My 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.