Tempted to Be Weary

My birthday is coming up in the fall and the schedule for my chemotherapy indicates that I will spend my special day attached to the pump of toxicity. Noticing that scheduling quirk caused me to reflect on the circumstances of my last few birthdays:

• three years ago: preparing to sell our house and move as Husband took a new call
• two years ago: the week we realized Husband needed a medical leave for severe depression
• last year: at the hospital with my 3-year-old son and his ruptured appendix

A strange little tradition I've got there. I could find other formats to fill in with timelines of discouragement. Some weeks I feel like the frustrations, large and small, accumulate endlessly and I am tempted to be weary. I feel sometimes that I have suffered enough and have earned the right to throw up my hands and give in. Who can endure this? Who keeps paddling against this flow of bad mojo when the current does not slow?

God is so gentle with me. He has not once whacked me on the head for thinking these things. He reminds me that I'm not paddling, I'm sitting in the canoe and He is paddling.

The other night, while Husband was at a meeting, my youngest son vomited several times. It lasted for exactly the two hours that I was alone with the kids. I was nearly overwhelmed with the feeling that I could not continue, that life was becoming too much for me. God brought to mind the passage from Isaiah, "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." (40:31).

I have never understood that "they will run and not grow weary" because God strengthens them. I now think of this every day. Life is so hard right now, and every day I am tempted to think that I cannot stay in the canoe. God reminds me that He will keep me here and give me what I need today.

I expect that next year my birthday will be free of crisis. I know that it might not be. It is possible that some circumstance even more distressing than those of recent years is waiting for me there. My hope rests on knowing that God will be there either way.

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.

Presence

I recently read a book that dealt primarily with a grown man's memory of the year he was 11 and his uncle died suddenly, violently. The movement of the story is the assembly of his memory, his childhood understanding, and his deeper adult understanding of what happened.

The most affecting scene is of the 11-year-old boy, Andy, sitting in the living room with his father and grandparents one night when all three adults separately and simultaneously weep. It is a stunning image of raw, private grief. It's a difficult and confusing thing for the boy to witness.

As an adult, after his father has passed away, Andy wonders why he never asked his father more about the uncle's death:

Why, as I got older, did I not ask my father for his version of these events? Now that he is dead, it is easy to wish that I had asked. And yet I know why I did not. I did not want to live again in the great pain I had felt in the old house that night when he had wept so helplessly with Grandma and Grandpa. I did not want to be with him in the presence of that pain where only it and we existed.

I did not want to be with him in the presence of that pain where only it and we existed. I know exactly what he means. How I have feared being in the presence of pain and the way the world shrinks to a horrible, tiny place where there is nothing but grief.

But isn't this the tremendous gift of Jesus? There is no place on earth where we are alone with pain. God is always with us, present in the deepest, most isolating pain. His presence is what I need most.

Finally, Easter!

Feeling Easter-lilyish today. Hopeful. Like I've been wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day all this time, and now the clouds have cleared and my glasses are off and I have to squint because God is shining so brightly in my heart.

No event has inspired this -- Husband is still unemployed, life is still very similar to what it has been for a while. But I feel different.

I even created a new label on this post: hope. Over 100 posts so far and this is the first time it's occurred to me to use "hope" as a category. Thank you, God, for today.

Keys to the Kingdom

In the worship service this morning we prayed that God would work through pastors to fulfill their vocation so that "the joy of God's people would overflow." It struck me as a beautiful and, right now, sad image of the task God has given to pastors. Pastors seem to have tremendous influence to nurture or to destroy the faith that God gives.

Sunday

Going to a new church is making me realize just how much I have hated going to church lately. En route yesterday my kids were acting crazy in the car, and I remembered how that used to put me over the edge on Sunday morning. Yesterday, it seemed fine and I knew they'd quit as soon as they unbuckled.

At our new church, lots of people smile and shake my hand and it's easy for me to say, "I'm new here. Could you tell me where to find...? How to ...?" There is a kids' church during the sermon, so we found the person who manages that and she showed us how it all works. When it was time for them to leave the service, my kids just got up and followed everyone else and were happy as could be.

The sermon addressed, in part, our identity. Does your identity rest in Christ, or in obedience, or right doctrine, etc. I tried to apply this only to myself, but my mind kept wandering to sr. pastor. My experience of him suggests that his identity is in something like being right. Technically speaking, that's not my concern anymore since I don't need to see him. But it is very hard to stop judging him.

Thankfully, there was also confession & absolution during the service.

Oddly Reassuring

I happened on this thoughtful article about Christian faith, ministry, and depression from a magazine called Just Between Us. No new information for me, but lots of things that I can't hear often enough.

The section on major depression helps me feel less freakish. It's good to see that everything I feel overwhelmed by is common to this disease. I'm not dealing with all of these symptoms, but enough of them at various times to feel like I'm totally losing myself. I am comforted and alarmed every time I read a list of depression symptoms and recognize myself.

Major Depression. This is severe clinical depression, an illness. Your physiology, thinking, and emotional state are disturbed. It is disabling and interferes with your ability to function and think normally. It can be experienced at one time in your life or at repeated intervals. It can go on for months or for years, if untreated. The symptoms need to be constant for two weeks or longer to be diagnosed as major depression.

The symptoms include:

• a persistent, sad, empty mood
• crying or inability to cry
• loss of interest and enjoyment in most things
• significant weight loss or gain
• waking in the early morning hours and not being able to go back to sleep; insomnia
• excess sleep, fatigue
• loss of energy
• social withdrawal
• feeling agitated
• a profound sense of worthlessness
• feelings of inadequacy or shame
• loss of sexual desire
• difficulty thinking and concentrating
• indecisiveness
• recurrent thoughts of death or dying, possibly with suicidal plans
• substance abuse

Thank You

Thank you for your prayers. The meeting went as well as we could have hoped. From my husband's report, it sounds like he was able to speak honestly and that most of the people present seemed to hear him. Praise God.

Urgent Need for Prayer

My husband has a meeting tonight with several members of our congregation. It is very important that the conflict be discussed honestly, but we have reason to believe that many of the people he'll be with are in extreme denial about the intensity of the conflict between my husband and the senior pastor.

It is physically painful for me that I cannot alleviate the anxiety or stress of this for my husband. I rely on the confidence that God will be at that meeting and that He works in the hearts of all the people there. Please pray that everyone there tonight will speak the truth in love and hear the truth in love.

Prayer and Consolation

Describing my depression always seems a little beyond my reach. Today I feel like some part of me is empty that really ought to be full. I'm sure someone out there would say "The answer is JESUS!" I suspect it is both that simple and much more complicated.

Earlier this week I had a chance to talk to a pastor's wife who is more experienced than I. Her husband has retired now and she has the long view of the challenges they faced together during a career in ministry. I asked her, in particular, what to do when I feel like my husband is being tortured. I feel so powerless, so hurt because he is hurt. She told me about times she'd felt the same way. She affirmed that there is nothing for me to *do* about it - no political action to take, no intervention I should stage. She encouraged me to pray for my husband, for peace and some comfort.

I pray for him, for all of us, though certainly not as much as I could. Praying is painful. It reminds me that God is faithful to His promises and it reminds me that right now He seems to be absent from this situation. I try to keep this misery tucked in a box, and talking or praying about it requires opening the box and walking around in it.

Talking with another woman who has gone through similar things was so comforting. I felt like she understood me and cares for me. I was happy, lighter when we parted; three hours later I was on my couch, immobilized. The dull ache of my soul had turned into an acute pain that I could not handle.

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.

Sad at Christmas

Just before Thanksgiving I was talking to my brother and could hear the excitement of the upcoming weekend in his voice. It dawned on me that Thanksgiving and Christmas usually energize me and add a joyful shine to everyday life. Not this year. Everything feels heavy. I don’t care much for festivity or decor. There will be no tree in our house; I’ve told my family that I need the year off from gift-giving.

I think this is the clincher: there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I am sick. Of course, I was diagnosed with depression months ago, and I *know* that I am not well. But I have wished it away so often that every few weeks I think “You should be fine! Just work a little harder and pull yourself together.”

There have been other years when Christmas was shadowed by sadness. Life-altering news and the deaths of family members have come around in Decembers previous. Those times were like living in a house with a permanently darkened room: every day I passed through that cold darkness, but I also walked into other parts of the house where I felt content and entirely myself.

This Christmas I am living in a brown-out house and the furnace is on the fritz. I’ve called the power company, I’ve kicked the furnace, I’ve lit matches and gathered blankets. The whole place is still chilly and dim.

There is surely something to be said for carving away the accoutrements of the holiday and coming down to the bare bones of relying on Jesus, and the confidence that the sadness of this life will someday end and we will be with Him. It also sucks to be sad when everyone else seems to be having a great time.

Boat in the Desert

I'm reading The Known World, a novel about a black slave owner. One of his slaves, Moses, describes these reflections on his situation:

Moses had through that it was already a strange world that made him a slave to a white man, but God had indeed set it twirling and twisting every which way when he put black people to owning their own kind. Was God even up there attending to business anymore?

That is somehow reassuring to me. I think it helps me appreciate that millions of people before me have felt this way.

The last month has been a lot to deal with. After my son's hospital stay, my husband and I have had a few opportunities to investigate possible career paths. Nothing has yet come to fruition, and there has been some frustration along the way. The net effect is a clearer sense of what ministry setting seems best suited to my husband's gifts, and heightened tension in the present situation (and the foreseeable future).

Is God up there attending to business? Noah must have asked the same question as he built an enormous boat in the desert.

Head Over Everything

And God placed all things under [Christ's] feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. (Ephesians 1:22-23)

Clearly, God loves the church. I can get my feelings hurt, be depressed, feel like everything is going backwards and upside down, but God loves his church. He will be faithful to us.

Anger

You might not guess it from reading this blog, but I am hesitant to be angry. I’m not sure that “slow to anger” expresses it accurately. I get angry in a hurry, but I am diplomatic and talk myself out of feeling or expressing anger. There are two sides to every story; cut them some slack -- they are trying to do the right thing; everyone has a bad day.

Talking to myself that way is an effective method of getting through everyday frustrations. I don’t ascribe malice to store clerks who are rude, or to friends who occasionally forget something important to me.

Sometimes, though, anger is the only thing. These days I lie awake at night having completely interior rages. I am furious, outside myself, that a narcissistic control-freak is calling the shots at our church; that he seems to lack the capacity to express pastoral concern toward many people, that a large portion of the staff and congregation seem emotionally and spiritually parched. That his wife is an ambulatory abcess of festering anger, blame, and manipulation who calls my husband in the room when she wants to lance a boil. For us to remain here means that Husband will continue to be abused and manipulated, though he guards against it much better than he used to. For us to leave means that God cannot use Husband to strengthen the very significant weaknesses in this congregation.

AND, above-mentioned unacknowledged weaknesses of sr. pastor mean that MY FAMILY will move to yet another church, settle in yet another community. That my son may well attend five different schools before he is 6 years old, this child whose particular anxieties reach their peak when stability and predictability are removed. It also means that my three-year-old's ruptured appendix will not be the most memorable thing about late 2009. I thought I'd have the sort of life in which that would rank as THE MAJOR TRAUMA of the year.

Deep down I trust that God is with us and we will be ok, but when I picture moving anywhere, I imagine plowing through the big transition and then arriving, settling, and sitting alone in my new house wishing I were not me. God would be with me there. I know it would end after a while, that I would make friends and adjust to wherever we are, but it seems like that would be a long way from here, with a deep valley in between.

For all that, I also feel compassion for Mr. and Mrs. senior pastor. I know they are miserable and stressed and probably feel trapped much as I do. I'm sure that they love God and want to serve Him.

Someone has described my situation as “a tight spot.” An accurate and generous phrase, I’d say.

Noah

I recently finished reading The Preservationist by David Maine. It is a novel based on the account of Noah in the book of Genesis. Maine imagines what Noah and his family might have thought and felt, how exactly they might have accomplished what God instructed. I went back to Genesis and realized, for the first time, that we are told primarily about what God instructs Noah to do, and then that “Noah did everything just as God commanded him” (Genesis 6:22). That’s quite a gap in the story.

Maine’s novel caused me to consider the ways we respond to God. In Maine’s story, Noah, his wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law each interpret God’s intentions pretty differently. Each is persuaded that obedience is necessary, and none doubts that “Yahweh” is omnipotent. They do not, however, all believe that God is good, or that He intends good things for them.

Noah is the only one among them who hears directly from God. The rest rely on Noah’s relaying of God’s commands and promises. After the flood, Maine’s Noah stops hearing directly from God and he feels lonely, possibly abandoned.

It makes me wonder about the way I interpret and respond to God. How do I ride the waves between feeling close to God and feeling distant? Certainly there is no change in Him, but how I feel creates a lot of change in me.

Lately, the influence of my feelings has been more pronounced than usual. Depression makes everything seem distant, disconnected from me. When I am very low, and most need the reassurance of faith in God, it seems the most difficult to grasp. I am reduced to the most basic sense of trust that God is true and faithful, no embellishments.

Vacation

We’re on a family vacation this week, and today is great. Starting vacation is a lot of work with three small children – packing, traveling, adjusting to a new place. Today we woke up content and pretty well-rested. This is just what we all need.

One of the best things about vacation is the chance to attend church together. We visited a small church yesterday and had a wonderful morning. The congregation was so warm and hospitable, and the service both familiar and new in good ways. It is reassuring to have an entirely positive experience on a Sunday morning.

Cognitive Success!

Had a counseling appt. this week and was moaning about my life as usual: I'm so sad, I'm so tired, when will this end, blah, blah, blah. Therapist observed that I was not talking much about church, and seem to have let it fade into the background of my life as a persistent-but-not-urgent irritation. "That's a major cognitive success!" she proclaimed. If only I shared such enthusiasm. It doesn't feel like much, but I suppose it is a good sign.

Once it was pointed out, I realized that I have written much less about the church lately, and focused mostly on my life apart from that. It helps me a lot that Husband has gotten much better at balancing his interests and gifts in ministry with the requirements of the sr. pastor. Husband is able to enjoy and appreciate the opportunities God provides for him to care pastorally for individual people. It has never been so clear that the ability to celebrate things that are going well is a gift from God.

In the Pit

Today I am in the pit.

Depression seems to be like this for me. I fall into a pit where it is dark, and I am on my own, and it’s not clear how I can get out. Then, later I am out of the pit. I don’t know how it happens. It’s like God airlifts me out after a while.

I’m busy down here. It looks like I’m doing almost nothing, but in my head and heart I am wearing myself out. I’m trying to stay away from unhelpful paths of thought. I’m arguing with my own feelings of helplessness or ineffectiveness. There are brief episodes during which I discuss with myself why not being could be preferable to being. I am never at risk of ending my life, but it is terrifying and exhausting to talk myself into wanting to be here. The pro/con list looks sort of like this:

Pro: decades ahead with my husband, three sweet kids who love and need me, a dozen or so other family and friends whom I love, piles and piles of books I still want to read, interesting people I have yet to meet, the runner I am not but still plan to be someday.

Con: my heart hurts.

Logically, the pro list wins by a landslide. But I have a sometimes-constant feeling like an aggravated cat is clawing my heart. The persistence of it can overwhelm logic, especially at night. I’m not sure why it’s worse at night, but it definitely is. In the morning it becomes like background noise and periodically other things can drown it out.

Someone told me that “sadness is a relentless foe.” I depend on the assurance that God is even more relentless.