I hate it when the car breaks down

The car still isn’t fixed.  It broke down on Monday on the way to work and I had to get towed.  Last week it was the engine housing;  this week it’s the computer.

I got stressed when it broke down.  I think my blood pressure went way up – my heart pounded and I had a sort of pain in my chest.  It’s a throwback to breakdowns passed, especially the one when I broke down 3 times in the one journey, with the same problem, on lonely roads, with the kids, night descending, and costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars, which I didn’t really have.  It was a time in my life, year after year, when everything, big and small, went wrong.

Any wonder that when I break down, the anguish of it comes back a bit. I still carry a sort of resentment towards God for all those dark years, when nobody helped; nobody understood, nobody helped me fight my corner.  All God seemed to do was allow more bad things. 

I know His purpose was to make me rely on Him. He let the devil trick and savage me all through those years.  It was like a trek off into the wilds;  so much darkness; so much despair;  so much conflict in every arena of my life. All to a backdrop of grinding hard work frugal living.

Now, here I am still holding the banner of the risen Christ;  still living by the precepts of the  Suffering One.  I’m still on the treadmill of low income and frugal living, with loneliness as my companion.  It’s just how it is.

I guess I know the nature of Christ and what it means to be a Christian, which is a little more founded in reality than those cardboard cut-outs who cry into my puzzled face “I’m off to Paris!  Isn’t God wonderful!”.  (pukeness-making I reckon).

I know what it is to live in the Spirit and soar with the Eagle (spiritually), with the light of God on my back.  I understand that the light and the soaring are perhaps as tangible and real, when I’m trudging through mud, as it is when I’m in a sunny meadow.  The Spirit and the light are the same whatever my circumstances.

The only thing that stops me soaring is that I’m still a frail human being and have become used to the easier path, when I’m not struggling with the pain of divorce or the loss of a son, or even the car breaking down.  I’m like everyone else – I don’t want to have my faith tested with suffering and loss.  It’s easy-peasy being a banner-bearer when nothing much goes wrong. The fact that it has been tested with these things, only makes me more susceptible to little things going wrong. 

To be honest, I don’t know why I’m still on the treadmill of working when I’d rather give up, and the alone-ness gets to me at times.  So when the car broke down the second time, it triggers the puzzled bewilderment which is still a part of me, and I wonder again, just what on earth was the purpose of all the designed and designated suffering?

But I don’t have the energy to rail against it anymore. I’ve resigned myself that this is God’s lot for me now until I reach “Aslan’s country”;  heaven;  the real Life for which this life has been a preparation.

I just hope God hasn’t got any more bloody awful surprised in store.  If He can’t allow good things (and when I’m in my right mind, I know I have many of those), I wish He’d keep the bad to himself.  I do SO get sick of being changed from glory to bloody glory!

I do get angry with God sometimes. But I SO don’t want to “do” anger either, and being thankful is a way to counter anger.  Anger is exhausting, futile, defeating of joy, hard going, depressing and affects no-one except me.

Sometimes too, God seems silent.  He never answers prayers I ask for myself – even when I was at my wit’s end (many times).  It’s the cost of being an Intercessor for others.

Sometimes He seems silent;  the great Silence from Him who supposedly craves our fellowship. Sometimes, I feel like I’m slowly falling out of love with God. I am tired of making the effort, when I so obviously, so fully misunderstand His ways and purposes.  Or, rather, I keep reverting back, like a blueprint I can’t erase, of a Providential, caring Father-figure God.  I expect Him to look out for me;  to be on my side, stick up for me, provide a little help when life robs me of the good crop I’ve sowed.  But that never seems to happen (or when I’m …. Admitting it now…. Depressed…. That’s how it seems)

Instead, when I am thankful to Him for all the positives of some loss He’s allowed, He allows more loss; just to be sure I have been tested enough.  And really, even though I have this idea in my head of a Providential God, what’s actually in my emotional, spiritual self is this silent, testing, hard-hearted God who looks away at my distress, who looked away at the struggle and suffering of Christ on the cross.

So I’m left with this suffering Jesus who must understand what it’s like to be rejected and un-helped by Father God.  I know too, that if I turn away and leave God out of my life, I am unhappy and left exposed, without shields or protection, to the demons of depression, self-pity, anger and despair. (shudder).

So, up I go again, to turn to the light of the “looking-away God” and the unearthly, unfathomable, joyous song of the Sprit, and to the suffering, bewildered, anguished figure on the cross, who said “why have you forsaken me God?”.

And I understand that. And I think “this is the narrow door”

And I go through it again.

After all, God doesn't really promise that nothing bad will happen.

He just promises an unending supply of hope, strength, courage and even joy, to cope with it all.

He will never leave us, or forsake us, actually  The forsaking is not an earthly, tangible, riches, comfort arena. 

It’s a spiritual arena;  He will never leave us to battle our demons;  our struggles;  our doubts, alone. He will never throw us into a spiritual arena which we cannot win over and emerge triumphant and whole.

I just wish I could get that bit through my head. 

Time heals

I got a message on my voicemail that my Doctor wanted to see me.  I had done a bowel screen test about 6 weeks ago, and, because I didn’t know why she wanted to see me, I jumped to the conclusion that something must be wrong, either from the results of the bowel screen or the blood test I had for kidney function, about the same time.

When you’ve had quite a bit of bad stuff in your life, it’s very easy to think the worst will happen, because you’ve experienced the worst before.  You know awful stuff can happen.

I didn’t have a lot of time to get worried or upset about the Doctor;  I made the appointment yesterday and I saw her this morning. Nevertheless, I could feel myself start to think “what if this is serious illness looming?”.  I had lots of depressed, resentful thoughts, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to face serious illness, and all the negative emotions which would accompany it.  I shouldn’t have worried – she just wanted to do a review of all my meds.  The bowel screen was negative and the kidney function was fine.

It struck me today, when I was thanking God that nothing serious was wrong – I suppose if there WAS something serious, I would have eventually thanked Him for that too (give thanks in all circumstances)…. Anyway, I thought that time is a very valuable healer.  I am able to much more easily throw off negative thoughts because I am further away from the traumas of 2006.  I feel stronger now than I did then.  When you are in the thick of pain or suffering or anxiety, you don’t have the same “choice” to throw off negativity and stay afloat.  It’s harder to do, because the thoughts are darker, more intense, stronger and come more often. You are living in a stressful arena, coping with anxiety and pain from many fronts, whereas when the trauma or cause of the anxiety has passed, time begins to heal and gradually, as you face what’s happened, the positives begin to expel the negatives.

So now, in the last 6 months or so, I feel like my life’s arena is a brighter place – my brain chemicals are much recovered since the death of my son, Ben.  It’s been a gradual process, but negative and sad thoughts are the exception now, where once they were the rule.  There was quite a sustained period in my life, after my divorce, when positives were the exception and I had to deliberately think of them.  They didn’t reveal themselves – I had to search for them and it was only after Ben’s death that I realized this, and resolved to find the positives, even in his death.

I used to feel like my life was a page with my story written on it and great ink blots of terrible things were creeping down over it, obliterating all the good stuff.  Even before Ben's death, my life had been fairly difficult year in, year-out, for many years.

When I look back over the nearly 7 years since my son’s death, I can see the healing which has taken place.  Some things, like regret, disappointment, abuse etc, are things you have to actively try and heal by facing them, forgiving people, shouting them at God, even.  But grief is something which just has to be walked, a day at a time. In my case there was not a lot of other stuff (like a broken or dysfunctional relationship with Ben) to deal with.  So, as I met and touched the great chasm Ben’s death left in my life, there was a gradual climbing up the cliff of grief.   I can see that I’m much closer to the top now and can see over the other side. I have more capacity for joy now and am learning again to look forward with anticipation, to simple enjoyments. 

I will always be well acquainted with how precarious life is and how bad stuff can happen to me, and that brings it’s own price;  if I’m not careful I can easily imagine the worst possible scenario in any situation - as in the trip to the Doctor – it IS easy to imagine that life might deal me another body blow. It’s a sort of “mended frailty”;  wounds, newly healed can be broken open more easily.

But in general, I have a happier outlook and that’s because the wound and grief of losing Ben, the terrible bullying and the ill health that all happened at the same time, in 2006, has healed a lot.

It’s helped a lot to let go of all the bitterness I felt at my bad marriage and divorce.  It was such a long process – years and years of feeling so impacted;  so bitter.  I can hardly bear to think about what a struggle it was to overcome the grief of it. If I’d kept clinging to those thoughts of loss and injustice and resentment (anger, really), I would have still been so unhappy now.  I suppose a positive outcome of it was that when Ben died, I knew I didn’t want to go down that anger/self-pity pathway again, and resolved not to.  (How I did that is for another blog).

Time heals. It really does. But you have to give it the right environment.

anxiety, endurance, and healing

I've been looking at 2 Timothy 3:11.  It's about endurance.  It's speaks of persecution and enduring with that. Paul says the Lord rescued him from his persecutions.  I suppose He did a lot of times, but I think in the end, Paul died a martyr's death.

 

When I think about how to endure, sometimes there's no other thing which keeps you going, except God. You can use strategies, diverting occupation, counselling, friends' support.  These things are invaluable.

 

But at the bottom of all these, it's just you and the problem and the pain.  And endurance will stand you in good stead.  The way to endure is one day at a time.  If you have anxiety, problems, endure them one day at a time.

 

There will come a time when you will be sick and tired of living a day at a time.  You'll long for a day when the pain/problem is less severe or finished. That day WILL come.  It absolutely will come.  And, the fact that you are longing for that healed day to come, is actually a sign you are getting better;  someone who is immobilised by fear or suffering or pain, lives in that moment because they are trapped in it.  It's only as you begin to come out of the terrible suffering or conflict, that you even have the capacity to contemplate the future.

Live a day at a time for as long as it takes to "feel normal" again.  There will come mornings of sunshine and evenings of peace.  You just have need to endure.  There will come a time when you are happier, calmer, healed. And along the way you will have learned strategies and strengths so that you will never be brought quite so low again.

 

Having said that, someone who has had terrible hurts at the hands of someone else, is never quite the same.  Certainly someone who has lost a child will never be completely healed until the Day of Resurrection dawns. Someone who has been abused as a child will always carry those wounds.

 

But there will come a sort of "healed, mended frailty"; not unlike a leg that once broken is always a little tender on the break site. 

 

For me, the anxiety and panic attacks can never have the power to completely control me, as they did in the past, because I learned how to "bluff them back".