Today I asked my neighbor if she could remember an extra special Christmas she had known, perhaps with her two daughters growing up. My neighbor was a single mother most of those years. Sadly, Christmas wasn’t often very merry because one of her daughters was often ill much of the winter with a chronic condition. So when she thinks of Christmas in those years, especially when she looks back at photos, she sees that little sick girl in almost every one.

Often when I ask people about Christmases past, I get a report on whether they had an abundance of gifts or not.

For many survivors, it’s not the gifts that come first to mind. It may be years of depression and suffering that seemed to get worse during holiday seasons. For some who grew up with alcohol as a big problem, things were even more unpredictable during the holidays when addicts often tend to turn to their fixes for a perceived help to get through the reminders of how things aren’t as they are “supposed to be.”

Maybe you will recall something unusual or funny that happened one year. I do. Two different years. Both in Africa. These are the two most likely stories you’ll hear when you come to our family celebrations today. Our daughter says these were her favorite memories, in fact.

The rains almost always come before Christmas in central Africa. Not so that year in Malawi, back about 1981. Just taking a breath was a chore in the sweltering heat and humidity! I think that was the year when our package from grandparents back in the States got lost. Forever lost! The year that our son sprained his ankle and spent much of his time in a recliner, looking at what few things we’d been able to assemble from our limited shopping, to put under the tree.

I just couldn’t get in the mood to cook that year. At least not Christmas dinner. Didn’t even want to light the gas flame to boil water! So, at noon on Christmas Eve Day, most of the food was sitting there untouched. I asked the other three if they had any suggestions, any ideas about what they might could eat if I made it.

“Potato salad,” our son James suggested. Renita, our daughter, agreed with more enthusiasm than she’d shown about anything in several days.

“What else?” I asked.

“That’s all!” they both chimed together. I must have looked shocked as I turned to my husband for ideas. He agreed with the children.

They got their request. And got it again at noon on Christmas Day. Because that’s what they asked for. It was the biggest bowl of potato salad I had ever made--twice!!

It must have been about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, as we sat around the empty Christmas tree, when the heavens suddenly opened for the first time in many weeks! I do not ever recall a more refreshing rain. It felt spiritual!

As spiritual as what happened earlier that morning when we’d gone to church, the usual custom in Malawi. It was a very special Christmas to the African children because the church had managed to splurge enough to buy everyone a Coca-Cola. Not on ice, of course. African children have never seen ice. Just room temperature.

What more could we want? We’d had chilled potato salad and iced tea in addition to more gifts than most African children could ever imagine.

Sometimes reflections like this help me put it all in perspective. I remember just how blessed I am. To have had the privilege to have known so many blessed Christmases, especially the memorable one in 1981!

Posted by Dee Ann Miller at 12:01 AM CST

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"I can be a chaplain for other people, but on my own behalf, I am useless. I am devastated by this horrible turn of events," he said. "When I heard it, I had no response. I sat there and cried. That's all I could do."

Sometimes I find it hard to admit that I also struggle to cope with the many changes in my perception of reality that I've been forced to experience over the past two decades.  One would think that with so much past personal experience, observing and coping with crises of others, I should have learned.

There's that "should" word again, and it's never helpful.  Truth is that things like abuse, collusion, extreme denial and limited understanding about abuse and collusion in most people I know,  cancer, disability, mall shootings, and many other big issues challenge ALL of us.  No matter how much we believe we are prepared.  Even with a wide degree of professional experience.

Sometimes all we can say to ourselves are the very words that we don't find coming much from others.  "I am sorry."  Taking time to comfort ourselves, while not wallowing in our own tunnel vision of life's challenges.  Thereby, being able to see others' grief issues.   Even in people we've never met, but need to understand in order to find spiritual growth.  That is a challenge for all of us, professional or not.   

Posted by Dee Ann Miller at 12:01 AM CST

Updated: Fri 12/14/2007 6:33 AM CST

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Right on the tail of paranoia comes another stumbling block.  Antisocial personality tendencies.

In a desire to be understsood, we all have a tendency to go toward people we believe can empathize with us.  We cluster, feeling most comfortable with folks who have similar problems or education or income levels or a similar belief system. 

I cannot think of a single relationship in my life that has been a close one without at least one of these similarities as a factor.  Can you? 

There is an odd quality that I have, for whatever reason.  Unlike most senior citizens, I have very few friends who are my age or older.  I tend to bond much more easily with those at least ten to thirty years younger. 

As I reflect on the young man who became famous for all the wrong reasons last week, here at the mall, I wonder what would have happened if he had been befriended by a lot of mature people in the general population who were committed to being there for him, willing to invest their time and energy into supporting him. 

One family did.  I've been impressed, though not with the limited exposure that this family's generosity has gotten.  They've had the mother of two sons on the news, the woman who generously took the boy in after he was no longer a ward of the state.  She poured her heart and life into trying to make a difference, obviously.  She was the last person he talked to, in a phone call, just minutes before he could be seen on the security cameras coming into the mall to survey things, then leaving for a few minutes to prepare his ammunition before quickly making his way straight to a nearby elevator into hiding.

I want to think that this kid was so different from anyone I know.  I'm really not at all sure.  I believe such kids are all around us.

Growth requires that I stop looking for people who have all of the similarity factors in common with me.  Instead I need to overcome some of my own tendency to shy away from people who are quite different from me.  Thereby moving toward a more social personality.

Maybe that's a growth issue for you, as well.  It certainly is an important one as we mentor new generations!

Posted by Dee Ann Miller at 12:01 AM CST

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Feelings do not make facts.

Whenever I feel that others do not care or imagine that they are doing something to actively harm me, I need to stop and examine my feelings. 

I know that much of the challenge in any case is that we never know what other people are thinking or doing.  Yet we need to admit that we cannot prove many things.  To believe that we can is a control issue. 

It's certainly an issue for me at times.  Constantly I'm asking myself to consider my own personality tendencies.

We can guess.  We can look at the tendencies in society, too.  We get into serious trouble, though, when we start believing with certainty that people are against US.

Truth is that people act out of fear and anger.  Sometimes AT us because they haven't stopped to examine their own paranoia. 

They haven't stopped to consider that it's not a person that is the problem.  It's those irrational feelings that keep us from focusing on the facts.

If we want to rise above the people who oppress us and keep our issues from coming to the surface, it's important to consider the facts, as well as the feelings behind the facts.

Paranoia is a symptom of serious dysfunction, whether it's found in a survivor or in the leaders of the institutional church.  Too bad that it keeps us from removing the beams we see in others' eyes.

These are some of the spiritual lessons we didn't get in Sunday School.  The lessons we need to teach our children.

Posted by Dee Ann Miller at 12:01 AM CST

Updated: Wed 12/12/2007 11:27 AM CST

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Depending upon your understanding of personality disorders, you may need to go back and do a little research before diving into this blog over the next few days.  It's research well worth doing, perhaps providing some understanding of your own issues, as well as the issues of some you befriend or meet along the way in survivor circles.  

I know that some have an aversion to the use of diagnoses.  However, they can be very helpful in understanding some of the issues that are long-term.

While some survivors have fullblown personality disorders before they actually experience abuse, others develop personality disorders because of the abuse.  This makes treating depression, substance abuse, and all other psychiatric disorders much more difficult.  Still others never have had and still do not have a personality disorder. 

Often, I've noticed, that all of us who have spent much time trying to face the issues of abuse and collusion, are prone to develop what is known as "tendencies" toward a personality problem.  It is important to guard against these tendencies, to try to get them in the bud whenever possible.  I think this is where therapy is often very helpful.

These aren't just tendencies that develop from abuse.  They can occur with any crisis that seems to absorb such a huge block of one's time and energy.  When something unusual develops.

That unusual thing can sometimes be considered something that gives a person a sense of being "special" or having a "special problem," rather than just a problem that others have not experienced.

On the one hand, there is a sense of anger that others have not had the problem, which we believe keeps them from understanding--a fallacy in thinking itself.  People CAN understand others' problems without experiencing them, at least to a very large degree.

With narcissistic tendencies, the sense of entitlement kicks in.  Thinking goes like this:  "Because I'm special, I have a right to....."  When we start thinking like that, it's important to see the red flag. 

Abuse victims do not have a monopoly on suffering.   Nor on rights, as important as those are.  If every person who had a tragedy in our world claimed to have the worst problem with a mountain of rights to go with it, a long laundry list of what the world has to do or see, then the small percentage of people who do not have "special" problems would find themselves unable to meet the needs.

At the risk of sounding uncaring, I need to leave you with this:

Sometimes what we need to do is stop and put some things into perspective if we are to grow past the unique challenges we have faced in this world that seem to be totally void of justice.

Posted by Dee Ann Miller at 12:01 AM CST

Updated: Wed 12/12/2007 11:26 AM CST

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Whenever I think of psychiatric diagnoses, I find myself mentally sitting in a state hospital where I once worked.  Sitting there at shift change as I heard of the needs and problems that my staff would be walking out to face a few minutes later. 

Some days, about halfway through report, the reporting nurse, in trying to update us on the scene for the last sixteen hours since we'd left, could have us in stitches!  Especially as she read the diagnoses.  Some days every patient seemed to have a laundry list of diagnoses, including several personality disorders, meaning that they had rigid ways of dealing with the world and weren't prone to dealing with reason.  Nor functional ways of coping with sudden change.

It wasn't that we were laughing at the unfortunate people who had landed on our doorsteps.  We really weren't.  Instead we would be trying to cope with our anxiety (sometimes blatant trepidation) as we looked at the potential developments we would be facing for the evening.  Such is the case whenever one goes into a potential war zone; and that's exactly what people often feel they are facing when charged with the responsibility of maintaining safety for all concerned. 

It helps to have a sense of humor, even when coping with the unexpected.  Perhaps especially when facing the unexpected.  That's something I need to work on as I attempt to let go of the fantasy that I can make my world almost perfect.  Or convenient.  Or perfectly safe.

Posted by Dee Ann Miller at 12:01 AM CST

Updated: Thu 12/06/2007 11:49 AM CST

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I've given up.  On figuring it all out, that is.  When the world seemed so simple and small (that would be the first forty years of my life), I thought I knew most of the answers.  Now I don't even understand how to formulate the problems that would explain all that I've forced myself to face.

Truth is, I'll confess, my "faith" taught me that with Jesus I should be able to solve anything.  That wasn't faith.  It was fundamentalism, though. 

Posted by Dee Ann Miller at 12:01 AM CST

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Is it too much to expect the church to be what it says it is?  I've finally come to believe that it is.  Took me almost a lifetime, though.

So, as we are teaching the children while coming to grips with our own decisions, what do we need to be saying?  Perhaps it is that church isn't necessarily the place to find perfect people, though it's a place where people often appear to be kind and can do some very caring things, as well as some awful things.  The problem is this.....

While the church uses the "we're all just a bunch of sinners saved by grace" and "we're not perfect" whenever those are needed for conversation stoppers, truth is that institutional Christianity seems to be the most neurotic of all I know.  The defenses are about trying to show just the opposite.  In other words, we ARE perfect because "Christ has made us perfect." 

I don't go to doctors because they are perfectly healthy.  Truth is that they don't have a great track record in self-care.  I've had several tell me that I take better care of myself than they do.  They admit that.  Yet they do not HAVE to admit that for me to seek their services.  Although I tend to switch doctors almost as quickly because of arrogancy as I do for perceived or known medical incompetence. 

It's quite difficult, in an institution that needs character and spirituality to look genuine, for confession and humility to be high on the agenda.  When I was a kid, it appeared to be at times.  However, it was usually about some "awful" matter that was likely to be visible to everyone in the commmunity. Or something quite petty like:  "I told a fib to my employer last week."  And almost never from the minister who needed a crystal image more than anyone else present. 

So there are several big-ticket items that I find on the list of things the church has never been likely to demonstrate:  competency, accountability, honesty, humility, gender equality, empathy, an appreciation for a broad education or science or other cultures, healthy living, safety......  Perhaps these are things we need to teach our children, whenever we talk to them about the church. 

Perhaps, more importantly, if we are involved in the church in any way, there are things we need to be sure are spoken clearly within the stpne walls of the institution that is so self-protective, saying that we long to see the church growing in public image in THESE areas, rather than the many areas where excellence does abound.  These might include generosity, sweetness (at least on the surface), providing programs for children, raising money, showing charity for monetary needs, holding nice holiday events, some fine music and oratory, producing some fine teachers of religious education, speaking judgmentally when matters of social evolution are involved, knowing how to celebrate (especially when luscious, but unhealthy food is involved) responding to common crises........

Posted by Dee Ann Miller at 9:10 AM CST

Updated: Sat 12/08/2007 9:30 AM CST

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Yesterday afternoon, while I was walking in another mall just a half-hour's drive away, nine people were shot and killled at Westroads.  That's the name of an Omaha mall I visit several times a year, often going into Von Maur just to enjoy the ambience created by the live pianist who plays the shiny, white baby grand near the escalator.

It's not just the dead who concern us now.  The names have not even been released, so we are all wondering whether we have friends among the fatalities.  Or if we'll need to comfort people we know who have lost loved ones while Christmas shopping.

With years of experience in working with traumatized children as a mental health nurse, my heart goes out to some little victims who have only been casually mentioned so far on the news:  The little children who were there shopping with their mothers.  For the rest of their lives, whenever they go shopping, will they be hearing forty gunshots and see adults diving into clothes racks as they scream in terror, trying to keep from being the next target? 

There is concern for some who are critically wounded.  We all know that the number dead may soon rise. 

The entire community is in shock.  Especially since it is impossible to deny that the most privileged in the metro could easily have been a victim of this tragedy.  Bystanders who witnessed all of it were placed in lockdown until police had a chance to interview all of them.  Several, just waiting around and still trembling, were interviewed.  "We just went into the store, thinking we were going to do something that would make the holidays bright for others.  Now, we feel lucky just to be walking out.  Our lives have been forever changed."  That's what they said in essence, as I pieced together phrases into a collective summary.   

Today the mall is shut down.  The bodies are still inside.  The whole community waits anxiously and mourns.

I first heard the news from one of my young students, soon after returning from my walk.  He'd picked it up on the radio, when the sketchy reports were that there was one fatality.  That was before police even got in and found the carnage. 

A kid, giving me news like this, seems surreal.  This isn't something kids are supposed to have to hear.  Especially about a store that they know so well.  What do we say to comfort them when they come down off of the "high" created in their kid-like fashion because Omaha has made national news? These kids haven't even learned how to mourn yet.  Most do not know how much lives are forever changed by all of this, including their own.

One little girl seemed to know better than most.  Her aunt had left the store, in the small area even, where the shooting took place only ten minutes before the troubled gunman entered!

As in times past, especially the Oklahoma City bombing that occurred in a building where my daughter narrowly missed a 9 a.m. appointment in the deadliest section of that place, the questions about surviving and coping come back to me in regard to what I've experienced at the hands of church terrorists.  In events with which most people seem incapable of finding identity.

My husband's first comment to me was powerful.  It was nothing close to what I heard throughout the evening, from every family I saw in the course of teaching.  It may not be what a lot of those families would think appropriate, yet it's the truth.

"....No one seems to care about the multitude who have been shot in North Omaha this past year"

North Omaha has had a growing carnage.  It's the area of the seriously disadvantaged.  Mostly African-American.  Since most advantaged people seldom visit, what happens there seems to be happening in another world. 

Will anyone see the correlation between the two scenes, where the death and destruction is coming from troubled young men who FEEL powerless?  I hope so.  I have my doubts.

Posted by Dee Ann Miller at 8:23 AM CST

Updated: Thu 12/06/2007 8:32 AM CST

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