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Stacey L. Lacik

~ Common Sense Christian Counsel

Stacey L. Lacik

Tag Archives: God

Midnight Musings

01 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by Stacey in The Journey

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Tags

Christian Living, Christianity, depression, God, Grief, Grief Loss and Bereavement, Pastoral counseling, Prayer, Sorrow

We had an event at church tonight, a fall festival in the parking lot.  There were bounce houses, games, cotton candy, and face painting.  Kids and colored wigs everywhere.

And underneath the costumes, and coats, and scarves, there was an awful lot of pain.

I heard stories of loss, and profound disappointment.  Stories for which there are no easy answers, when even offering to pray for someone sounds trite and condescending.  I think sometimes the reason we offer to pray for people is to make an uncomfortable conversation more palatable;  it makes us feel better, as though we’ve done something to help when, in truth, there is nothing that can be done.

This doesn’t fit our culturally sanitized version of Christianity.  I can think of five people right off the top of my head who would be so upset with me for even writing something like that.  We’re supposed to pray with power, and authority, and fix everything and everyone with scriptures, and platitudes, and hollow-sounding affirmations that fall on deaf ears and broken hearts.

Sometimes all you can do is just say how very sorry you are.  And leave it at that.  Sometimes there’s absolutely nothing to say, at all.  I know that when going through the worst of it, people would pray, meaning to help, wanting to do something, and it did nothing for me.  Things that helped?  Something to drink, hot or cold, depending on the day.  Space to be quiet.  Freedom to not talk.  A place to rest.  Sometimes a walk, even if I didn’t feel like talking.  I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t usually listening, either;  I was feeling the warmth of the sun, or the heat of the mug, or the softness of a blanket.  But that’s it.  When you’re grieving, people’s voices seem so far away.  They’re comforting, because it means you’re not alone, but the expectation to hold up your end of a conversation is physically exhausting.  Short, simple questions work best.  Not a lot of them.

My own, constant prayer on a bad day is “Dear God, please hold my heart together.  I can’t do this anymore.  I certainly can’t do this today.”

If we have kids, we do it for them.  I don’t know what people do who don’t have any.  I really don’t know.  I know I wouldn’t be here.

But tonight, dear God, please hold their hearts together.  The people who, for whatever reason, opened their hearts to me tonight.  Help them and hold them.

Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.  – Ephesians 6:10

My Odyssey

13 Monday Jul 2015

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A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, Church, Counseling, depression, Divorce, God, Healing, Homer, Odysseus, Pastoral counseling, Soul Healing, The Odyssey, Trust, Word

  1. 640px-Departure_of_Ulysses_from_the_Land_of_the_PheaciansSo, I turned fifty in June.  I had to walk away from the blog for a bit (except for the post on July 4th) because there were too many other things that required my attention, and while a blog post may read easily, it definitely isn’t quick and easy to write.  A lot has happened in the past couple of months, not the least of which was leaving the church that I’ve been a member of since my divorce in 2003.  I have gone back to the one I belonged to before, the church my daughters grew up in.  It was not an easy decision, but I believe it’s the right one for this time and this season.  I have thought long and hard about it over the last year.  I wanted to be absolutely sure that I’m not just running away.

Because sometimes there is a fine line between leaving and running away.

I am well aware that I am doing a bit of both, but I do believe that this is the assignment God has called me to for this season.  People keep asking if I’m “happier there” but to me, that’s irrelevant.  It’s the wrong question, the right one being: is this where I’m supposed to be?  As Christians, I believe we should go where we’re called, and where we’re needed.  We don’t come and go because we like the worship, or we like the people, or all of the perks and amenities offered as a result of membership.  The church is not a club, and the building is not a clubhouse.  I wasn’t ‘unhappy’ at the other church;  the only problem I ever had wasn’t with the church itself, it was the occasional breach of confidentiality by my pastoral counselor, who also attends that church.  If it weren’t for that I would have been quite happy there.  Time and again, she made it abundantly clear that I was neither welcomed, nor wanted.

Sometimes the giants in the land are the people we would least expect.

I keep forgetting, now that I’m back, that for everyone else, more than ten years have passed.  For me, it’s just been one very long, very bad year.  I find that I have to keep making small mental adjustments as people are talking to me.  They have no idea what I’ve been through since I left, and for the most part, they don’t need to.  But I keep wondering, what in the world happened to my life while I was in therapy?  Where did my life go?

I feel like I just woke up, and have discovered that I’m not who I was when I left.  Time will tell if this is a good thing, or a bad thing.  (Or, more likely, maybe I wasn’t who I really am while I was there.)

I am now in the process of reassembling my life, very carefully and very slowly, one piece, one person at a time.  It’s like sifting and sorting through the remains of a disaster, trying to find what’s worth salvaging, and what needs to be repaired or replaced.  I have long thought that the divorce hit me like a plane hitting one of the towers on 911, but what happened after the divorce, what happened in the end, with my counselor, was like having a tsunami hit in the exact same location, while everything in my life was still destroyed by the first crisis, and the air was still thick with smoke and falling debris.  And now, the waves;  of grief, regret, and shame, from having ever trusted anyone so completely and so stupidly.

I have been reading Homer since early spring, and feel somewhat akin to Odysseus, who, having experienced multitudinous adventures, returned home ten years after the Trojan War, only to find that nothing was as it was when he left.  I also had a Mentor on my journey, but instead of pointing the way home, she directed me away from home, as is common in long-term therapy.  My life became smaller and smaller, until there was almost nothing left.  I lost myself.

Or like Dickens’ Miss Pross, who, after the last fatal scene with the seething Madame Defarge, climbed into Jerry Crunchers’ carriage, having been rendered completely and permanently deaf in the struggle of her life.

“I feel,” said Miss Pross, “as if there had been a flash and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life.”

All I’ve had to go by for the last four years is a pillar and a cloud;  the Word of God and the inward leading of the Holy Spirit.  But that’s pretty much it.

“I can hear,” said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her, “nothing. O, my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great stillness, and that stillness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be broken any more as long as my life lasts.” *

If I let myself think of all that I’ve lost – over twenty thousand dollars to my pastoral counselor, all for nothing, in the end;  time with my daughters, my family, and my friends; my health, home, jobs, graduate school – l get bogged down in sorrow and can’t function.  The memories I don’t have are the ones I didn’t make, because life happened while I was in counseling, and I feel like I missed it all.  Everyone else kept living;  I didn’t.  My life ended the day my counseling did, in a fit of rage and anger.   So, the best thing to do seems to be to try not to think about all of it, and distract myself by working hard and keeping busy.  And yes, leaving my church is part of that.

Let the healing begin.

“The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you;  he will never leave you nor forsake you.  Do not be afraid;  do not be discouraged.”         Deuteronomy 31:8 (NIV)

* A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens.

It’ll Be Okay

04 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by Stacey in The Journey

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Counseling, depression, Divorce, domestic violence, God, Grief, Healing, Single-parent, Soul Healing

As I wrote last year, I don’t celebrate the Fourth of July.  It is far too painful;  if I close my eyes, I can still hear the shrieks and squeals of my daughters as they ran through the dark with their sparklers;  can still see the looks on their faces as the fireworks exploded in the night sky.  I can still feel the sweet, sticky little arms gripping my neck, and my hands, as they watched the parade in Manlius, waiting excitedly for their uncle to pass by in the fire truck.  Waiting to run out as the candy was thrown, before running back to our spot on the side of the road.  I tried, a couple of times, to go to the parade and fireworks without them, but it was disastrous, so now I usually just stay home.  It just hurts too much.  I miss them horribly.  I miss all of our traditions.  The family-ness of it all.

Happier times.

Happier times.

And when I do, I feel akin to those parents who have lost their children through some great tragedy.  Except that mine are perfectly fine.  Now young adults, they’re on a beach in Virginia this week, getting sunburned and hot as they wait to go to dinner with their father, and later to watch fireworks by the side of the ocean.  It’s the yearly family vacation……without me.  And it has been this way every year, since the divorce.

Because of a mix-up and a miscommunication, my pastoral counselor could not come to court that day, to be in the courtroom with me as I gave my testimony.  I knew I couldn’t do it without her, so we (or rather, our lawyers) agreed to settle in the hallway outside the courtroom.  She moved into a beautiful new home that day, and I lost mine.  Life happens.

I feel guilty as I grieve, because the reality is that my kids are fine.  It’s me who isn’t.  Not only that, but they will be home tomorrow, so I’m trying to keep busy today, cleaning and getting ready for them, otherwise my head is full of courtroom and counseling sessions.  (In truth, I haven’t done a single, blessed thing all day except cry.)  I am aware that those parents who have lost their children forever would gladly give up every holiday just to have their children alive and well, whether they could be together or not.  So, it feels like illegitimate grief, although that doesn’t make it any less painful.

As I write this, Jeff and Sheri Easter are singing “It’ll be Okay” in the background, on Daystar.

And I believe it will.  I believe that somehow, someway, some day, God will make it all okay in the end.  I have to believe this.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  Jeremiah 29:11

A Contemplative Night

25 Saturday Apr 2015

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depression, Divorce, domestic violence, Faith, Family, God, Grief, Healing, marriage, Mental health, Soul Healing, Thought, Trust, Word

1396744041183Lots of thoughts and feelings tonight.  Seemed like every demon in Hell was ready and waiting before I even swung my feet over the edge of the bed this morning. I had to distract myself all morning to keep from sinking into sadness; spent some time in the Word, with a cup pot of coffee, and then some time getting group notes and files in order, and eventually I felt better.

And then, in a notebook, in the middle of notes on European history, I found several journal pages from the beginning of the end of my marriage.  (When I say the beginning of the end, I mean long after it actually ended;  it just took a few years for the reality to hit.  Shock does that to a person.)

Notes on how my husband, after having been gone for a couple of years, verbally attacked me in a pet store of all places, in front of the salespeople and our daughters, who were little at the time.  How I began to realize that I had outgrown him while he was gone, not just spiritually, but emotionally, and that there really was no marriage left, and hadn’t been for sometime.  How the manager had come to confront him, and help me.  How completely and utterly humiliating it all was.

More notes.

He had pushed me one day, quite hard, in our bedroom, and then, after staring at me and hesitating for a moment, pushed me again, and I flew all the way across the room and hit the dresser.  (This ended up being a hospital visit, with one of the discs in the center of my back protruding visibly through my t-shirt) and how, somehow, that particular day, it finally occurred to me that he wasn’t ‘out of control’ he was in fact very much in control.  Something about the way he hesitated before pushing me the second time.  That day – that very day, I realized that abusive people are not ‘mentally ill’.  They are masters of not only self-control, but of deception.  That it is easier for them to charm the oil out of a snake than it is for them to tell the truth.  For so many years I had made excuses for him:  I had made him angry, he was mentally ill, he had childhood issues (who doesn’t?) but I never called it what it was.  I never saw it for what it was, until that exact moment, on that exact day.  All because he stopped to think about it. Truly mentally ill people don’t do that.  Abusive people do.  If he hadn’t hesitated, I wouldn’t have seen it.

The nice thing about getting older is that you get (hopefully) more clear-headed.  You become more firm in your convictions, right or wrong, so watch yourself, but you get stronger.  You become free.  I know that I do not want any more abusive people in my life, and certainly not in my heart.  I do not want any more ‘friends’ who get angry if I don’t do what they feel I should do, never mind the fact that I am more than capable of hearing from God for myself, thank you, and I also do not want any more people who wear their psychiatric labels like a suit of armor, protecting and absolving them from any moral responsibility in the wars they wage against other people.  It’s not that they can’t control their anger, it’s that they choose not to.

Why so transparent tonight, about such personal issues?  Because the walls of my heart are all trampled down tonight, and in this brief space of time, before they go up again tomorrow, I need to put all of this somewhere before I go to sleep.  Somewhere where maybe it can help someone, who is tonight where I was all those few years ago.  And all I can tell you is, God Himself delivered me.  That if you trust Him, He will make a way out;  He surrounds us with His legions of angels, He goes both before and behind us, and leads us through, and out the other side.  I am not completely through yet, but can definitely see sunlight somewhere up ahead.

So, I am sad and worn out tonight, but oh, so thankful for all that God has delivered me from.  So very thankful.

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them. ~ Romans 8:28

 If we remain in His love, God will redeem every circumstance for His glory.

Worried Sick

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by Stacey in The Journey

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Tags

anxiety, Bible, Counseling, depression, domestic violence, Faith, God, Health, Pastoral counseling, Single-parent, Soul Healing, stress, Trust

Coming down with pneumonia was not in my plans for this week.  My immune system has tanked again;  it seems that stress is bad for your health, financial stress in particular.  I had to make a choice between paying the rent and paying my daughter’s spring tuition; they are roughly the same amount of money.  If I don’t pay her tuition, she can’t go online and see her grades, and there is a hold on her account, meaning she can’t register for her fall classes next week.  If I pay the tuition, but not the rent, she won’t have a place to come home to at the end of the month.

Running away is not an option, and appears to be the realm of ex-husbands, ex-fathers and irritated pastoral counselors.  But not mothers.  We don’t bail, jump ship, or disappear.  Mothers get a cup of coffee, a Bible, and get alone with God to see what He has to say about the situation.  About us, in our situation.  And what He has to say is “Persevere … remain steadfast … trust, and see the salvation of your God.”  In other words, don’t jump.

So, I paid the rent.  Not all of it, but at least enough to cover April.  I haven’t said anything to my daughter, because I want her to be able to concentrate on her grades, and studying for final exams.  I don’t have a clue what to do next, or what is going to happen now.  The money is gone, and there’s no getting it back.  I’m not even sure I did the right thing;  paying bills lately is akin to shooting arrows at a target while wearing a blindfold.

Every time the phone rings, or I see that there is a phone message, I think it’s the landlords saying we have to go, or National Grid saying they’re shutting off the utilities, or the school, demanding payment.  I try not to answer phone calls unless I’m sure of who it is.  I have a hard time looking at my bank accounts without feeling sick, nervous, or nauseated.  I have so much apprehension about going to the mailbox that some days I just don’t.  There is rarely anything good in there. Most of it is anxiety-provoking demands for money that I don’t have.

I am the queen of avoidance.

When my daughter came home for Easter last week, her acceptance for nursing school came in the mail, and she was so excited.  I am so proud of her, and didn’t say a word about the fact that I don’t know how we’re going to pay even for this semester that hasn’t ended yet.  She can’t just suddenly stop in the middle of her junior year of college. Those who are unfamiliar with the dynamics of domestic violence say that I should just ‘make’ her father pay for her schooling.  Well, wouldn’t that be lovely.

So here we stand.  I don’t know how it will all work out, I just have to believe that it will.  Pneumonia isn’t fun, but it will clear up.  I have a modicum of faith.

But let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, so that you may be [people] perfectly and fully developed [with no defects], lacking in nothing.  James 1:4

When the Crisis Doesn’t End

21 Saturday Mar 2015

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depression, Divorce, Faith, God, Grief, Single-parent, Soul Healing, stress, Trust

This was a heart-broken day.  It was my youngest daughter’s twentieth birthday, but I didn’t get to spend it with her.  Her father picked her up at school and took her to Ohio, and she won’t be home until tomorrow night.  She went to a basketball game and out to dinner, and will stay at a hotel tonight.  She is having the time of her life, and I wouldn’t take it from her for the world.  He can more than afford it, and I can’t compete with NBA games, and Universal studios, or condos on the beach.  I, however, am having a hard time buying her a card and a gift.  I knew this was going to happen, but I had set my mind to be okay, and I was (kind of) until someone reminded me this afternoon that the girlfriend went along with them.

And, I confess, I think I have hate in my heart tonight, Lord.  A bag of candy and a lot of tears later, I believe there’s some intense dislike and resentment there.

I don’t want to be the kind of person who hates, or dislikes anyone.  I usually don’t, but this one is hard.  Always.  So please, God, guard my heart against bitterness.  And hopelessness.  Hopeless is a horrible feeling, but it can be so hard to fight it, and some days I just don’t feel like fighting.

Sometimes I feel that there is no corner of my life untouched by sadness.

I have not heard from my landlord yet regarding the house;  I owe them money, and am not sure [again] if we’re coming or going.  I am so very tired of moving.  If I had a million dollars, I would buy a place of rest and refuge.  (With roses.)  Somewhere peaceful, private, quiet and safe.  It would be nice to be able to go to sleep for one night and not have to worry about money, or bills, or being homeless, or having the utilities shut off.  It’s not that I’m not grateful for what I have (and I have a lot) but the financial and emotional fallout from divorce and domestic violence is huge.

I had written last time about I book I had found, about False Memory Syndrome.  The book has been enormously helpful, but healing from misguided therapy has taken a backseat to all of the financial worries and health problems.  I will write more about it, because writing helps, but not tonight.

Tonight all I will do is trust God, and pray that tomorrow will be a better day.

(And try to beat my daughter at Trivia Crack.  Or maybe I will let her win, just for tonight.  After all, it is her birthday.)

 

Of Mice and Money

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Stacey in The Journey

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Christian, depression, God, Soul Healing, Spiritual warfare, Trust, Winston Churchill

Shortly after signing the lease for this house, and when I had only made a dent in the sea of boxes in the garage, all of my money was stolen.  By a stranger;  someone standing at an ATM in Atlanta, Georgia.  They just helped themselves to everything, and added fees along the way on top of it.

I had gone to Home Depot to buy mouse traps (of all things) a couple of days before, and I believe it was there that my account was compromised.  Not quite sure, as I also went to Target right after, but I believe it’s one of the two.  I got a call from the card company saying that there had been some ‘unusual activity’ on my account, and that someone had just changed my pin number and withdrawn everything I had set aside for bills.  Several hundred dollars, all of which is needed by Saturday in order to pay the rent for November.

The thief comes only to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.  Indeed.

“I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”  (John 10:10)

Nothing like a good, old-fashioned attack of the enemy to make you wake up and put your armor on.  That, and the quiet observation of a nineteen year-old passenger that you sound more like a nihilist lately than a Christian.  (These are long car rides.)  I have already been through so much that I’m determined not to let this one get to me.  God has been faithful, always, and has helped me and strengthened me through everything.  I know God brought us here.  I believe we’re supposed to be here.  I believe He has a plan and a purpose for us in this place. He is who He says He is, and will do what He has promised to do.  I am not going to let depression and fear win this time.

With God’s help.

 Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.  Never yield to force;  never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.  – Sir Winston Churchill

The Shadow Side of Truth

19 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by Stacey in The Journey

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depression, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Francis A. Schaeffer, God, Grief, marriage, Mental health, Philosophy, Reality, Religion and Spirituality, Robert Pirsig, Single-parent, Soul Healing, The God Who is There, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

3600329089432I spent most of this summer looking for a place to live.  For some reason, I also spent it re-reading a book by Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; a book that was assigned in an English class my husband and I took years ago, before we were married.  This is one of my all-time favorite books, not just because of the memories of my relationship with my husband, before everything went so horribly wrong, but because it’s probably one of the best philosophy books I’ve ever read.  It was around that same time, that first semester of college, that I dug a used copy of Francis A. Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There out of a bin in the college bookstore.  Although Pirsig circles spiritual truths and poignant realities without ever coming to actually know God in a personal way, and Schaeffer’s book argues from the other side, both books shaped much of my young-adult thinking.  Anyway, I thought I was so desperately searching for Zen because I missed my husband, but I think I was really just looking for me.  (The old pink copy from Mr. Baldwin’s English class was buried somewhere deep in a storage unit, so I finally went to Barnes and Noble and bought myself a new copy, which I liked much better anyway.)

I wandered pretty far off the path this summer in my thinking.  Stress does this to me;  I can think myself into a hole so deep only God can find me.  He always does, but not without considerable grief on my part, usually ending in some kind of confused fog that no amount of therapy or medication can dissipate. I went all the way to Is there really a God, and do we even exist, and if we don’t, then what’s the point of it all anyway? full circle back to There is a God, and these are real tears, so I must exist, and therefore, there must be a point out there somewhere.  The real value of a book like Pirsig’s is that while truth is approached but never arrived at, it gives you something to measure truth by.  A theoretical plumb line.  As in, okay, if I do not believe this to be truth, then what is?  Or, more accurately, what exactly do I believe?  “Truth is arrived at by the painstaking process of eliminating the untrue.” And while the Lord was more than patient with all of my midsummer wanderings, now it’s time to put things back in order and get back to work.

Mice.

An irritatingly re-occurring, and always traumatic reality in my life, they seem to have moved in to this place sometime before we did, and I can’t quite wrap my head around how to deal with them.  I don’t want to;  I want them gone.  Can’t get a cat, either, because I’m as allergic to them as I am afraid of mice.  Besides, a sign saying “This house is guarded by a kitten” is something only a real blond would put in the window.  I had just been thinking, too, that I don’t actually meet the DSM criteria for PTSD anymore (said criteria having been obliterated by all of the ones required for a major depressive disorder) and haven’t for some time, but no, no such luck.  Back with a vengeance, which is so humiliating, because this house was supposed to be both a blessing and a place of refuge.  And so many, many people bent over backwards trying to help me, and are now so happy and relieved that my summer of homelessness is over, that I don’t have the heart to tell them how upset I am with where I am.

The proper response to “Blessed and highly favored;  how are you?”  is not “Stressed and suicidal, thank you.” (“Blessed and highly medicated” doesn’t go over so well, either, unless you actually like being obviously and hyper-actively avoided by other well-dressed, seemingly healthy, adults.)  At least, not at our church.  Our poor staff is just not prepared to deal with such disturbingly raw honesty, so out of kindness and consideration for them, from the goodness of my heart, I give the appropriate response, knowing full well that I’m lying through my teeth the whole time.  God forgive me.

I really am grateful.  Grateful for a place to think, to write, to sleep and study.  I missed my bed.  And my coffee maker.

It’s good to be back.

Over the Falls, by Hugo First

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by Stacey in The Journey

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Church, Counseling, depression, God, Healing, Pastor, Pastoral counseling, Soul Healing, Trust

profile_236971163_75sq_1350264225I feel like my daughter and I have just been drifting alone in a tiny boat for the last year, knowing the edge was getting closer, and we were going to go over, but I was completely unable to do anything about it.  And go over we did, in July, because there was nothing to hold onto, and nobody was watching.

It’s amazing how your life can just quietly come to a complete stop- can end-  while the rest of the world just goes on without you.  We went over the edge, and nobody noticed.  Everything just disappeared.

I’m not who I was before this all happened.  I feel it when I sit down to work and don’t know what to write, or when I pick up a pencil and don’t remember how to draw, or a paintbrush and can’t paint.  Or play the piano.

I see neither pillar nor cloud.  Just unending darkness.

The God that I have created in my head is not the God of the Bible.  This thought occurred to me the other night when I was out walking.  The God in my head is impersonal, detached. Critical, and somewhat harsh;  usually irritated, if not angry. Punitive.  I don’t even know how or when everything changed, I only know that it has.  I see Him as another person to whom I don’t measure up;  another place where I am not wanted, or am no longer free to go.  I don’t see Him (in my mind) as the loving, gentle, forgiving God of mercy I read about in scripture.

I cannot serve both.

Forgiveness is hard work.  Not impossible, but hard.

Semantics

29 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by Stacey in The Journey

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Tags

depression, God, Mental health, mentally ill, Soul Healing, Trust

800px-The_Subsiding_of_the_Waters_of_the_Deluge,_1829,_Thomas_Cole_-_SAAM_-_DSC00868My daughter is getting impatient with this whole unable-to-find-a-place-to-live thing again.  On the way to pick up her medicine this afternoon (she came back from Florida not feeling very well) she expressed some of her frustration in the car.  Specifically, her frustration with me.

“Why don’t you do something, for once, about our situation?  Why do you just keep trusting God to fix everything, every single time, when clearly, He isn’t doing anything?”

I didn’t have an answer, so I just kept driving.  Besides, I keep having the same thoughts myself lately.  Trying not to, but there they are.

I honestly don’t know.

I briefly contemplated running the car into the next telephone pole, but abandoned the thought as soon as it came.  (Although I have had that thought quite frequently lately, too.)

I don’t believe that being depressed also means you are mentally ill, any more than being mentally ill means you are, by default, depressed.  I’ve worked with quite a few truly mentally ill people who aren’t depressed at all;  in fact, many of them are far more cheerful than I am.   However, I will be the first to admit that I am emotionally ill.  Semantics?  Maybe.  Maybe we could make a religion out of it;  I’m sure we could, if we tried.  The Church of Semanticism.  You say mental illness, I say emotional illness.  You say prosperity, I say greed.  You say faith, I say apathy.  It could be a whole religious movement.  (Don’t all email at once please;  I’m being facetious.)

I’m sure my counselor has told her friends and colleagues, or whomever she has talked all of this over with, that I am mentally ill, simply because it would serve her purposes to do so.

Absolution.

She sure isn’t telling people that all I did was send an email, and she read it, or read into it, rather, and got angry and said I couldn’t come back.  What should have resulted in communication ended instead in excommunication.  I could see if I were actually mentally ill, not just depressed, or had in some weird way threatened her, or, say, stole a coaster from her desk or something.  I don’t see why everyone else can go to their appointments except me.  What in the world is the big deal about a depressed woman trying to heal from a divorce?  Pastoral counseling is for situations like mine.  There is simply no ethical, professional, or moral reason for what she is doing.  She’s doing it simply because she has the power to do so.

I don’t know how to answer my daughter.  I really do believe God is going to work this all out, somehow.  Both situations.

We don’t have a place to live.   We have a pile of boxes.  I’m as frustrated, upset,  and worried as my daughter is.  Time is running out.

Cole,Thomas.  The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge.  1829.  oil on canvas.  Smithsonian.

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