Saturday 8 December 2012

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It's a book that changed my life, and could change yours.




An 'ah ha' Moment


An ‘ah ha’ moment

Well, here we are! Almost at the end of another exciting year with so much to be thankful for. I spent the entire day Thursday meditating on what I love about my life and what I love about myself. It seems that in recent weeks I have become overly hard on myself and I have learned through a friend that I am expecting too much of myself. Meditation is a great way of life, and something I try to use as often as I came to find some Zen. Many people think of meditation as something weird and a concept many people are afraid of. But to meditate only means to bring your focus to a level where you can find peace with your surroundings and dwell on one particular topic, or maybe to even dwell on nothing at all and just simply be. A very dear friend of mine asked me recently, “If you went back a year ago, would you have ever imagined you would be where you are!?!?” I began to sob, because honestly I didn’t think I was strong enough to get through it all. We all tend to minimize our own strengths and weaknesses until being strong is the only choice we have, then we find out we should have been a superhero! She asked me this because I have been finding it hard lately to find balance. I seem to either live in the past, where all my hurt is, or in the future where I feel more hurt will be. It is so much easier for me to live in my past……”Oh I act this way because I was abused by my father…..” or “If you only knew what I have been through in my life, you wouldn’t treat me that way….” Or “I’m going to die soon so why don’t you leave me the hell alone!” But I have learned over the past few days that this really is an unhealthy way to live. It allows you to make excuses for what you are not doing, and should be doing. It allows you to live in a different time where you don’t have to accept reality as it is today. And it also makes you miss out on the blessings of today.

As I discussed in another blog, death is something that was introduced to me at a very young age, and for the longest time I have been thinking that this was a curse. But has it not been a blessing? I question whether or not I would have left the religious organization I was a part of. I question if I would have embraced the life I was meant to live. I question if I would truly value each day the way I do now. I just came in from outdoors; have you ever gone in the woods and just smelled the evergreen trees?!?! The smell is divine! And it’s meditating on these questions that have brought me some wonderful observations.

As I look back on what I have accomplished over the past year, I can’t help but have a measure of pride. Not the kind that makes me think I am better than everyone else, because if you really knew me you would know that that is not the case. But a pride in myself for doing what I knew in my heart was right. And for following my soul’s voice to freedom.

I had a hard couple of weeks, I’m not gonna lie. And I was beginning to get hard on myself again. Thinking that maybe I was making the wrong choices and maybe I wasn’t really living a life that was pleasing to God. Maybe those Jehovah’s Witnesses were right! Maybe the happiness I am feeling now is a mask that the devil has placed over me to make me believe I am doing the right thing. Such foolishness we allow our minds to dwell on or even give any attention too! God is too big to fit into one religion! It seems that when something doesn’t go the way I imagined it to go, I fall into a funk that I find very difficult to get out of. So that’s what I am going to be working on over the winter, is staying above that line that I have now drawn for myself that I am not allowed to let my surroundings affect me enough to cross. This takes a lot of friggen work man! It’s hard when you are someone who is used to taking the easy way out and allowing my mind to wander in that dark place to keep myself out of there. I think I got comfortable being in the dark. But, not any more! I am done with spending my days worrying about the past and worrying about the future. I really am going to be working on this for a while! We cannot change the past and neither one of us can see the future. And the reality of the matter is, I could outlive all of you guys! No offence! But what about if they find a cure for CF next year, then what’s all the worrying about death, dying and sadness going to accomplish? Absolutely nothing, because then your all stuck with me for sure! Life is a gift and it’s too damn precious to be spent worrying about things we have no control over.

I had a real good, deep conversation with my Auntie Heather recently. I was telling her about how sad I was that things happen. People die of disease, people die of tragedies. She knows all about loss, she lost her sister to CF. But her attitude would turn your stomach she’s so brilliant! I have been trying to find my purpose here……what am I, Jamie Chafe here to do? And then she said this to me;

“We are not here to find purpose.
 We are here to create it.”

Well let’s just say that a light bulb exploded over the top of my head, as I understood exactly what she was trying to tell me. We spend so much time trying to find out we are here that we simply forget to just be. “We may never know what our divine purpose is” she reminded me, and assured me that whatever it is, I would accomplish it. We all do! It was just this morning I received an email from someone who has been reading my blog and fighting CF amongst other struggles. It was a letter to thank me. Thank me for writing my emotions down for the world to see. And that somehow when she felt like giving up, she read my words and felt strengthened to go on at least one more day. How can I not be proud of that!? I said right from the get-go that this blog was created for my use. For my benefit. Getting these feelings out through written word has released a burden off me that none of you will understand. The fact that in doing this I am able to be of encouragement and strength to others – that’s a great bonus! I get messages like these all the time from my readers and to this day I don’t know how to answer them back because I am just so filled with joy that my pain and everything I have been through can be of strength to someone else. So, should I not thank my ‘hard times’ for shaping me the into the man I am today? I know that sounds strange, the concept did to me at first when Heather said to thank the Jehovah’s Witness organization for teaching me what I don’t believe. I thought; Ludacris! How can I thank something that has caused me such great pain and almost cost me my life!?

But it didn’t.

This is a journey, a journey that allows us all the take different paths to where we need to get to in life. All those dark and scary roads have led me to the bright and glorious path I am on now! They have made me stronger and have strengthened my resolve to never give up. There is a lot of wisdom in thanking your past, especially if it hasn’t been a bed of roses. I often say that I am grateful to have CF….people don’t understand that. But I wonder if I would view life as beautiful as I do now if I didn’t know my life could be cut short. So, look at your life and thank it for the many hard times you have had to endure. They have helped shaped who you are today! And hopefully you have learned something from each of them.

I feel better already! After writing this entry….. I am determined to not allow negative thinking to enter back into my mind. But hey, I’m not perfect and nor are you, so we are going to have bad days. But I am going to work harder and try and keep that negativity away, will you join me? Life is too short to allow it to absorb all the joy in our lives. Before I leave you again I want to share this last bit of wisdom from Heather. It gave me an ‘ah-ha’ moment.

IMPERFECTION
We are all perfect within our imperfection. See the wisdom there?
It’s our imperfections that make us beautiful. Make us who we are.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Some jot notes from our conversation

- I have limitations that are obvious, some are not so much
- Stop looking for answers, just let them come
- Stop trying too hard
- Perfection vs. Reality
- Replace a bad thought with a new, healthy thought
- Thank your hardships
- Life is set up this way so we appreciate it
- GET OFF IT! JUST STOP!
- Educate an open mind
- How do I wanna spend my time
- Stop looking for the solution, there is more than one


“Don’t forget to be ‘flawesome’!” ~ Tyra Banks

Peace and Love,
Jamie Leigh Francis
xo

Please watch this 5 minute clip, it will change how you think!

Monday 3 December 2012

The whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God


The whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God

I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately. Though I am a million times happier than in my ‘previous’ life, I am still finding it hard to find purpose and meaning on my journey and I’m just trying to figure it all out. In doing a personal inventory of my emotions, it has occurred to me that a lot of my anger and doubts still come from my past and former religion. It’s an everyday struggle to keep the voices I still have inside my head quiet so I can stay tuned to the real world around me.

When I was sixteen and became a Jehovah’s Witness I was young and very impressionable. I was also vulnerable and an easy target as I was trying to make sense of why God caused me to have a disease and plague me with such an unsettled childhood. I was trying to make some sense of something I couldn’t understand. As a young person, I always believed there was a God, but did not know how to find him and I thought becoming a Jehovah’s Witness was the answer. Turns out it was a way to hide from my painful reality that I now know was the way I was truly made to live. But as it turns out, it wasn’t always easy.

Almost immediately they enforced a fear of God, and a strict set of rules that were acceptable and unacceptable to the God of their understanding. And for someone who was longing for answers, I learned to silence the inner voice inside that told me to follow my heart and to lead an authentic life, and I did so until that voice was almost destroyed forever. From early on, they taught me that being a homosexual was wrong and that God hated this kind of lifestyle and would punish anyone who pursued it. It was almost as if they felt demons were present in people who were gay and viewed them as lesser human beings because of their sexual orientation. In fact, I learned to judge everyone. I judged the world! If you weren’t a Jehovah’s Witness, you were nobody. As you can imagine it was an awkward feeling outwardly judging gay people when inside I was crying inside, desperate to lead a life I knew in my heart I was meant to live. I am so ashamed to say that I looked down upon, but only outwardly, on people who practiced a homosexual lifestyle, yet it was never from my heart.

I tried to kill myself by studying the bible more and by searching and searching and searching for something that I was missing. Something that could maybe cure me from this ‘wickedness’ I had inside. They even taught me to “pray the gay away”. Well, it didn’t work. In fact, it only made it worse. It was like the more I prayed to God about my inner thoughts and feelings the more I was moved to take action to live a pure, genuine life. I missed out on so much when I was a part of that society. Spending time with non-Jehovah’s Witness family members was frowned upon. I missed out on the joys of Christmas and the happy times that we as humans celebrate each year. I was taught that such practices were pagan and that God detested anyone who partook in such events. I learned to judge the world and everyone in it and thought more of myself than others only because I felt I was living the ‘right’ was and everyone else was living the ‘wrong’ way. What a hypocrite! The man I was on the inside was totally in conflict with the man I presented to the world. You can imagine the torment I had!

So I did it, I got married. I married a beautiful woman and thought that it was God’s master plan for me. I thought somehow that it would make it go away and that God would make sure to remove the man I was deep inside and replace it with one I thought he wanted me to be. I loved my wife, from the bottom of my heart, and I still do and I think I always will. But there is a big difference in being ‘in’ love and loving someone. And that was the issue. Though I loved her dearly, she was not able to give me what my inner, genuine, and real self craved and wanted so badly. But I stuck with it, slowly dying inside and losing the color in my heart.

If I were to be completely honest, it was harder leaving all my friends who were Jehovah’s Witnesses than it was leaving my ex-wife. Deep down I knew she would be ok. I knew that she would bury herself into religion and follow the course her parents taught her. And she has a lot of support from friends. But I had built, what I thought were genuine, unconditional friendships over the 7 years I was a member of that organization and it almost killed me to leave behind, people whom I associated with regularly and did many great things with it. I must stress to you that when you are a JW and you leave to pursue a ‘disgusting’ way of life, you are shunned. I was instantly dropped like a sack of potatoes from the lives of people whom I thought were my friends. I even had two people I viewed as my parents who have not spoken to me since that day. The pain I have in my heart is great, and it still bothers me to this day, which is why I thought I should write about it. The love I was shown by fellow members was conditional to one thing; that I continue to live a lie and do as God expected of me.

I remember the pain I felt driving away from my home, never to return to the life that I so desperately loved yet so desperately hated all at the same time. But I was tired. I was tired of hiding. I was tired of judging. I was tired of seeing the hypocrisy and the  twisted things that happened behind closed doors that rather than bring me closer pushed me so much further away. I don’t miss the half-hearted smiles of genuine Christians who pretended to like my all because it would affect their status in the congregation. But most of all I was tired of hating myself.

I want you to stop for a moment. Imagine you’re looking in the mirror. You are all dressed up to go from door-to-door and you slap a nice smile on your face, like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. But when you look in your own eyes, all you see is sadness. And you see a light that is burning, but only by a thread. Imagine looking at yourself in that mirror and saying ‘
I hate who you are’.
That was my pain.
That was my reality.

I became so sad that it left me wanting one thing; to die. And I almost did. If I didn’t succeed in taking my own life then I would surely die of a broken heart. And thank God neither of those things happened, though I was very close to the first. In my darkest hour and the lowest of my lows, I reasoned with myself and with the God who I believed in. “I would rather die a thousand deaths at the hand of my creator, than to live one more day in the life he made me to live and be so miserable. If God is love, then God did not want that.” They would tell you that that’s the devil talking and that I was justifying my unclean lifestyle. But you know what? I don’t care anymore. I am the only person who will have to be accountable for the way I live my life, and I don’t think any human being has the right to tell of make someone feel that the way they are living isn’t good enough. It was so exhausting judging people and looking down on everybody but myself. I think of all the time I wasted!! It makes me so sad. I try and live with no regrets and somehow pray that that whole experience made me a better person somehow. I still believe in God, I have to. It only makes sense as he is the one who helped me get through all of this. And it’s funny how it’s working out because when I practiced a JW way of life, I always felt my prayers were unanswered, but now that I am ME, it’s like every single one gets answered.

I have a freedom now that none of you reading can understand. I was a mighty lion, destined for greatness trapped in a cage. Now I am free to roam and leave my mark behind me and touch people’s lives in ways I never could going door-to-door with a bible. I am living a good life by example and not one according to someone else’s rules and agenda.

I didn’t write this blog to turn you all against JW’s, and I believe there are good people in all religions. The two people I mentioned being like my parents are two of them. I needed to let this go, and this is my way of doing it. Writing down for the world to see, in hopes that the darkest most desperate pain I felt can be of light or courage for another. My heart is happy, my health has improved and I am content with who I am. I still have my sad days when I miss people from my past I wish would still talk to me, and see that I am not evil, and I am not something to be looked down upon. I am a human being not an animal. What makes me even sadder is that when I left to pursue my new life, I had four Jehovah’s Witness males contact me. Each one in their own way told me they admired my courage and that they too were gay. But their fear of disappointing God and their fellow believers ruled over their hearts.  I pray every day for them and hope that they can find it within themselves to embrace reality, and not live in a dream world where they feel inadequate or demonized.

I walk into my bathroom every morning now. I look in that mirror and I tell myself that I am beautiful. I tell myself that I love myself. And I smile from ear to ear, with a heart full of gratitude that I was one of the lucky ones. I was able to find myself after almost losing myself. I see a light, not a darkness in my eyes that fills me with so much joy. But most of all, I am no longer in conflict within myself. I am happy. When I say I’m happy, I mean I am happy. No more lies. Only truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.


“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden
 to bear.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Peace and Love,
Jamie Leigh Francis
xo