backpacking cities. We try to meet up at least once a year and do something fun: it’s usually outdoors, involves a glass of wine, a tourist stop, and deep conversations.

A friend like Ruth is one of those rare gems – I think of her more as a sister. Her intelligence, character, and love of God have not only inspired me but buoyed me through some really hard times, as well as contributed to the good times. I know I can call her at any time to tell her anything, and she will always be gentle and listen. She doesn’t judge, yet she’ll call a spade a spade when it needs to be said. I am so grateful for her honesty and her 24 karat persona.

I’m excited to see where the Lord is going to lead Ruth. She made the decision to leave her abusive marriage after many failed attempts to fix it. Now that she is free from that burden, I know she will blossom, like the tree by the water in Jeremiah 17:7-8.

….and I can’t wait for our next adventure!

 

Writing Challenge Day 27: Four Weird Traits You Have

On By SimonneBradenLeave a comment

Awkward
I am really awkward. Physically, mentally, and under certain denominations, spiritually. My body is a pear: small on top, large on the bottom. It doesn’t fit into normal business dresses and I can’t pull off looks where my waist isn’t accented. If only I had boobs, everything would be fine. We won’t discuss my hair. Because I am so individualistic, I don’t run with what the crowd is doing, and so I am the perpetual outsider; it can be quite frustrating when trying to make friends or join a group of people. Politically I’m a centrist who leans slightly left. I don’t swallow American Christianity whole. In fact, I don’t ingest it at all. I don’t blindly support political figures based on their rank, party, or stance on abortion. I don’t fit into any of the round holes cut out for me. I’m a parallelogram peg.

Read mood of room
One of my favorite traits I only recently learned I have, is to read the mood of a room or an individual. The key is not to view anyone through a lens: let them tell you what they are about through their words, body language, eye movement, and facial expression. I can size someone up in moments and then tailor my behavior to mimic or complement theirs.

Inability to wear make up
To go with my awkwardness, wearing make up has also eluded me. I was blessed with my great grandmother’s deep set hooded eyes. They’re basically useless with liquid eyeliner. My fancy almond eyed niece tried to help, but it was futile. I’ve yet to wear eyeshadow or eyeliner like everyone else without looking like a lady of the night or a 5 year old was my make up artist. Make up tutorials backfire. Maybe I just need help. Maybe I should stop trying. Maybe I should always look like I just spent a day at the beach with my tinted moisturizer, powder, mascara, and eyebrow pencil.

Great sense of direction
I could find the way out of a wet paper bag. If I study a map, I can recall my location and navigate. GPS is great, but I don’t need it if I have a few moments with a map. Last week I tried to find a way to my new house from the main drag: I had a decent idea where to go, used my compass, and I found it without much effort. It’s a gift. I’m fun to travel with, too, because sometimes I miss turns and find new roads. If you’re with me, adventure is never far away.