Monthly Archives: October 2012

Grief

28 Sunday Oct 2012

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English: Hillside with grieving sheep

English (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Grief is difficult.  There is no “right” way to grieve;  the process is an individual one, and the stages of grief are messy.  It’s unpredictable.  Fine one minute, crying in Target the next.  And it does not get better with time.   It would be great if we really could forget trauma;  the reality is that we don’t.  We go over and over an event, a sentence, trying to figure things out, or make sense of things that do not make any sense at all.

Trauma gets re-enacted, in a desperate and usually unconscious effort to get a different outcome.  This person will not leave.  This person will not reject me.  Until they do.  And we relive our personal nightmares all over again.  We are left with memories and fragments of conversations that will forever remain unfinished;  sentences dangling in eternity.  Weren’t we just having coffee?  Weren’t we going to do such-and-such?  This week?  The silence is deafening.

God holds our hearts;  if He didn’t, we couldn’t exist after loss.  When we’re grieving, performance and productivity are not options.  If we’re lucky, we breathe.  But we don’t forget.  We do not ever forget.  It would be nice to have a memory eraser.  Just for an afternoon.  Mornings and weekends are the most difficult for those dealing with depression;  I read this somewhere.  I don’t know that I can say it’s true;  everything in between is difficult, to me.  Make coffee;  breathe.  Put laundry in.  Breathe again.  Take shower.  Now what?  Oh, yeah.  Breathe.

And pray.  God help me to get through today, because I don’t know how.  I have friends who are grieving today;  the loss of loved ones, whether through divorce, or death.  Many of them far greater losses than mine.  Why God made us capable of caring so much for people, I don’t know.  But we do.

And while we’re grieving, life happens. It continues.  We watch from the sidelines, and wonder.  Some days, we put our toe in the water.  Too cold;  not today.  Maybe tomorrow.  Some days we forget, for a moment, and laugh.  A blessed moment.  Some days are better than others, in that we are stronger.  We lean heavily on the arm of God, but we walk forward.  Partly because life demands it;  bills have to be paid, car repairs have to be made.  Today we’re driving my daughter up to see her boyfriend at college.  It should be a good day.

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness….”    `Isaiah 41:10

The Formative Years

20 Saturday Oct 2012

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Robin againI have been reading James Wilhoits’ book Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered this week.  Our private lives matter to God, and to the Great Cloud of Witnesses cheering us along on our journey.  It’s not about being legalistic (God forbid that we should ever do anything out of a sense of “this is right, and good, and needs to be done immediately”) but about bringing stability and order to our lives.  We live from the inside out.  In all of our trials and tribulations, we forget to maintain discipline in our private lives.  A long time ago, one of the ministers at our church told me that he thought I was very strong spiritually, but very fragile emotionally.  I have never heard a more accurate description of me.

Looking back on ten years of therapy, I can honestly say that much of it was a performance.  Not out of any desire to be dishonest, but out of a knowing that saying the wrong thing could result in suddenly being told I can’t come back next week.  Which is, of course, exactly what happened in the end. And just like that, the one constant in my life was upended;  knowing that “This is what I do on Wednesdays”  and looking forward to having a quiet, private place to go and discuss all the things that can’t be discussed with co-workers, fellow students, or other church members was suddenly over.   I don’t have a husband;  counseling replaced that in a way.  Being a single parent is lonely and hard.  I think every woman going through a divorce should have a counselor;  it doesn’t have to be psychotherapy.  I chose pastoral counseling, because that’s what I wanted, and it was important to me.  I wanted someone who was first and foremost a minister, because I knew that more than anything else, I needed healing.  But regardless, without counseling, the tendency for  women after divorce is to treat our children like more like roommates, and expect them to meet emotional needs that should be met by an adult.

I did better in counseling, in that I was able to keep a job, and go to school.  I needed the help with anxiety, and someone to talk to about depression.  Life has been hell for the last two years, and it doesn’t look as if the situation is going to be resolved any time soon, as I had hoped. But I am tired of ‘deleting myself’.  I did that in my marriage, I did that in my counseling, and there doesn’t seem to be any point in doing it any longer, as both ended anyway. Performing to please people doesn’t work.  I heard someone talk once on the difference between being a peacemaker, and being a peacekeeper.  I think I tend to confuse the two.  I like peace;  I’m not fond of chaos, and discord, and noise.  Being a writer suits me;  so does counseling and ministry.  Counseling that honored and encouraged that would have been healing.  But, I tried.  I can honestly say I have never tried harder in my life.  Something to think about, but now I have to go and pick up my daughter so she can go and help her father and his girlfriend paint their new house.

Have a Blessed day, people.

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.”  ~John 14:16

Steadfast

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

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“Stick with your work. Do not flinch because the lion roars; do not stop to stone the devil’s dogs; do not fool away your time chasing the devil’s rabbits. Do your work. Let liars lie, let sectarians quarrel, let critics malign, let enemies accuse, let the devil do his worst; but see to it nothing hinders you from fulfilling with joy the work God has given you.

He has not commanded you to be admired or esteemed. He has never bidden you to defend your character. He has not set you at work to contradict falsehood about yourself which Satan’s or God’s servants may start to peddle, or to track down every rumor that threatens your reputation. If you do these things, you will do nothing else; you will be at work for yourself and not for the Lord.

Keep at your work. Let your aim be as steady as a star. You may be assaulted, wronged, insulted, slandered, wounded and rejected, misunderstood, or assigned impure motives; you may be abused by foes, forsaken by friends, and despised and rejected of men. But see to it with steadfast determination, with unfaltering zeal, that you pursue the great purpose of your life and object of your being until at last you can say, ‘I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.'”

-Anonymous

“Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced.  Therefore have I set my face like flint and I know I will not be put to shame.”  ~Isaiah 50:7 (NIV)

Does God Care?

14 Sunday Oct 2012

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Bird

(Photo credit: Dave Williss)

I have lost my heart for writing lately.  An unexpected turn of events has left me feeling like I maybe should just not do this.  Any of it. Someone I care about read my blog, and was hurt by it. So I have gone through each post and tried to clean it up, and delete things that could be taken personally, but well aware in the process that I am once again deleting myself.  It’s difficult.

My Aunt went into the hospital on Thursday;  she needs a pacemaker to regulate her heartbeat.  I was thinking this morning that I wish I could have an emotional pacemaker for when things are overwhelming, and the world is scary.  So that when a relationship ends, I could continue to function without being blindsided by grief.  But that’s not how life works.  Loss hurts.

I went to church Friday evening;  the worst part (for me) is when the ushers try to seat you.  A very severe lady told me to “follow her” and I thought, oh, sweetheart, that’s not how this works.  I held back, and sat in the back row, as I always do, which visibly irritates them.  Only I can manage my anxiety in church, and angry ushers do not help. She was not happy.

I had a client once who said that he had tried to go to church, and he really liked it, except that when it came time for the offering, the ushers closed and locked the doors into the hallway.  And this particular client also suffers from severe anxiety.  He was never able to go back;  psychologically, he understood why they would do that (the church is in the city) but physiologically, he just couldn’t do it again.  I felt so bad for him.  Our church also has locked doors;  ropes, and people who shut you out, or trap you in hallways when you only meant to go to the ladies room quickly and get back in your seat before the whole room was sitting down.  I leave church exhausted.  And sad.  A lot of anxiety, and a lot of grief.  I wonder what God thinks as He observes all of this, done in His name? To inspire worship of Him?  To help us to see Him reflected in the lives of those who serve Him?  Because I don’t see it, not much, anyway.  I see organizational chaos. A lot of Very Important People running around with their headsets, and beepers, and pagers, very impressed with their roles and titles, but not really having a clue what they’re doing.  Or what they’re doing to people. Does God care?

Grief is a horrible, horrible feeling.  I am overwhelmed with it this week, and can’t write much.  A pacemaker would help.  My heart also beats too slowly sometimes, like my aunt.  My emotional heart also beats slowly, and sometimes bottoms out completely.  I have a meeting at church in an hour.  There was a wonderful gentleman who took my application for the Life Teams;  when he asked why I have not been involved in church, I accidentally blurted out “Because they do not want me.” And he threw his head back and laughed.  No, really;  that was the message left on my answering machine.  But I laughed too.  And said I want to be involved, and I do, my nerves don’t, and is there a place for me where nobody can see me?  I just want to help people;  to love those who hurt like I do, and tell them it’s okay.  It is all going to be okay.  They will be okay.  Time does not heal everything.  All healing takes time.  Some things will not heal, not in this lifetime.  Grief does not get better;  gone is, well, gone.  No therapy technique can fix a broken relationship, or heal a loss.  Only God can.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness….”   ~II Corinthians 12:9