The Appeal of Resignation

Sometimes, resignation is so aggravatingly appealing.

Right now, it feels like my only option. I feel completely helpless. I feel like there is no hope. I feel small and worthless. I feel like the only possible solution is to just resign to things as they are. To draw back and become as small as possible. To try to shrink into non-existence.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.

I’ve just recently begun to really step out of that resignation thing.

Oh, how it calls to me. How it tries to lure me back in.

I chose it for so long. And I despise it. I utterly despise it. I want to live in hope. I want to ACTUALLY live in hope.

I would love to move away right now. To be in a place where no one knows the people who have hurt me (and who I have hurt, as well). To be isolated or around people who don’t know me or anything that I have ever lost. To be in a place where I have no reminders of that pain. To shut off my heart and not feel.

Augh! Why can’t I get that completely out of me? Why do I still fight these urges to deaden my heart? Why is resignation so attractive to me?

Will I be fighting this forever? It was a habit more than 20 years in the making. The Lord has brought me a long way, but I am not so foolish as to believe that I am completely in the clear on this one. Like I said… it still beckons me to find safety within it… death… resignation.

Spirit of Life, I need you so desperately. Awaken hope within me! Let me be found with a confident and rejoicing heart. God of hope, fill me with all joy and peace in believing, that by the power of the Holy Spirit I might about in hope. Holy Spirit, help me!

I choose to believe it right now… that these desperate cries are not forecasts of death but signs of revival… signs of life within me. There is hope for me, yet.

I cannot forget, hope is something that we must cling to. We don’t just choose it once and then float happily through life. It is the anchor of the soul, but we must hold fast to it.

Everything else seems easier. But I know that this is what I have to choose.

God, you see how my heart and my flesh are failing me. You hear my groan. You see my desperation. You know my frame. You know how utterly weak I am. You see how depleted my strength is. Help me. Oh, Lord, help me.

I wonder if…

“I wonder if two people who are ‘only children’ can get married.”

My roommate was pondering out loud tonight. Obviously, this isn’t a question of the possibility of such a match, but of the compatibility. (This was provoked by the idea of the oldest child frequently marrying the … whatever child… and the like. They always tend leave the only child out of those first-middle-last observations. Sigh… always forgotten and alone.)

Little did she know, this was something I had thought a lot about. You can be sure, however, that she soon knew of my extensive contemplations concerning the matter.

I am an only child. This random life question has a lot of potential significance for my life.

Harder to Explain… Harder to Endure

I have recently found myself in a season of grief that is much harder to explain than the ones that preceeded it.

The early months after my mother’s death, I was met with such a profound and enveloping sense of the Lord’s nearness. Though it seemed as if my life had been shattered, I was filled with joy and peace that (upon reflection) were almost (ironically) unsettling.

Outside of that time, however, the predominant feeling of the last year has been utter abandonment. I can tell myself that I have not been forsaken… but I cannot feel it as true. I can remind myself of His nearness… His inescapable presence… but I cannot detect it.

Fortunately, hope does not require happy circumstances and a general sense of well-being in the status quo as prerequisite. In fact… the hope that I now desperately grasp for would mean very little to me if I were not acutely aware of my need for something drastically different from what I am now experiencing.

Plowed Over by the Grief Train

So… I knew I was sitting on the tracks. I knew the trains came and went at irregular times. But I didn’t see or hear the high-speed train that was coming at me today until it had completely spattered me in little bits across the tracks and the surrounding field.

Last night, I had a dream about my mom. She wasn’t in the dream, but her death was. The way in which it happened in the dream was fairly different from what happened in reality… but it really hurt.

I woke up and was painfully aware of one reality. I am so upset that I never got to say goodbye. I mean, I knew that this bothered me. Of course it did. But I didn’t realize how angry I was at the fact that I didn’t get to see her just one more time.

It was about 9:00. My alarm was supposed to be going off in about 40 minutes. I had a minute or two of transitioning from that waking-up stupor in which I was able to translate the emotions of my dream into the context of reality. I had this futile, fleeting hope that I might just fall back asleep.

And then it began… another session of squirming, gasping, sobbing, tossing, turning, clawing and writhing under the pain of it all.

And it didn’t stop.

I’m Home Again

I stayed in the prayer room until about 2:45 tonight. It felt like coming home.

I don’t know if I will ever feel at home on a day schedule. I was made for the night watch. I do not doubt that. I’ve always loved staying awake through the night to commune with the Lord. Though I don’t understand it, there has always been something different about the night time for me. And here, He has given me a community in which I can stand through the night in the place of prayer and adoration.

I’m not REALLY back yet. I still have to teach in the morning. Which means I still have to go to bed by about 3am every night. I can’t pretend that this will be easy. It will take a lot of discipline to go to bed on time. But I imagine it will be a great deal easier than going to bed at 9:30 pm!!!

Being on days, I could never really get over that homesick feeling. I knew I was out of place. I was longing for the night watch… how absurd must that seem?

I guess it’s kind of like the groan and longing that I feel in the midst of this broken, fallen world. My pain tells me that it’s not right… that I’m not at home. I belong in a world where sin and death no longer have dominion. I belong in unbroken fellowship. So long as creation is groaning and longing for His return, when He sets everything right, I will feel that homesick ache. This isn’t what I was made for. This is not the context in which I was made to dwell.

Do You Ever Just Want to Give Up?

I’m there. I am completely there right now.

Everything hurts. My head is pounding and my stomach is a mess. My heart feels like it has been ripped to shreds and then rolled over (I’m thinking steamroller). My pride is severely wounded. My confidence is completely shot. Everything hurts.

Everything feels like it is too much for me. I kind of wonder how I am going to make it through the next week. I kind of wonder how I am going to make it through the next few minutes.

I just got done crying so hard that my nose bled and I nearly threw up. I’m actually not sure that I’ve ever cried quite that intensely before. Even the night that I got the phone call telling me that the most important person in my life was gone.

It started in that place. “Oh, God, I miss her.” And then the gasping and heaving and clawing and sobbing and writhing.

Another Season of Tears?

(Disclaimer: I typed this very fast and without any preplanning or careful consideration of what I was saying. I just started typing and stopped when I stopped. I kind of quickly skimmed it, pre-posting… but I am up past my bedtime and NEED to go to sleep. I feel ok just posting it anyway. But… read at your own risk.) 

Cause of Death

So, I was going to try to come up with a title that was a little bit more tactful… but really, what’s the point? I often think about that… if I am talking too much about this, or about the kinds of things people don’t want to hear… or if I am phrasing it in ways that make people uncomfortable.

Then I decided to stop. Well, it’ll still come to my mind… and I won’t be completely insensitive. But I am certainly not going to stress about it.

It is what it is. If I’m talking about it too much… well… people will either get over it or give themselves whatever distance they feel like they need. If I say things about my mother’s death that make people uncomfortable, the will grow through their discomfort or potential offense or, again, they will back away. God can shepherd their hearts. He is certainly doing an amazing job with mine.

I was sitting here thinking how much I really needed to be in bed, (and in the process of winding down) when an email from my dad popped up. We finally have a “cause of death”.

Hypertensive Cardiovascular Disease (i.e., high blood pressure)