While Waiting, Afraid

O Thou who art my quietness, my deep repose,
My rest from strife of tongues, my holy hill,
Fair is Thy pavilion, where I hold me still.

Back let them fall from me, my clamorous foes,
Confusions multiplied;
From crowding things of sense I flee
And in Thee hide.
Until this tyranny be overpast,
Thy hand will hold me fast.

What though the tumult of the storm increase,
Grant to Thy servant strength, O Lord,
And bless with peace.
~Amy Carmichael

Paralysis

Today I stumbled across the one word that describes where I have been for months: paralysis. I have been emotionally, mentally, spiritually paralyzed in the wearing away of many of my hopes and expectations.

I am aware that my situation is facilitating my journey to the Cross, and what I bear is, in fact, an invitation to suffer with Christ. But accepting that invitation requires more courage than I own or even aspire to own - I mean, who wants to die?

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend who encouraged me not to despise the death that is overtaking me. On the other side, she said, is Life. And peace. Oh, such peace.

Once upon a time I had an idea of God. "He's going to do this for me." "He'll give me my desire if I just pray in His will." "He'll reconcile this relationship because it must be His will." "After nine days in the hospital, I know there will be a diagnosis, a reconciliation, something!"

And He didn't do. And He didn't give. And He didn't reconcile. And my diagnosis was AWOL while He did something in the life of two doctors and a nurse.

And I was furious. And confused. Oh, so confused. God had done something for them, but not for me? He helped others but not me? But I had done, and prayed, and hoped, and loved, just like He told me! It wasn't fair! What reason did I have to follow Him now?

The heavens were silent except for His repeated reminders of His love.

A love I didn't want because I couldn't control it. A love I want so terribly I can't live without it.

My friend sent me a link to several chapters from a book by T. Austin-Sparks. The first chapter is entitled Paralysis: The Paralysis of Disappointed Expectations. Here are some quotes from the chapter:

"The facts are that there is often a larger service through a certain curtailment, a fuller life through a deeper death, a richer gain by a keener loss; and we have to look for the impact of the operation of God in us in a realm where the eye of man cannot trace."

"There is no doubt that most of those who have been called into some of the most vital expressions of 'the eternal purpose' have been trained in the school of apparent Divine contradiction, delay, withdrawal, and darkness. Paul wrote to the Thessalonian saints that 'no man should be moved by these afflictions for... we are appointed thereunto.'"

"If we have God's life in us we can survive anything. The Lord is not out to peevishly frustrate our hopes or disappoint our expectations, but to either change them for His own or fulfill them in a higher and larger realm."

"The greater the usefulness to God of any life, the deeper the loneliness in experience. He takes us often where no others can enter, interpret, understand, help. Rather, by their mental play upon our strange experience, and their interpretations given to it, they create even greater painfulness and distress for us. Sooner or later we are bound to be disappointed in man but this may lead to a rich and deep knowledge of God if we are not soured and paralysed by it."

(Read the entire chapter here.)

Once upon a time, God dreamed a dream of us knowing Him as He is.

He will not be disappointed.

ABC Notices Depression

"I knew I was depressed and needed help, but there is a stigma about depression in this area," said Wendy, who asked that ABCNEWS.com not use her last name. "People think it's a sign of weakness. It means you're not capable of being a good mother or wife or teacher."

Two Studies Find Depression Widespread in Utah

Happy Flowers

I discovered something recently that has had the oddest effect on the beginning of my day.

Our bedroom window faces east, so we get full sun in the morning. This is a very good thing for me, physically, and I often stay in bed longer, just soaking it up.

I had placed the white tulips my husband bought me on my windowsill so I could photograph them for this blog template, and then because I was too tired, I didn't bother moving them.

The next morning, the sun came through my window, and the tulips stood at attention. The morning after that, they had grown taller and were starting to open.

Every night, they would close again in the darkness, and every morning, they would be open and receiving all of the sunlight they could get. They looked so happy that I felt happy. Noticing and embracing the life around me helps me remember that the world is not as dark as it sometimes feels.

So now I'm keeping tulips on my windowsill.

Being Like the Tide

I read this post today on a friend's blog that has been incredibly encouraging lately. It was me-in-a-nutshell. Here's a snippet:

Nothing I feel feels shallow. I try and fake shallow to hide the destructiveness that i surely would bring if left unrestrained. The weight that i would bring to conversations, to arguments. How do open up a storm that in its self threatens to overtake and break me? How do i trust that someone else would be able to stand after seeing this ocean? I've come to learn that most of the world does not have this reservoir within them. That they don't have the currents, the pull, the terrifying and uncontrollable driving depth to them. How then, can they understand that my words carry the weight of the tide? That when i say i am wounded, i mean it to my core. That when i say i am frightened, i shake in my depths. That when say i am angry, you can see it's dark storm behind my eyes. They are able shake off life, distract themselves with other agendas, but how do i distract the currents? How do i distract the tide?

Read the whole thing.

Pancakes

Today has been one of those bad days I've talked about. I had a really long day yesterday, what with teaching for 4 hours in the morning and going to a friend's house in the evening. I slept til noon today and most of the day have felt like I was half-asleep. Rough.

Anyway, about half an hour ago I realized I was craving pancakes. You know the kind: a tall, thick stack slathered with butter and dripping with maple syrup.

The only problem is, I can't have them.

There's an IHOP and a Silver Diner minutes from my front door, and they're both open late. I could go get pancakes. I could even send my hubby to get take-out, and he'd be happy to be able to do something to make me happy after such a rough day.

But I can't.

Every little bit of sugar I have contributes to the chronic headaches I struggle with. I swore off sugar on the 1st of the year and made it til Valentine's Day with flying colors. I also swore off Advil and after some nasty rebound headaches, the frequency started to decrease.

I had a raspberry souffle on Valentine's Day.

A week later I got my period and I had ice cream to help me deal with the cramps - Breyers all natural, just milk, cream, and sugar - but still. Sugar.

The headaches have come back. I've been fighting them off nearly every day and I haven't made it more than 4 or 5 days without a full blown one.

I feel an incredible amount of resentment right now. I resent the skinny girls I saw last night who raved about my sugar-free apple pie but nevertheless talked about how sugar might be bad for you, but it's cheaper than the healthy sweeteners, so they have sugar anyway. I resent people who can enjoy a stack of pancakes without getting headaches. I resent skinny people, healthy people, people who don't get headaches, people who can have Advil when they DO get headaches and don't have to worry about rebound headaches.

I resent what I have to deal with on a daily basis. Sometimes I resent life.

Today has been a bad day.

Good Days and Bad

I never know when I wake up in the morning what kind of day I'm going to have. Sometimes I have really good days - I leap out of bed with tons of energy, I feel inspired, even happy. I go through the day getting lots of little things done. I even practice my violin - something that has definitely gotten sidelined with being sick. I make dinner, have a great evening with my husband, and pat myself on the back. I must be getting healthier, I think. There's light at the end of the tunnel. I go to bed happy, looking forward to another good day.

Sometimes I do end up having a good day the next day. Other times, like yesterday, I wake up after what should have been enough sleep - 10 hours - and feel like I'm in a daze. My brain is foggy and my limbs are heavy. I drag myself to the computer and take my morning meds, thinking that maybe they'll help wake me up. I check my email and blogs and Facebook, still trying to wake up. An hour later, not sure what I've actually been doing for an hour, I stumble back to bed because everything hurts.

When I wake up again an hour and a half later, I still feel like I'm in a fog but now it's almost noon and I have to actually do some things. I stumble through the rest of the day, forgetting to eat until late in the day..maybe I make dinner, maybe I cave and order in because I just can't handle making decisions and standing in front of the stove. Then I kick myself for not eating whole foods from scratch - you know, the kind that will help me get well. We watch some TV and then I stumble back into bed - my constant sanctuary - wondering what kind of day I will have tomorrow.

---

It's hard not being able to count on anything. I can't make plans or have goals because I just don't know what I'll be capable of doing tomorrow, or the next day.

Lately I've been getting back into exercising, something I wasn't able to do in the earlier stages of my illness. I'm a fan of the TV show "The Biggest Loser" - I love how hard everyone works in an environment of support and respect. I want to work that hard, I want to become an athlete like the formerly-out-of-shape contestants. Sometimes I go to the gym and have a FABULOUS workout, feeling great afterwards. I'm on my way, I think. Other days my body is literally so heavy I can hardly move. So I don't. I can't set a goal of working out three times this week. Some weeks I work out five or more times. Some weeks I don't work out at all. I just don't know.

I'm starting to practice my violin again. It's like a friend I haven't seen in a long time - I love every minute I get to spend with it. I start building up my practice time, thinking maybe I can get up to something respectable like two hours a day. This works for awhile, then I have a day of such extreme exhaustion that I don't even consider going into the studio.

I love to write. Blogs, journals, something called "morning pages" that I'm doing as I work through "The Artist's Way." I would love to write every day - I feel more alive, more in tune with myself, more able to do other things well. But I swear, the minute I set a goal of writing a little bit every day, I have several bad days in a row or I get the flu or a migraine or...something.

It's depressing; in fact, it may be one of the biggest sources of my depression right now.

It's like God is asking me just to trust him for today. Not tomorrow, not next week, not a year from now. Just today. Wake up today and assess how I'm feeling TODAY...not taking yesterday or tomorrow into account. Asking, what do I want? - and then, going and doing that, not worrying about goals or plans or "have to's."

It sounds so lovely on paper...being present in the here-and-now, living every moment to the fullest of what God has given me for that moment, being honest with myself about my limitations. Just being. Excusing myself from the rat-race of life.

But I chafe.

I want to have goals, lists, plans. I want to see my life going somewhere. Though I've always eschewed the idea of a five year plan, I do like to have an *idea* of what the future is going to look like. But I don't. Hell, I don't even know what tomorrow is going to look like.

Being present, one moment at a time, is the hardest thing I've ever been asked to do. It's a laying aside of my human desire for big goals, achievements, successes. It's learning to rest, to refuse to equate my value with my doing. Sometimes it's struggling with the depression and isolation of not being able to relate to everyone else's busy lives and packed dayplanners.

But then I'm reminded that depression isn't always a bad thing. Oh, it can be. It can be ugly and brutal. But I think, right now, I'd choose the depression that comes with stepping off the treadmill of busyness rather than the meaningless filling-my-life-up-with-lists-and-plans.

Of course, I see it that way for a very simple reason...today is a good day.