(If you missed it, click here for part 1)
I didn't connect this struggle of faith with hopelessness
until one very dark afternoon while waiting in the carpool line at my
daughters' school. I had been struggling through several very days of
dark moods when my friend Chez, who had been very concerned about me
when I stopped talking to him, called me on the phone as I sat waiting
for school to get out. He suggested to me that what I was feeling with
regard to God sounded like hopelessness and I knew at once that he was
right. I realised when he said it that I had cringed at the sound of the
word and that I'd been actively avoiding using that word. I knew that
the painful, gaping hole inside me was there because of a lack of hope.
You would think that knowing this might help, but it only seemed to make
it worse. I sank deeper into despair and grew more and more
disconnected from my faith and, subsequently, from any desire to continue living.
To
make a long story short, a flicker of light appeared in March of 2015.
That's when I attended a Lenten ladies' devotion at our parish that was
led by our family's beloved friend, Fr. B. After the devotion ended and
everyone was chatting and nibbling on snacks, I went to say
hello to Fr. B as it had been a good year or so since we'd seen each
other. After our initial hellos, he asked how I was. I didn't want to burden him with my troubles, but something in the tone of his voice when he asked the question reminded me that he is more than just a priest, but a dear friend. That reminder of our treasured friendship undid my resolve and any attempt at
trying to pretend I was "just fine" completely crumbled. In a choked
up voice, I told him that things were hard and I'd had much better. He
looked at me with such compassion that I felt myself start to cry a
little bit. He handed me a napkin, gave me a hug, and said he'd be praying for me. That alone was a priceless gift, but then he told me to send him an email and
we'd get together at his parish and pray about it. I did just that and
a week or so later, we met together.
I'll admit that at that first meeting, I
wasn't very keen on the idea of praying at all and told Father as much.
He understood and before insisting that we pray anyway, he heard my
confession and gave me the anointing of the sick. After those two
sacraments, we began to pray -- or rather he prayed. I sat beside
him and as the words of the prayers washed over me, the dam burst and I
bawled like a baby. When Father finished praying, we talked briefly
while I wiped my face and then we walked over to the main church and he
gave me communion before leaving me there by myself to pray. As I knelt
there in the church, a sense of calm stole over me that I hadn't felt
in a very long time. I had promised Father that I would stay for at
least 10 minutes, but somewhere in the midst of that silence, 10 minutes
stretched into an hour without my even noticing it.
After
that meeting, we began to meet regularly, about 1-2 times a month for
spiritual direction and prayer and over time, that increased to weekly
at times based on my need (and his schedule) along with keeping in close
touch by email as well. What grew out of those spiritual direction
meetings was a very slow and very tenuous renewed relationship with God.
In the past year and a half, there have been moments when I have
wondered if what I was feeling stir within me was a spark of hope, but
every time I have felt this -- whatever this is -- it has gone as quickly
as it came, snuffed out by fear, PTSD triggers, or the circumstances of
life. I have longed for hope to return and it has remained elusive and
also something that I simply cannot bring myself to believe that I will
ever have again.
And yet.....here we are and it's time
to choose another word for the year and I'm being nudged by the Holy
Spirit to choose "hope" as my word for 2017. I felt this insistent nudge
about a week or so ago and immediately refused to entertain the idea.
I've continued to feel it since then and every time I have shut the idea
down so fast that if it had a head, it would spin. Nope. Nope. Nope.
BIG old NOPE. Think of Dana Carvey's impersonation of George H. W. Bush
where he says, "Nope, not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent at this
juncture." That's basically where I'm at right now.
The
Holy Spirit even went so far as to nudge me to mention this idea to
Pendragon during our last session and to Gray last night. Obviously,
Pendragon didn't push me and neither did Gray, but I know that both of
them would be encouraged if I did decide to take the plunge and make
"hope" my word for this coming year. The thing is, I can't do it because
of how I know it would make them feel. If I chose this for any reason
other than a desire within myself, I think it would be a miserable
failure.
And yet....and yet this nudge is persistent.
Do you know how I know this nudge is from the Holy Spirit? It's because
everything within me -- every instinct, every gut reaction, every fiber
of my being -- is screaming at the top of its voice,
"Noooooooooooooo!!!!" and as much as I want to ignore this nudge to do
it, I simply can't. It's not that it's louder than my own voice, but
that it's just as loud and inexhaustibly, relentlessly determined not to
let me wiggle or headbutt my way out of this.
So here
I am on the edge of 2016 becoming 2017, still resisting and still
scared. I know I need to just bite the bullet, say "Okay" and make the
commitment, but for whatever reason, I just can't. Then why write this
long essay about words and this subject? Because I needed to write it
and because I know that despite not beginning the new year with a new
word, this isn't over yet. It's only just beginning.
In
the meantime, pray for me. God knows that not only did I need to write
this, but that I need to do it too and only He can help me find the
courage to plumb the depths of this virtue and learn how to find it,
embrace it, and allow it to grow in my heart once again.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
One Word 365 Recap and Thoughts on 2017
Eleventh Doctor: Vincent, can I help?
Vincent van Gogh: It is so clear you cannot help. And when you leave, and everyone always leaves, I will be left once more with an empty heart and no hope.
Eleventh Doctor: My experience is that there is, you know, surprisingly, always hope.
I'm not gonna lie y'all. It was a rough year for me personally. It was also a year that turned my world upside down in a way that was really difficult (and still is to a great degree), but that will, I think, eventually wind up being positive. The jury is still out on that, but my therapist Pendragon said something at our most recent session on Thursday that he hasn't said in a long time. Actually, he used a word that he hasn't dared to use in a long time -- but more on that later.
A couple of years ago I discovered this thing called One Word 365. Basically, the idea is that you select a word for the year to be a kind of focus word, if you will, that you allow to influence and change you mentally/emotionally, physically, or spiritually. For 2015, I chose two words because as much as I tried, I couldn't shake the idea that I needed to embrace both of them -- write and follow. The first one was chosen because I had just come off the 2014 Write 31 Days challenge in October and I wanted to commit myself to writing in my blog more regularly and keeping up with it instead of just throwing it to the side. In the two years that have been since, I've had ups and downs, but I think I've managed to write at least one entry each month and some months, more than one. That may not seem like much, but it's a start. I chose "follow" as a word because I was struggling spiritually with wanting to follow after Christ. I've spent pretty much my entire life following Christ, but had gone through a trauma so severe that it had shaken my faith to the deepest levels. I wanted a reminder of what I had always done and that I knew deep down that I still wanted to do -- follow Him.
For 2016, I kept my 2015 words and added a third -- move. In 2015, I participated in my first ever Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk and struggled physically much more than I wanted to do. After only completing about 1.5 miles of the total 18, I felt defeated and I knew that although I had emotionally been struggling, I wasn't in the physical shape I needed or wanted to be either. I also knew that I needed to lose weight and make some changes to better my health, so I decided that a good first step would be to start moving more. To that end, I joined a local gym so that I could start walking and lifting some weights and in April, I got a Fitbit tracker to help motivate me to take more steps each day. I can't say that I suddenly became a fitness fanatic, but I did get more steps in this year and as a result, I lost a little weight and got in a little better shape. This year I completed 7 miles of the 18 during the Out of the Darkness Overnight walk and that was with the addition of taking a nasty tumble and mildly injuring myself. So although it wasn't a hugely different year with regard to fitness, it was a better year than the one before it and it is the beginning of a journey that I'm going to continue this year.
Speaking of this year, I suppose it's time to tell you about what happened the other night in Pendragon's office. You see, out of deference to how much he knows I've struggled with it, there is a word that he has studiously avoided using for the most part over the last three and a half years. He knows how much this word has caused me anguish and buckets of tears. He knows how many hours I've spent in his office talking around this word, afraid to even breathe it aloud. Because of that, he hasn't pressed me on it, but during our conversation on Thursday, he went out on a limb and said that he felt like the things I've been learning with my psychologist Dr. D have been beneficial and that the fact that I've been able to use those skills is a good reason for hope.
Hope.
I have to be honest. Just typing that scares the heck out of me. I have been scared for almost four years to have hope. It is to the point that in the beginning, I couldn't make myself utter the word aloud, not even in its more common sense (like "I hope you have a great birthday."), much less talk about it in any depth or use the word in its theological sense. A lot of my reluctance to talk about it has come from the fact that part of the theological sense of it has to do with trusting God. For someone who has trusted God her whole life, that ought to be easy, but trauma has a funny way of changing the most fundamental things about a person in ways that he or she never thought possible.
You see, the trauma that I endured and the PTSD that came about as a result of it also created a deep pit of anger within me and a quite a lot of that anger was directed towards God. I felt deserted by Him in my greatest hour of need, despite having cried out to him amidst the ordeal I went through. It was as though He had vanished completely. The silence was deafening and the sense of His presence which had always been so real to me, was gone so completely it was as though I had never felt it at all. The combination of the trauma itself plus feeling so completely abandoned by God shook my faith so much that for a very long time, I wanted nothing to do with God or even anything associated with God in any way. It got so bad that I eventually began to doubt my faith and struggle with the temptation to turn away from God completely.
(Please click here for part 2.)
Vincent van Gogh: It is so clear you cannot help. And when you leave, and everyone always leaves, I will be left once more with an empty heart and no hope.
Eleventh Doctor: My experience is that there is, you know, surprisingly, always hope.
*****************
A couple of years ago I discovered this thing called One Word 365. Basically, the idea is that you select a word for the year to be a kind of focus word, if you will, that you allow to influence and change you mentally/emotionally, physically, or spiritually. For 2015, I chose two words because as much as I tried, I couldn't shake the idea that I needed to embrace both of them -- write and follow. The first one was chosen because I had just come off the 2014 Write 31 Days challenge in October and I wanted to commit myself to writing in my blog more regularly and keeping up with it instead of just throwing it to the side. In the two years that have been since, I've had ups and downs, but I think I've managed to write at least one entry each month and some months, more than one. That may not seem like much, but it's a start. I chose "follow" as a word because I was struggling spiritually with wanting to follow after Christ. I've spent pretty much my entire life following Christ, but had gone through a trauma so severe that it had shaken my faith to the deepest levels. I wanted a reminder of what I had always done and that I knew deep down that I still wanted to do -- follow Him.
For 2016, I kept my 2015 words and added a third -- move. In 2015, I participated in my first ever Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk and struggled physically much more than I wanted to do. After only completing about 1.5 miles of the total 18, I felt defeated and I knew that although I had emotionally been struggling, I wasn't in the physical shape I needed or wanted to be either. I also knew that I needed to lose weight and make some changes to better my health, so I decided that a good first step would be to start moving more. To that end, I joined a local gym so that I could start walking and lifting some weights and in April, I got a Fitbit tracker to help motivate me to take more steps each day. I can't say that I suddenly became a fitness fanatic, but I did get more steps in this year and as a result, I lost a little weight and got in a little better shape. This year I completed 7 miles of the 18 during the Out of the Darkness Overnight walk and that was with the addition of taking a nasty tumble and mildly injuring myself. So although it wasn't a hugely different year with regard to fitness, it was a better year than the one before it and it is the beginning of a journey that I'm going to continue this year.
Speaking of this year, I suppose it's time to tell you about what happened the other night in Pendragon's office. You see, out of deference to how much he knows I've struggled with it, there is a word that he has studiously avoided using for the most part over the last three and a half years. He knows how much this word has caused me anguish and buckets of tears. He knows how many hours I've spent in his office talking around this word, afraid to even breathe it aloud. Because of that, he hasn't pressed me on it, but during our conversation on Thursday, he went out on a limb and said that he felt like the things I've been learning with my psychologist Dr. D have been beneficial and that the fact that I've been able to use those skills is a good reason for hope.
Hope.
I have to be honest. Just typing that scares the heck out of me. I have been scared for almost four years to have hope. It is to the point that in the beginning, I couldn't make myself utter the word aloud, not even in its more common sense (like "I hope you have a great birthday."), much less talk about it in any depth or use the word in its theological sense. A lot of my reluctance to talk about it has come from the fact that part of the theological sense of it has to do with trusting God. For someone who has trusted God her whole life, that ought to be easy, but trauma has a funny way of changing the most fundamental things about a person in ways that he or she never thought possible.
You see, the trauma that I endured and the PTSD that came about as a result of it also created a deep pit of anger within me and a quite a lot of that anger was directed towards God. I felt deserted by Him in my greatest hour of need, despite having cried out to him amidst the ordeal I went through. It was as though He had vanished completely. The silence was deafening and the sense of His presence which had always been so real to me, was gone so completely it was as though I had never felt it at all. The combination of the trauma itself plus feeling so completely abandoned by God shook my faith so much that for a very long time, I wanted nothing to do with God or even anything associated with God in any way. It got so bad that I eventually began to doubt my faith and struggle with the temptation to turn away from God completely.
(Please click here for part 2.)
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