It’s been a while since I wrote last and this won’t be a long entry. A lot has happened that needs to be recorded but it’s just been too daunting a task. I have to live it every day; I can’t bear the thought of having to relive it at night through my pen. Even now I pause and rally my strength.
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For Whom the Bell Tolls wasn’t whistling Dixie: it has been the best of times, it has been the worst of times and the not-quite-the-worst of times.
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I will start by saying despite my bone-rattling doubts and the horrible experience of having to tell my father I quit my job, despite having hope of starting at Central Corp early as a teller only to have it dashed, setting off a royal panic about my finances, God has provided. Truly he meets my needs every day – and no more. Some truly unexpected things have developed as a result of this ridiculous path I’ve chosen – I’ve realized I like setting my own schedule and working from home. I’ve realized with each passing day that I don’t want to work at Central Corp as teller or manager or at any similar job, and I am really getting into this internet marketing project (experiment, really) that cropped up in the void of a job and my hope as well. And it's such a blessing to have Mom give me work for this time when I get to pursue the information marketing for her, becoming so useful that she interceded with my father – put her foot down actually – and insisted she couldn’t lose me to a job just yet. I have until the new year to see what can happen with this. Oh, the grace. The next day after she told me that (last week) was the first morning I didn’t wake up with a ball of lead in my belly.
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And I will never go back to teaching. I would foreclose on my beloved house before I go back to slavery in Egypt. Often I am aware of the hell other teachers are enduring every day while I work on my couch in my sweats, and it’s a blessing.
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And my parents have really stepped up to make sure I feel supported in this. Even if my decision to quit my job was foolish to them, they at least understand I truly tried to make the right decision. I was conscientious to a fault and honestly believed it was the right thing for me to do. And as Mom especially has supported me through this and observed the path my feet have gone down, she’s even conceded, “Maybe you weren’t wrong when you thought you heard God.” Oh, the Balm of Gilead that was because I had doubted everything.
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How horrible this month and a half has been, with the doubts and the spiritual terrorizing. More than once in this shockingly brief span (has it truly only been a month and a half?) I have come to the point of being just. so. tired. So tired. Ready to collapse. It seems the longer I know God, the less I know of anything, including – maybe especially – how to withstand spiritual attacks and doubts. Before that awful, awful weekend when I despaired of my very life and my faith, I had dealt with my times of weariness, but I had had such faith, such pure faith that my desire to follow was enough and I would be led. I had far more resilience. And even though by this point I have examined again and again what it means to be “led by the Spirit” and my path fit the bill, I knew I was every day finding myself one step farther in a straight path toward B____. How many times did I ask if it was time to move on? How many times did I stand ready, pain ready to be unleashed in my chest but backpack zipped and boots tied, ready to follow? And I am certain that God would not have given me that sign had I not demanded it, and while I am aware of the valuable lesson learned about God’s timing, I can’t help but wish he had just said no. That he gave first-accident forgiveness the first time I really gave into my doubts in all these months of believing blindly in the impossible. And I am also just as certain that it was the Holy Spirit working in me to send that letter to B____ a week and a half before doubt slipped its hooks into me and the bottom fell out of my life. I would have gone on indefinitely waiting for God to bring B____ to me. In my natural self, I would never have thought it necessary or even appropriate to contact him. The conversation with Kelsey was the first nudge, the conversation with Jessica was the second. And then, that Wednesday morning when I was going to help Kelsey get her room in order at the new school, I was getting ready, and standing in front of the mirror I was really wrestling with whether or not this was the right thing to do. The best thing. The decision God would have me make, since of the three who would be affected, he was the only one who knew what would happen. And I felt this almost audible (but it was silent) sense of, “Yes. Do it. Do it now.” I was suffused with a peace, confidence, and sense of rightness, the same certainty I felt about resigning my job. That was not me. I wasn’t building on my good feelings and just trying to convince myself to do what I wanted to do anyway.
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And getting that sign that awful weekend was not attended by any good feelings, only bad. That’s not how God works when you haven’t been fighting him.
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But logic is a cold and unwieldy comfort in this case. I’m terrible now – so wishy-washy, so unconfident. I’ve struggled for a month and a half for some answers and been met only with silence. I finally had to come to the conclusion last week that just like you’re told when you’re a child and lost, to stand still or go back to the last place you were with someone, I had no choice but to go back to the last place I saw God. And that was right before that weekend. That was when I was believing whole-heartedly for B____. No idea how I would accomplish that, seeing as everything has changed, including me, but there I am. Still no clue. Still wondering if I’m back there in fact, if it counts when I don’t have the solid belief I had then.
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Don’t even know if I love him still in the first place. But I had to forgive. Realized that last Sunday. Realized I’d been unbalanced by unmitigated rage for weeks and feeling dreadful about it. I had been mostly angry at God, since B____ had managed not to have done anything wrong or dishonorable in this whole mess. But how do you forgive God? As blasphemous as it sounded to me, I knew that right or wrong I had developed anger, bitterness, and resentment toward God, as well as toward B____ and even my dog who ludicrously remains stubbornly un-housebroken. Who knew you could need to forgive a dog? For Pete’s sake, I had to forgive Faline for having accidents all the time in the house. I had to forgive B____ for being cowardly and weak not to even give me a real try, for going off and fucking some other woman and dreaming of making babies and plans and futures with her, and I had to forgive God most of all for my perception (even though I knew it to be inaccurate, I couldn’t convince my heart of that) that he had toyed with me, that he had played the cruelest joke to watch me languish alone, so alone, for three decades, then dangle like a carrot before me all I wanted, let me cling to that and then leave me desolate and utterly abandoned. Yeah, there was so much anger toward God. Still a work in progress.
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As am I, I hope. Because I have now, finally, become what I once was – not a woman, not a lover or a mother, but merely a female human, a female animal. I am ash. God has an unbelievable amount of restoration to do in my heart just to make me fit for my life, let alone for a relationship and a family. I’ve developed a habit of hurt. Pricks of pain have now lost their element of surprise and become commonplace. Everything reminds me of him. It’s not fair that six weeks – six weeks – should have such an obscene ripple effect. There’s music I can’t listen to, places I can’t go, shows I can’t watch, food I can’t eat because they have become nothing more than ghosts of him.
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And I’m stressed even more because I can’t find good feelings for more than a day to express my faith in a different future. I think it’s just that I honestly can’t remember how to feel good. It’s been so many years since I was a “happy person” that I no longer have the capabilities to get excited about things like a child, be thrilled or ecstatic or blissful. I try. Man, I try. I try all day. Try everything I can think of. I’ve cut out pictures to make a vision board, I have encouraging verses taped to my bathroom wall, I have oodles of verses bookmarked on my phone’s browser, I listen to motivational tapes, I try to dredge up gratitude and love. I can’t do it.
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I honestly wonder if I’m depressed. Laughable that I of all people can’t recognize it. I have hope that it’ll get better. It has to get better. Things have to be easier someday. It can’t always be this hard. There has to be some happiness in store that I don’t have to work and scrape and visualize so hard for. This can’t be as good as it gets.
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But oh, is it hard to feel that. I wonder if there’s something wrong with me, that God has shown me many kindnesses that I recognize during this time, that he has shown me such grace in my work that I have a chance to pursue this without the horrible dread of job-searching, and yet I can’t be grateful, I don’t feel appreciation, can’t manage to feel joy. It’s never enough.
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I’m stone in my heart, I’m enraged at petty annoyances, and I weep almost every day. And I couldn’t even say it’s just one thing. If he resolved the thing I’m crying about on Monday, I’d be crying about something else on Tuesday. Will anything ever be enough? I’m so tired of crying, I’ve started avoiding my quiet times with God because something about being alone in the dark with him just turns on the waterworks. I finally just had to excuse myself today. I had expressed everything, I had communicated, and I was still crying and that wasn’t doing either of us any good.
I’m so keenly aware of my shortcomings and imperfections, of my faltering heart and disappointing faith. I have to trust – blindly yet again – that he is as compassionate and patient as he says, to take my mustard seed and make it into anything at all. It has to get better.
