I am finding that keeping a blog is having a profound effect.  I think I've mentioned it before, but it's true.  I find myself thinking of what I will write the next time I post.  And then I start writing and find that it takes me to places I haven't visited in a very long time or a thought that meanders a bit.  I apologize if it seems that way to the reader, but it is easier to for me to write it in this way.  I also firmly believe that God is helping me pen this blog.  He knows my struggles and every thought I have. And it helps me.
     I met Dr. Susan Krasner for the psychological "test", whatever it was.  We talked for a bit and I explained my anger at my doctor, and my own firm belief that I was mentally sound.  As we talked I know I had little nibbles of fear that perhaps I did have some evil thing in my brain.  But the more we talked the more I knew I was all right.  She affirmed this by saying she didn't see any signs or red flags.  So she put me in a room gave me the paper test and left me alone for some time.  I don't remember exactly what the questions were, but there were statements and I had to rate them with a yes or no, sometimes, usually or always.  Questions like, " I feel so badly some days I wish I were dead".  "I like flowers".  I remember wondering what the heck flowers had to do with anything.  Dr. Krasner told me afterwards that the questions you think are important really aren't and the ones you wouldn't think have anything to do with anything were somehow the important ones.  I left that session feeling confident that I was okay.  She also assured me that she didn't think anything would come up, but I made an appointment for the following week to get the results.
      While I remember feeling positive, I also remember that each day that passed seemed to grow longer and farther away from the life redeeming surgery to implant the Neuro-Stimulator.  I often felt that God was against me.  Taking his time with my pain.  I didn't understand it and it made me mad. 
     I had been working in my church for about 10 years at the time.  I had always used music as my prayer, and I tried so hard to help the people of my parish to pray in song.  To enhance the liturgy.  It was always my mantra.  I never took weekends off.  I played for every funeral and wedding and other special day.  The only time I was off was when I was having surgery, and even then, I would go back as soon as I could.  That job was my sanity.  It was a "job" but it was a ministry that I believe God had led me to.
      Let me  veer  away from my topic for a moment and explain a little about my career.  As a high school student, I didn't enjoy school, I was not popular and I wasn't anything close to looking like a girl.  This has been affirmed through the years as my children have tried to find pictures of me as a youth and laughing hysterically.  I tried to keep things far away from their eyes, and in fact had done the same with Dan.  Looking back, I am not so sensitive.  I suppose we all feel awkward at that age, but some feel it more.  I guess you could say I was the victim of some "bullying".  When I was in 6th grade, a group of "popular" kids had made up a song about me.  Something about a monkey.  It was very hurtful and stayed with me for a very long time.  It is amazing the things that shape us.  I remember several years ago being at a Christmas party with family and friends, and a girl who had been in that "popular" group.  She remembered the song, and started singing it as she laughed remembering it.  I am sure it was done in harmless fun, but it hurt me deeply, even as an adult.  Those sorts of things get embedded  in our heads and never really leave.  I remember the joking around the table as I turned red and literally got sick to my stomach.  I know I asked Dan to take me home and he didn't understand until I explained it to him.  He tried to  explain to me that she was "just that way", trying to ease my pain.  Maybe it helped.  I don't know;  It still hurts.
     At any rate, when I graduated from high school, I thought I wanted to go to college to be a writer.  No one told me or encouraged me to go into the music or art fields, the only things that I did like about high school.  At that time when you met with your student counselor, they just shuffled you through the system, not really making suggestions about possible career choices.  So I went to our local school, SUNY at Fredonia.  It is a music school.  But it was cheap.  And I had to put myself through school.  I come from a family with 8 children.  So our parents had instilled in us a good work ethic, making us work as strawberry pickers and grape tie-ers, we worked at age 12.  It was a given.  So when each of us graduated to college, there was no question of us not going, but there was also no questions of our own financial responsibilities.  So off I went to school, hating it, yet going every day to earn a degree in Children's Literature.  A degree I had to create on my own because Fredonia did not offer this as an option.  The music buildings were on the other side of the campus, and I had little interaction with other students or activities.  I was a commuter.  I went to class and went home.  I had one best girlfriend that was also from Fredonia and attending the college.  Julie.  We had been friends in high school, and found one another to be so valuable that we are still life long friends.  She is even Daniel's Godmother.  She is another sister to me, perhaps even closer.  We stuck together like glue in those days, drinking, boyfriends, socially, confidentially.  When we graduated, she moved to Buffalo, got married and got a job as a CPA.  I graduated, got a job and went to work in a Jewelry store.  I wasn't writing.
     I was raised as a Catholic.  I went to church every Sunday, sat with my large family, belonged to the CYO as a high school student.  When Dan and I started dating, it was "cool" to go to church with your boyfriend.  We had belonged to the same church and had never known each other.  I had gone to public high school, and he had gone to the Catholic high school, so it wasn't unusual that we wouldn't know one another.  We actually met at my sister Karen's wedding.  He was one of Larry's groomsmen.  I used to keep a journal, and I remember writing the night after the wedding  that I thought Dan was the man I was going to marry.  I didn't know why.  I didn't even know him.  But some eight months later we started dating.  That story is a whole other episode.
     So, some time after Jenna was born, I decided to join the church choir when the "little old lady" was told she must retire because of health and not being able to climb the stairs any longer.  She was an old timer.  She probably had no actual training, but had been there for as long as I could remember.  A new organist was hired and it seemed the right time.  After only a few years, he relocated to another state, and because I was able to play the piano I begged Fr. Dan to give me a chance.  He hired me.    I was awful.  I took lessons from a great organist from the college.  He came to St. Anthony's every week to teach me.  Little by little I learned to tranfer the knowledge of the piano to the organ.  I also sang.  Loud. And a lot.  I was leading the congregation.  It was wonderful.  Something was awakened in me.  As I learned the technical skills of playing and directing a choir, I found my faith mulitiplied by leaps and bounds.  I went to workshops, I learned my way through.  The people of my parish were very forgiviing for my stumbling of missed notes, playing to loudly or not loud enough.  That support was a saving grace.  It lifted me up, confirming that I had made the right decision and with the help of the church and Fr. Dan, I went back to the Music School at Fredonia and worked on my music degree.  While I learned a lot, I didn't get the chance to finish, as by that time, Ben was a toddler, Jenna was in school by then, and I found out that I was pregnant with Daniel.  And I was still working, now as a menswear buyer at a department store called Sidey's, now closed.  With the hard pregnancy and the store closing, my job as music director became my full time job.  And I took it seriously.  Picking hymns for each week was a job of searching for the right songs to fit the weeks readings.  And in Fr. Dan I had a weekly table talk and coffee to talk about what he was preaching and teaching about.  That was a good time.  I hadn't been told I had cancer.  I hadn't started having back issues.  I even taught in the Catholic elementary school for a year before Fr. Dan wanted me to take on more responsibilites and become the Liturgy coordinator.  Things were good.  My faith was strong and I had come through that educational floundering some 10 years after I had originally graduated from college. That was all before my back betrayed me.  I  missed Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving mornings with my family to be at church.  They followed me though.  We managed to adjust our home time to make everything work.  The kids often came upstairs in church and sat on the organ bench with me.  Ben learned his love of music in church.  In fact, I was pregnant with him the Easter Sunday he was due to be born.  He waited until after Easter and was born 3 days later.  He is today and accomplished musician.  He is naturally gifted.  I had to work at learning music.  He seemed to pick it up so much easier.  Today he often plays in church.  And when he sings... he has a voice blessed by God.  This I am sure of.
     As I meandered off my topic of surviving, I look at these words I have written and realize that in a way, music was my savior.  God gave me this gift to share and I have done it willingly and longingly.  It has always brought me closer to my God.  It has shaped my life and the lives of my family.  If Fr. Dan had never given me a chance, I might not be in this place that I am today.  It cemented my faith.  When my back and legs became an issue, always, always, I played.  And I sang.  I prayed. I longed for peace.

     As I have drifted off my topic so completely now that I think I will take a break and come back a little later to continue with my psychological test and what transpired after it.
I wish you peace
Survive
Barb