My Picture Walk

               Well, there’s been a lot on my mind lately, but first…let me be honest: I don’t – can’t, really – go on walks to think. I think too much. I tend to over-think and over-dwell, so walks for me have always been a release from thinking, where my mind can be quiet and alone…just me and God’s creation. So when I took my walk the morning after Christmas, it wasn’t much different. I did a lot of thinking over the past few days’ events when I got up early, worked out and showered, but my walk was - as the prompt says - for me. I used it to let go. Well anyway, I’ll give a brief overview of what I thought of before hand. But first, a little history on the situation.

               When I was in middle school and the early years of high school, I had a number of self-worth problems. To remain as brief as possible and yet remain candid, I’ll say this much – I tried to kill myself a few times. One day on the way home from church a few years ago we learned my great-uncle’s ex-wife killed herself just a day previous on my brother’s birthday. As my family discussed it, one thing my father said stood out to me: he said it was a horribly selfish thing to do, with no consideration of the people who cared for you. Initially I chuckled bitterly to myself, tying that woman’s choice to myself – yeah, what care? Surface-level care doesn’t merit a thing. That’s how I felt at the time – my family “cared” for me, but told me outright they didn’t understand me. To this day I believe those wounds hold more than simple “teenage angst”…quite literally, my family didn’t get me. Well, after my father said what he did, I got thinking about selfishness. See, even though I hurt, I was not inconsiderate towards who my family was to me – I was very conscious of the work they did to keep me afloat with a good home and education. One thought struck me hard (and this was how my mind worded it at the time, my feelings of worth were so low) – my parents wasted so much of their lives on me…I’m not worth enough to take that life-energy and time they spent to let it mean nothing. It was that day I swore I’d be the kid they didn’t have to worry about – I would not ever do drugs, I would not get drunk, I would not let the world pull me away from my God, no matter what. I swore I’d do the Sitterley name proud.

               That last bit there, “doing the Sitterley name proud”, is where much of the last few days’ events (and my pre-walk reflection) begin. See, that has always been a very big deal to my father – knowing that we, as his children, were representing the family well. Since then I have assumed that responsibility and felt its weight immensely. That was why when my brother decided to make a scene in Starbucks the other day, my face and my heart just burned. It seems stupid…we were on our way to help with the Firefighter outreach and my brother wouldn’t stop shoving me while we were in line, but when my dad made him stop he flipped. My dad was wearing his Commissioners’ sweatshirt and it had his name emblazoned on his chest. I could feel the eyes on us; I could almost taste his shame. When the situation was brought up again during an argument between my father and brother at home on Christmas eve, I was bitter. Ever since my ..ex-great-aunt? killed herself, I had put so much effort into representing our family well, and now I was looped into this very public mess. Well the argument went on – my brother being a ridiculous hot-head and my dad with a raised voice – and eventually (because the origins of the argument were not found in this Starbucks event…the principle just carried over) it turned into that classic “lesson for everyone” situation. Roque, work on how you react. Madi, work on not harassing your brother. Victoria, you need to watch your tone. I don’t know what it is about you and your mother, but sometimes your tone comes across as harsh even when you don’t mean it. Okay, don’t judge – but my reaction went something like this: first I was super hurt…I know my voice has that problem, but I literally do not know how to fix it. I was also bitter – because the joy and warmth and kindness that works into my tone comes from REAL sources of joy, like when I said “hi Kaitlyn!!!” in the hallway. The moments where people like my dad aren’t making me self-conscious about how I talk ..that’s when my voice auto-corrects. Then I got angry – I feel, felt, like I was actually doing a decent job representing our family, and my father seriously needed to give me some credit and back off on talking about my voice that I can’t bloody well fix. That was a strange reaction…often when I felt insulted by the people closest to me, I just felt hurt..i wouldn’t get angry, I didn’t put enough value in myself to get angry. So I guess there’s two things to get out of this story that tie into the next – 1: my feelings of value have increased. 2: I REALLY care about representing my family well.

               That brings us to the carry-over of the events on Christmas. My grandma and I got into a discussion about my future and college and all that jazz…and let’s just say….we don’t see eye-to-eye. My father and my grandma didn’t, and she and I don’t either. My father grew up being told to go be a doctor, and now I’m getting that treatment too. She’s very education focused. She claims to keep her eyes towards God, and do not get me wrong, she is a very VERY respectable mother and woman, but I have my doubts. Her eyes always seem to be on what “you” can do and what “you” can accomplish and all these things of workings in the world that I really don’t have any taste for. She even (again, please don’t judge) said I would be a pioneer for my mother’s side of the family because of their college-education situations. Now that ticked me off. NOTHING about how “amazing my brain works” makes me ANY better than the amazing men and women on my mother’s side of the family. My mother didn’t go to college, and quite frankly I feel we as children benefited from her stay-at-home situation. My grandmother was appalled when I said, with my brain, that I would be okay with a stay at home situation too. Now, I know she was in no way trying to disrespect the rest of my family..her values are just different than mine. Hers are rather worldy, and mine are entirely spiritual. I was kinda depressed afterwards, thinking about how I was going to deal with basically becoming a disappointment to my grandmother. I am not going into the medical field, that isn’t my place. Then I got thinking: my father tried, having gone to UW initially to become a doctor, but he eventually had to drop it and now has an entirely different job. I searched through my memory banks to recall any moment where he spoke of how he dealt with also being a sort-of “disappointment”, but I couldn’t find a thing. The most I could come up with was him just acknowledging the let-down, and letting it go in his contentment and amazement in his relationship with Christ. While I was content with that answer, I couldn’t really figure out how he would deal with it when he faced it directly in his heart. Did he just put it away? What would I do? Then I took a step back.

               I thought to myself, “you know what? All things considered, which of her children do you think your grandmother is most proud of?” My father’s side of the family is…troubled. My aunt and uncle have made some horrible life choices, and it’s screwed them up. My father alone stands above the crowd. That was enough for me. Even if I wasn’t a doctor, I could still stand above the crowd for my grandma. My father is an amazing man of God with a heart of gold, and that flows over into blessing the other aspects of his life as well. His focus on the spiritual has naturally been mine, and therefore I was content. I would still be worth something.

               That evening, my grandmother did say a few things right. I shouldn’t limit myself to just one thing – there are, and can be, multiple sides of me and my education. And I’ll be honest, my mind can absorb and understand things from many different sides of life, be it scientific or artistic, and that isn’t hugely common. I don’t put much stock in that. I seriously do not think my brain is so great. My grandma seems to think so, and much of what you’re about to read is really just an argument against my grandmother’s point of view using her premise that “if I have a brain, then I better use it”. Based on that, I then REALLY got to thinking – okay, I’ve never really WANTED to just study and do one thing for the rest of my life. I’ve never had a serious forte, whether of skill or level of enjoyment. The only thing I find real worth and LIFE in is spiritual. Perhaps…just perhaps, I have a bigger responsibility in store for me. You know that Biblical idea where people need to use their talents to the best of their abilities to glorify the Lord? How we are actually RESPONSIBLE for those talents? And how teachers have an even greater responsibility. Well, I turned to the projection of my gramma in my head, and I told her “You know what? I would argue that even more difficult than handling medicine is handling the human heart. It’s all trial and error, whether you’re diagnosing and treating a body, or trying to heal and SAVE a human soul. That’s a lot of compassion. But if I’m to tell the man about to commit suicide that God is the answer, I BETTER be able to back myself up. And what better evidence against atheism and for God than the world itself? Understanding the world we live in, and understanding it well…knowing chemistry AND geology AND biology AND all that other fun stuff well enough to defend your faith….now THAT is a challenge. I could go to school for 12 years and be really good at being a doctor and understanding one aspect of it – or I could dedicate my life to continually learning of how God can be seen in the world, while yet retaining my intense compassion for the human soul.

PLEASE do not think I’m trumpeting my own horn – I reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally do not think I am this good. A lot of this was more response to my grandmother than a response to reality, but I feel like it says a lot about where I stand now as "me". I’ve grown a lot since I was baptized, and I think that this realization might be a challenge for me. Maybe I have the capacity to study and learn hard facts while yet embracing the abstractions of compassion and love for the soul. I don’t know. But if I do, I want to use it. Sorry grandma, I really really really really don’t care what job I have as an adult. Whatever it is, I’ll do it to the best of my ability. I just pray that I can keep loving and uplifting the people around me, wholly and completely, with enough of me left over to stand up for God and do it well. And you know what? God has blessed the Sitterley name through my father, who has a similar disposition. I’m completely confident God will watch over me as well, no matter where I am. And He will watch over you too, always and forever.
Anyway, yeah. That's basically all that ran through my mind before my walk, and I really used my walk to just flush all that out of my system, quiet my spirit, and let God's creation do the talking for awhile. Well, here are the pix! Enjoy!