Time to Myself!

Last Saturday you all patiently endured my lament about needing to get away from my peeps (aka children). This week has been MUCH better. Everyone went to school on all the appointed days, which means I had a couple of hours alone on each of THREE separate days. Today I've been out of the house on my own for most of the day. I am feeling much better. Thanks for your encouragement.

I also had to go see another doctor this week. Nothing bad - I'm following the prescribed path. I needed to see another specialist who will do the necessary tests to be sure that the cancer is all gone. I was surprised by how distressing the visit was. When I tried to schedule the procedure - which requires some anesthesia, so I can't drive myself, so my husband needs to come with me, so someone else needs to take care of the kids, so on and so forth for ever and ever amen - I fell to pieces.

When I finished chemo I'd started thinking that we were done. I'm realizing now that "done" is not a useful concept in my life. If I pass this test, which I fully expect to do, there will be another next year. And the next year. For the next 2-3 years I am at the highest risk for recurrence. For 5 years I will continue to see the oncologist. I'm sure the anxiety will wane, but right now that seems like a long time.

God is much less attached to closure than I am.

When Can I Stop Needing So Much?

Chemo is finally done. ALL done. It will be a few weeks until I can have a test to ensure the cancer is gone and I fully expect it will be.

The depression is also gone. Every day that I make plans or march happily through an ordinary day I remember how miserable it was to be unable to do that. I recently wrote to a friend that I feel like I'm waking up after missing the last three years of my life. It feels SO good.

This morning I read a post at Church Whisperer about self-reliance and it reminded me of an unhappy thought that has crossed my mind several times in the last weeks: I am eager to be able to take care of myself. I have been depending on so many people to take up the slack - care for my kids, feed my family, encourage me when I cannot come up with any encouraging thoughts on my own - and I'm tired of it.

I feel weak and needy on Sunday mornings. I know there is strength to be gained from worship and from conversation with the kind souls there but I want to stay home and hide until I can show up on Sunday feeling put together. Everyone else seems to have it together. They don't look like enduring an hour in the pew with their kids is going to make them cry or strangle someone.

I KNOW, of course, that weak and needy is precisely how God wants us to come to Him. I know that less of me and more of Him is good. My pastor suggested once that my need is a gift to the people who are able to help me.

I suppose I am not the only one who is torn between what I know is good and what I feel like I want. Must it be so complicated?

Bonhoeffer

There are a zillion things I would like to write about, but I lack the energy to compose anything. Chemotherapy drains me to the very bottom. So I'm sharing an excerpt from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. The emphasis on the last sentence is mine.

Our righteousness is an 'alien righteousness,' a righteousness that comes from outside of us . . . the Christian is dependent on the Word of God spoken to him . . . God has put this Word into the mouth of men in order that it may be communicated to other men. When one person is struck by the Word, he speaks it to others. God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure.

I am finding this to be absolutely true and difficult for me. If I must depend on God, please let me depend on God only! But God has designed us to need one another. Dang it.

Anxiety Fatigue

We're deep in the midst of moving activity and my anxiety is spreading like the toy cars and dinosaurs my kids leave on the floor. There are so many unresolved pieces and there is no way to settle them quickly. A big one is that I will need several months of chemotherapy and it needs to start right around the time we are moving. That should be settled this week after I meet with my new oncologist, but in the meantime it's keeping me agitated.

I'm not sure what to do about all this. Moving requires a lot of energy and is necessarily unsettling. Focusing on God's steadfastness gives me confidence that the floor is not falling out beneath me entirely. I am not in despair. Faith in Christ does not resolve every contingency of this life, though.

I've been thinking of the Israelites wandering the desert and relying on God's daily provision of manna. I've always heard that episode described in terms of the miracle of God's provision and how Israel learned to depend on God every day. A miracle it certainly was. I'd guess it was also frustrating and anxiety-inducing.

Crazy

A few weeks ago I wrote that a congregation had called my husband. He has accepted the call. That is (of course!) good news. It also has the potential to make me completely insane.

By the end of the summer, we will have packed and unpacked our entire house, live in a new community, my kids will be in new schools, we will all be getting acquainted with a new congregation and a new schedule, and I will be visiting an oncologist twice a month for therapeutic poison-drips. Nothing on that list appeals to me. Every bit of it has come to me unbidden.

Here's the crazy part: I am not freaked out. I am, today, entirely calm. I feel content about accepting the call and making the move. I feel confident that God is guiding us there and that He will provide what we need as we need it. I am almost rolling my eyes at myself as I write this because it sounds so pious.

I feel like I am witnessing my own death and resurrection. I surrender. I give up on trying to figure out my life and make it work right. I'll focus on today and thank God for giving me the grace to trust that He will provide everything I need when tomorrow gets here.

Recovery Week

I've been quiet this week because I suddenly realized how completely exhausted I am. Husband is done. He is no longer pastor at our former church. It is such a relief.

It is not, however, the finished-your-final-exam kind of relief I'd hoped for. It's more of a bad-guys-finally-stopped-chasing-you relief. Several times I longed for a week's beach vacation where my only responsibilities would be moving from bed to beachtowel and back again. I feel spent.

I went on a women's retreat this weekend. I was with a group of several dozen Christian women who did not know me. It was a lovely group -- diverse ages, warm, caring, and open to new friendships. I felt safe among them and realized it's been years since I felt safe in a church group.

God encouraged me through the Bible study and through several different women I met. I was proud of myself for finding a way to be kind & respectful toward our former congregation while also being honest about my sadness. Today someone even described me as "vulnerable," which is not a word I've ever known anyone to use about me.

I feel hopeful and realistic. We have passed an important landmark but the road is still long.

What Depression Feels Like

I've heard someone describe depression as "feeling like you've never had a good day in your life." It's true.

A few days ago I was completely wasted. I could not make myself get out of bed. I knew that lying in bed does not make depression go away but felt overpowered by vague and persistent feelings of wanting to surrender. At times like that, how I feel and what I know are completely unrelated. I feel like nothing good exists for me, but know that there is lots of good in my life.

I could not think what to do except hope that the next morning I would feel better. Blessedly, I did.

Days like that remind me why the relationship between the psychological and the spiritual is so hard to define. Days like that feel like Satan is working overtime, like I might never again be in the light.

If someone asked me why I go to church I might say it's because of days like that. I need to practice knowing that Jesus is with me, that God's promises are reliable, so I can see them in the dark.

Mary

I often describe myself as skeptical. My husband is definitely an idealist, and my pragmatic realism makes us a good balance. This year is the first time Mary, the mother of Jesus, has looked like a kindred soul.

When the angel Gabriel first greeted Mary, he called her “highly favored” and proclaimed that the Lord was with her. Then Luke says that “Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.” That is, she was skeptical.

After Gabriel explained God’s plan for Mary, she was still in questioning mode: “How will this be since I am a virgin?” It is an excellent question. I appreciate that she was keeping an eye on the mechanics of this thing, and not just falling on her face and agreeing to any crazy prediction the angel made.

Mary trusted God and pledged herself as his servant in that conversation with the angel. But she didn’t sing the magnificat until after she’d seen her cousin Elizabeth. Reading it now, her visit with Elizabeth seems to have functioned largely as confirmation of the absurd promises delivered through Gabriel.

I want to be like Mary. I want to keep my brain turned on, to think hard about what is going on in my life and whether it is from God or from someplace else. I also want to be free to trust God. I doubt that Mary could have imagined that magnificent and horrible things that lay ahead of her. By God’s grace, she kept going.

Without Ceasing

The last several months have taught me a lot about prayer, especially about prayer as ongoing conversation. I’ve begun, occasionally, to ask God for help in the midst of a challenging moment/hour/day. When I want to crash and never get out of bed again, I complain to Him that my life is too much for me.

The admonition to pray without ceasing has taken on new meaning, too. The more aware I am of how much I need God’s power, the more aware I become of all the pain around me. I recently met a woman who told me, in a 5-minute conversation, about the series of difficulties that have shaped her family’s life in the last months: she was laid off at the same time they moved to a new house, she is expecting a baby soon, and her older children are struggling with the new school year. All I can offer her is compassion and prayers asking God to care for her family.

Now I have become increasingly concerned about the spiritual condition of our congregation. In the last months, more than one parishioner has said something to Husband about Satan being at work in the congregation. These are people who know more than I do about the interpersonal relationships and conflict among laypeople and leaders. It is alarming to me. I feel helpless. My first thought is, “I guess there’s nothing I can do except pray.” That is awfully dismissive of God’s promises to work through our prayers. I try to revise that thought: “God has given naïve, depressed, wishing-I-were-somewhere-else little me the opportunity to support our entire congregation by praying for them.”

Still Crazy After All These...

Vacation was good, I came home feeling better. For a few days, I found it easy to make a list for the day, enjoyed crossing things off, and felt a pleasurable sense of capability and accomplishment.

Whenever I have a blue-sky episode like that, I start to think I am better and now I will go back to my regularly-scheduled life. I don't need all this help with the kids anymore, I don't need to see a therapist anymore. I'm fine!

But I'm not fine. It seems I am still depressed, and I've been blessed with a few good days. I can see this is counter-productive: when I feel sad again, I am disappointed and discouraged that I am not well, and that magnifies the sadness, etc., etc.

People who understand this better than I do encourage me to think of it as I would a broken arm or cancer. Depression is an illness as real as those. What my depression lacks is the objectivity of an x-ray. I want someone in a lab coat to run a test and tell me what's wrong. When I start to feel better, I'd go in for a follow-up. They'd do another test, and say, "Oh, it looks good. The depression is shrinking. But it's still there, and you need to continue treatment or it will get out of control."

My treatment is annoying in its lack of certainty. Therapist does not tell me what to do, she suggests things I might want to try. Some of them work, some don't, some of them I don't want to try. What I want is a to-do list with a guarantee that if I complete it, I will be well.

Who Turned Out the Lights?

I woke up this morning and was feeling better. I think I slept all night, uninterrupted. My son woke up and came straight to our room to tell us the story of the Transfiguration. Apparently that’s what he learned at vacation Bible school yesterday. It was delightful to hear him excited and full of the details.

Then my brain got warmed up, and the world felt heavy and dark again. It’s weird because I know there are little lights shining all around me. So many people are praying for us and encouraging me. My son is obviously thinking of awesome things about God. Something that ought to make me ecstatic: today I saw the senior pastor and felt warm and kind toward him as we nodded and said good morning to each other.

But all those lights look tiny and far off, and the darkness seems very near. I feel like I should do something about it, but nothing I do seems to make it better. I suppose this is forced dependence on God.

Delayed Gratification

I suppose this should not make me feel cranky and put-upon, but today it does. Feeling self-righteous is so satisfying in the short run. Loving my enemies sounds like it will involve loooooong delayed gratification.

"We show love to our enemies by praying for them (Matthew 5:43-48). It seems that God gives us our enemies for just this purpose; He allows them to attack us so that He can use us to pray for them and so secure His blessing for them. When we do that, we most clearly resemble our heavenly Father and copy His dear Son." (Kleinig, 207-208)

"You have heard that is was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-48)

Advanced Placement

I feel like a middle school student who accidentally enrolled in college: completely lost, listening to the smart people and wishing I knew what they know.

A year or two ago, I was at about a junior-high level of spiritual and emotional maturity. Now I seem to be in a crash course on compassion and dependence on God, and I just can’t catch up. There are pop quizzes every few days and I fail most of them. I hear the other students say that surrendering to God is not defeat, it is relief. I show up for class every day, take notes, do my homework, and still I am confused.

I want desperately to be in charge of something. Say what you will about the theology of the cross and the theology of glory – happy self-reliance feels good, and sad, weary ineptitude feels bad. I like to feel good. I am not noble enough to readily embrace pain. I just submit to it when there is absolutely no other option in sight.

My husband is miserable. I am miserable. We feel trapped and helpless. I want nothing more than to fix things for him, to take away his pain. Knowing I am powerless to do that adds to my misery. My role as the pastor’s wife, and the particular complications of this situation, suggest that I may not have any venue to express my hurt and frustration in the context of the congregation. I accrue hurts, set them aside for the sake of my husband’s professional well-being, and do my best to find a peaceful corner at church.

But, darn it!, I reserve the right to stomp into the senior pastor’s office any day now, full of righteous indignation and armed with a list of his failings. I will be demanding and I will be right. And it will make me feel good.

Or maybe reserving the right is a problem. A big one.

Kleinig writes with conscience-stabbing insight about the connection between the Golden Rule and prayer (Luke 7:1-12).

The whole section [of Luke 7] deals with the problem of our attitude toward sin and failure in a Christian community. What should we do about the shortcomings and blunders of our brothers and sisters in Christ? Two approaches are common. … We can use God’s Law to judge and condemn sinners. Jesus warns us that when this happens, we pass judgment on ourselves. … We can be lenient and overlook the fault in the hope that the power of the Holy Gospel will change that person. Jesus warns us that where this is done something holy is desecrated and defiled. He therefore advocates a third way, the way of intercession. The sins of our fellow Christians, their failures and their mistakes, the conflicts and tensions in a Christian community, are all opportunities and occasions for intercession. (201-202)

This does not nurture happy self-reliance. It grows from sad, weary ineptitude that must depend on God’s grace and leave judgment to Him. I want to go back to middle school.

The Phone Isn’t Ringing

A few months ago, my husband was contacted by a congregation to see if he would be open to a call. (YES!) He spoke to them, met with them in person, and we waited. And waited. It’s been a nice reprieve, one door ajar in this long, dark tunnel.

Yesterday we heard that they called another pastor. At first I felt no particular disappointment that we must remain or relief that we don’t have to muster the energy to start something new. I felt only concerned for my husband. When I look at him I cry. I am so desperate to rescue him from this soul-crushing situation.

Today, I am exhausted, sad, and so done with cross bearing. In the last few days there have been more horrid conversations with the church leadership. More defensiveness, more blindness to our pain, more rigid rule-following and efforts to shove my husband into a tiny box.

We sound seriously pathetic in prayer. “God, this is too much for us. It feels like this place is going to destroy us. We don’t know what You are doing here. We need You.” Utter dependence feels like a crappy arrangement right now.