Christianeese

I haven't written in a while because I know what I need to talk about......this is by far the scariest post I've done. I'm petrified of what you will think of me because this matter is so personal and so dear and so......political. But I know it needs to be said and if I'm to continue to live an authentic life, then here we go.

I wanted to be profound and write metaphorically and use powerful words but I threw that out, it's going to be raw folks, hope you can handle it! As I've mentioned before, I realize through the journey of my sons death that I had a very unauthentic relationship with God. I wanted to be a "good christian.". I figured out what that meant by hearing sermons, reading books, and talking with other Christians. So I did all those things that made me great, here are just a few of them:

Go to church

Be involved

Be in a bible study

Read scripture (have a daily quiet time)

Memorize scripture

Pray (use the ACTS acronym, A -adoration, C-confession, T-thanksgiving, S-supplication)

So as you can see I was exhausted and really didn't get to ALL these things everyday. But with that came guilt because I wasn't measuring up. I mean God gave His Son for me, the least I could do was live completely for Him. All of the above defined that. Oh and by the way, I had a hard time enjoying the process. There were things that I did really enjoy like being involved and especially worship. I loved fellowship and talking about God through our life experiences. But I had a hard time with the task of reading, memorizing, and sectioning out time alone with God. I kept thinking it would get easier, I equated it with running.....the more you do it, the easier it will be and you will WANT to do it. I was told that you should do all the above things even if you don't want to because God commands it. And....you will be better for it. Little did I know that this was not helping my relationship with God but was slowly building a wedge between us called works. I started equating Gods love for me with what I did for Him rather than who I was. That is why the guilt happened. I knew I had disappointed Him when I didn't get up to my alarm to spend time with Him. I was doing all I could, juggling so many balls in the air until one dropped and they all began to fall.

After losing Jerin I was mad. I do all these things, I do all the "right" things and this happens!??! I didn't KNOW God. My foundation was all knowledge based. I knew of Him, i knew what He does and is capable of doing.....It was Christianeese. Yep I made up a word. But true, I could say all the right things, do all these things, I could tell people anything I could about God.....and then He allowed my son to die and I had nothing. I was mad my Christianeese had ceased. It was gone because it wasn't true. It wasn't authentic. I didn't have a heart relationship with Him. The rubber meets the road and I had to figure this out.

So my son dies and I try to "fix" these feelings I had towards God. I needed to get my Chrisitaneese back! I was broken and I couldn't talk up the christian walk, I couldn't say God is great, God is good. But I tried. Let me tell you this, you can't have a Chrisitaneese relationship when your mad, but this is where the authenticity comes in. I didn't know (still don't) how to have an authentic relationship with God.

I immediately realized all of my "tasks" needed to be removed or else I would fall back into the lie. I dont have regimented times with God. I have removed myself from task oriented things because those things were defining me. I need to be still and be vulnerable and be imperfect even in this. I can honestly say that the most difficult thing for me to do is to just.....be. I am no longer the hamster running aimlessly in the wheel, I have forced myself to get off and just BE.

I've explored what it truly means to be a "good Christian.". Those of you who are ready to quote me scripture I want to say, it can't be defined. I defined it by trying to do the above things but it didn't work....for me that is. I've told my counselor, I'm afraid that I am not in a relationship with Him right now because I know if I go back, it would be because I am trying to "do" again and not "be." She asked me to define what a relationship with God should look like. I knew what I thought it should be. But I didn't know what an authentic one looked like. I started rattling off all the things I thought and she stopped me and said, "God doesn't need you." She explained that He created me to have a relationship with Him. He is God, he doesn't need me to complete tasks for His sake. He places those things for us so we can know Him better. He doesn't NEED me to have a quiet time everyday or memorize scripture......that's for me. It's the tools He gives me to better understand Him. Wow. It seems so self explanatory.....but all along I was doing because I thought He wanted me to, expected me to, or was disappointed if I didn't.......there is no freedom in that kind of thinking or relationship.

So I am still in the process of being real with my relationship. I really feel so vulnerable and challenged in this place. I feel like Adam and Eve when they realized they were naked, I am uncomfortable because I've stripped away all that is familiar to me so that I can start over. I've said no to memorizing scripture in my bible study because my urge was to say yes only because I didn't want them to think less of me. I didn't fast how I "should of" because all I could think about was how much weight I would lose in that time. Yep it's embarrassing but true, that was the old me who did things for people rather than God. Now I am just "being" for God and it feels so right.

I want to end by saying this: I'm on a journey, I value all the things we "do" to know and understand God. If you "do" all those things, I value you and respect you. I'm in no way passing judgement on what you do and I pray there is no judgement on me. I am here to live more fully and authentically and I challenge you to do the same. There is freedom in being real....it is uncomfortable yet so liberating.....

Waves

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 29, 2011, at 9:00 PM, Erin Motto wrote:

Having been on this journey of grief I decided to look up the popular "stages of grief" just to see where I was. I found myself viewing the stages as platforms that I would strive to somehow get myself to the next "stage." I strived to get to the next stage like we do when we are playing a good game. It is everything to us and we cant wait to get back to it in order to pass it. I asked my counselor how to speed up this process and move on with it. However, it has become clear after my research and my own experience that "getting over it" is not a linear motion. It is fluid, like the vast ocean moving with waves. Waves that are going in and out of anger, questioning, disbelief.....just when I think I have arrived to "acceptance," a wave knocks me off my feet into the tragedy all over again.
I think my problem with the word "acceptance" is that I equate it to perfection. I will be perfect when I arrive to this platform. I will have no more sadness or grief....I will be able to be like "all those other people" who can get up on stage and talk about their tragedy like nothing. The reality is, I never want to be "those people" because I want to be real, breathing, and tenderly cry for my son. The tears are a tribute to a child who is not with me.....the remembrance is giving homage to my lineage. Besides, who says pain has to be bad? I loved this quote (that I'm stealing off of Facebook)...."grief isn't wrong. There's such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown." I get it Charlie, I do!

Family of five

Today I finally got some physical representation of my son! I have struggled so much with the fact that my son isn't here physically but he is so much of who I am (just as all of our kids and loved ones). We don't have a picture of him hanging on our wall, he isn't in our Christmas photos, and I don't hear his footsteps coming down the hall. But again he is apart of my family. I have had so much guilt that everything that has to do with him is in a box at the top of my closet. My closet!!! It just isn't right.
But now I have him next to my heart. No one has to know about it or ask, it's just for me. He is now physically apart of me. If they do ask....MarKay already has....I can tell them and, it is what it is......I feared how I would feel when the necklace with his name and birthdate arrived in the mail. Would it feel like the anniversary of his death or his due date? Would I be able to put it on or would it be too hard? I slowly opened the box anxiously and was shocked at my reaction. The feeling I had was absolute pride. It was the moment when you say to yourself, "that's my boy!". I was surprisingly overjoyed and wanted to show the world like you would a super cute photo. I'm beaming even now just telling you about it. Over the last few hours of wearing my son it is clear that I am riding a wave of acceptance right now. I've decided to enjoy the ride.

Sent from my iPad

Trying for a boy.......

Ok don't get excited.....there is an explanation for the title of this blog.

I have been quite surprised how often I am getting this question.

Poor unsuspecting people see my two girls and ask if we are going to

give it that one last shot and try for a boy. I'm quite thrown off

because I have had a boy. Then it dawns on me....my son will always

be apart of me and he exists in my family but there is no physical

representation of him. No one else can see him or even knows about

him. But from my perspective, he is the single most impacting event

in my life. So the question is, how do I answer this question? Poor

unsuspecting people are not prepared for me to unleash my dead son's

story on them but if I don't mention him I feel that I'm ignoring his

existence. I guess there isn't a solution to this, just another unknown piece to this life puzzle.

Rats

The other day I ended up watching Hoarders, the animal episode. I rarely choose to watch Hoarders because I'm disturbed by it deeply. I don't know what it is but I can't fathom how someone can live in the mess. The episode I saw was about a guy who lived in his house and welcomed rats as his pets. He didn't have a ton of stuff in his house but he fed and housed at least a thousand rats. They were crawling in the walls, in every room and perhaps the most disturbing, in the mattress where he slept. He never cleaned up their feces or urine and really didn't mind it. He loved the rats, they were his friend, his everything. As the therapist was going through the house she was processing everything with him. She knew he had an unhealthy strong attachment to the rats. She brought to his attention that he had lost his wife and found her dead in a traumatic way. She said that he never had dealt with this pain and he was using the rats to cover up or replace the affection he would no longer be able to give his wife. This episode has stuck with me. I had been so judge mental of this man and how he could possibly let his life get to be this way. I mean rats.....the filthiest thing you can think of.....in your bed!?! Unreal. Or is it?

Reflecting on my life, I have rats too. They take a different form. There are things/pain that I don't want to deal with, things I mask. Things I have lived with for so long, I call them friend. I sleep with these thoughts as they nestle themselves in my mattress or crawl up on my pillow. More importantly than that, they are so hard to get rid of that they manifest themselves and multiply to where they take over. I think I have never seen this or noticed it because I was so used to living with them. Then one day, when my life changed forever, I saw them. Going through and "cleaning house" has been hard work and so painful. Taking off "the mask" has left some open wounds and vulnerable emotions. There are vacant and lonely holes in the walls where they used to reside. The stench and soiled stains are still there. You may be asking, what are my rats? They are a lot of things.....self doubt, fear, anger, bitterness, shame, pride, and many more. Who knows, there might be some even now that I can't see but one day will.

Another huge impact this particular episode left on me is the fact that they got most of the rats out by exposing them to light. The rats hid and flourished in the darkness but were rendered ineffective in the light. Wow this is so true for us. What is the light? The light is truth. I'm not really all those things I believe about myself, but I have kept them in the darkness and have let it take residence in my life. As hard as it is, I want to expose it, show light to them and rid myself of the lies. I want you to see my rat infested house so that I'm not in the darkness giving power to the filth. Yet in such a strange way, those thoughts are my friends, I love them. So I continue to shine light and cage them up and say goodbye to them as I rebuild my foundation.

This last month

In the last four weeks we've lost our nanny, Jerry has lost his job, and we spent 48 hours in CHOC with MarKay.

It's hard to say how I'm doing really. Honestly I feel like I'm doing better than what I had expected. I'm starting to think that this is the "peace that surpasses all understanding" that I have desperately been waiting for.

Over these last two years I feel that I've been on a roller coaster of fear. Every circumstance has me holding my breath to see what fate God has in store for me. I've struggled with rendering myself ineffective for God. How could He use me if I was consistently questioning, angry, and had so little faith?

Now that some crazy things have happened, I'm strangely feeling a sense of peace. A sense that everything is going to be ok, that this was planned and somehow will work out to benefit us in the end. Yet even as I'm typing this I fear uttering the words, "peace." I hold my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Two things have been said that has really helped me put this whole thing in perspective.

The first thing was some insight from my counselor. I was telling her how my relationship with God looked so different than what I thought it was "supposed" to....she said, "Erin, what if your mom had the power to save your son or to keep him alive and she didn't? Your relationship with her would forever be different. You would be angry, hurt, and confused. You would have a hard time trusting her and maybe not talk to her for awhile or worse." Yes.....so true! I feel Ike this helped me put into perspective that my relationship with God is just that....a RELATIONSHIP. One that ebb and flows, that goes though different stages of life, rocky paths and unspeakable bliss. THIS is the single reason why I have felt so authentic with God for the first time.

The second thing happened this past Sunday.
Mike Erre came to speak at our church. I won't even try to replicate what he said so I've posted it for everyone in hopes you will have time to watch it. What really hit home for me is the fact that God doesn't promise us an easy life. So...if that is the case, why follow Him? I've always beleived that He would protect me from harm, He would guide me to safety and be my shephard. Since I have lost my son, I haven't believed that. This is why my life's circumstances have dictated how I feel God loves me. Because of this new "reality" that God isn't always saving me from harm, I've often thought, "forget it, I'm through with this following God business, what's in it for me?" Yes selfish, I know....but true. Well, I know that I have mentioned this before but I have nowhere else to go. No person, destination, or substance can give me HOPE. When hard times come, that is the single most important thing following God can offer (plus many more that I can't even count). Hope is not found in yourself, positive thinking, or in daily circumstances. We can't rely upon anything in our life except for our hope in God. Oh yeah and another thing is I know that one day I will be able to talk to Him about all my suffering and hear how He used it for "good" and live with Him for ETERNITY. Nothing else can give me that.

I want to leave you with the email I sent Mike Erre just so that you have more perspective on how his thoughts impacted me:

Hey Mike,
My name is Erin Motto and I am a member of Moment. I wanted to sincerely thank you for your sermon on Sunday. I'm sure you get a lot of these but I really felt led to email you my thoughts. Your sermon was something that has been 2 years in the making for me. I have grown up in the church, served God through multiple ministries....mostly creative arts. I have maintained what I thought to be a "good" relationship with God.
Then I found out while I was five month pregnant with my son, he had died in my womb. I had to deliver him. Ever since then I have grappled with anger and confusion at God. I have dealt with guilt at the fact that this is not a "right" feeling to have being a Christian. I realize that I'm not supposed to have a perfect life but I struggled with wanting to follow a God who didn't always protect me. In this process I realized that my relationship with Him has been the most authentic then ever. Even in the ugliness and complication....it is true.
I want to thank you for meeting me in the word, for stepping out to be vulnerable and preach the unpopular and the heavy. This place can be very lonely and I often have felt that very few understand. So I appreciate your honesty about your own life and struggles. I was one that stood up and I thank you for that opportunity. I pray God continues to bless you and your ministry.

God bless,
Erin

Again thank you all for your support and love, you mean so much to me!

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Sigh

I really want to be profound right now but I'm sooooo not! Lol!

Today marks my daughters 9 month mark and it would have been my boy (Jerin) 2 year birthday....

It is such a weird thought that if I were celebrating my son's birthday, I would not be looking at Piper pulling herself up to stand or crawl across the floor. I really can't wrap my mind around it.

I still see boys playing ball or in everyday life and I wonder what Jerin would have been like. I still miss him and can't wait to meet him. It's amazing that a piece of my heart has already left me here on Earth and is in heaven. I keep waiting for me to be "ok" about this but I don't think that will ever happen.

I've been learning a lot about God's Grace and really just trying to give that to myself before anything else... I still feel like I let God down with not being "Super Christian" these last couple of years...still trying to figure out how to be myself and love God at the same time. Ugh authenticity....it's really harder than it sounds.

One thing I do know I can do is love. Love on people and my children...give people a second chance....truly and honestly care. That is easy, because I do! If all else fails....love authentically, live authentically even if it isn't perfect.....being broken is real, it's something everyone can identify with. So when I feel like I can't be "good" at "being good", I can love.

Today, I feel joy and sorrow imperfectly and lovingly. I thank God and question Him at the same time. I'm blessed and angered all the while wondering if what I'm feeling is "allowed."

In the meantime I want to tell you, I care about you. Thank you so much for all your support and I offer you what I can do and do it well...my love.


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Authenticity is not a social norm

Recently I realized that authenticity is not a social norm. It is kind of a sad reality for me because I have aspired to be authentic always and I'm losing hope that this is possible.

The definition of authentic is to be real or genuine. This is really easy when all is going well. I can go around with a smile and honestly tell people I'm great! But I've found that when things aren't perfect, authentic means being the "Debbie Downer" of the group. I struggle with the possibility of bringing things down, or being "that" person.

I've also realized that even though my life has taken me down this road, others are not ready/willing to join me. It saddens me because I don't want to pull teeth to get to know how everyone is REALLY doing. I call it being on "level 5." Level 1 is saying "hi" and "how are you" as a courtesy, you don't want to be rude.this is reserved for people who are acquaintance or those we don't know very well. Level 2 is talking about the weather or your favorite reality or sitcom show and how you can't believe that guy chose her! Sometimes the "real" you comes out in these kind of conversations but you can shield yourself behind a character of a show. Level 3 is talking about your weekend and some personal stories, where you went, what you did. Maybe here is where you elaborate on your life and opinions but still safe behind the wall of events. Four is letting someone in to talk about the "norm" of our lives. You know, the fight you had with your significant other, your kids and how they are driving you crazy. This is where your normal conflicts that "everyone" can identify with are. Level 4 is the level I think most people live when it comes to friendships. It's great right? I mean at this level we can stay safe yet feel like we are getting to really know someone. These level 4 things are not what we tell just "anyone!"

But level 5 is going deeper. Its identifying the true self. Its opening up the ugly. It's your fears, insecurities, vulnerable moments, and your seemingly silly dreams. Some people never have this relationship. I know I didn't until the ugly happened to me. Being stripped of every mask you have happens when life happens. When the boiling pot you were trying to keep the lid on for so long begins to boil over. I believe that you have to be authentic and true to your own self before you can dare give it to someone else. I don't know if that would have ever happened had I not been on this journey. Now I can see my ugly but often feel alone in the fact that ugly is not allowed in everyday conversation.

Yet there are those few that join me in level 5. I can say I'm having a rough day, I don't feel important or, I'm comparing myself to others and I'm on the losing end....every time. I can admit that I'm angry at God at times, I'm not the perfect Christian, and sometimes I question Gods character. I can come to them in shame and embarrassment that I don't measure up and they still love me for who I am.

The funny thing is, these relationships....and you....can identify with this ugly. I'm sometimes told that I'm brave or amazing for having this calling and going on this crusade (so to speak). But often times I feel that I don't belong, I'm out of place. I feel that my desires to be this vulnerable at all times is impossible and in that I am weak, a failure.

I always feel that I end every entry this way, thank you for those of you joining me. It's ok even if you join me silently....I get it. Every person desires a sense of belonging....fitting in.....I'm trying to do that after everything I've been through. The journey continues, I dare you to belong to it....


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Missing

Wow the last two days I've been missing something I've never had.

I don't know how that is possible.

It's so odd because I don't know what has triggered this feeling. I find myself missing seeing my son grow and develop, smile and learn his first word. Would he be a momma's boy (but of course)! Who would he look and act like? Would he like sports or music? Who would his first girlfriend be?

Gosh I can't wait to meet him.

Love you Jerin.




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