Psalm 12

I'm a day late with this meditation. Yesterday was a long day and by the time I got around to finally having time to sit down and actually write, my ability to think coherently was long gone. I'll admit that there was also the issue of being frustrated and not wanting to write yesterday. With each day that passes, I'm finding it harder and harder to write. It's not that the subject matter is so complicated, but I think I'm hitting a wall mentally. That and the last several days, I feel like I'm writing the same words over and over. The more I think about it though, maybe that's what I'm supposed to do.

Today's psalm is subtitled, "Plea for Help in Evil Times." You know, this was written a few millennia ago, but given the way our world seems to be at the moment, it could have just as easily been written today. It speaks to how there are so few people left who are godly in the psalmist's world. It's very easy to see how that applies to our world. You know that old saying, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"? For me, that is a good example of this idea. The reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is because of the sinfulness that so permeates our world. You can see it play out in other areas as well -- war, domestic violence, slavery, famine, the lust for power, murder, etc. With all that ungodliness going on, it's easy to see why the psalmist penned these words:

Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind. They utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a double heart, they speak. (verses 1-2)

But those who suffer in the wake of such ungodliness -- the poor, enslaved, beaten, sick, unjustly imprisoned, etc -- are not forgotten by God. Even as the psalmist bemoans the wickedness he sees around him, he expresses his hope in God's love for those who follow him and suffer injustice:

"Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up," says the Lord. "I will place them in the safety for which they long." (verse 5)

God does see when His children suffer and even when it seems there is no one left who follows Him, He won't leave us abandoned. He will place us in safety.

That's a hard thing to see sometimes in the thick of it. I know if someone had said to me during my trauma almost three years ago that God had not abandoned me and would place me in safety, I'd have thought they had lost their mind. Quite honestly, I would have thought that if they'd said it to me in the immediate months after the trauma. I had horrible flashbacks, the most vivid and scary nightmares I've ever had, and was mostly miserable and felt very unsafe for a long time.

Looking back on it though, I can see that while I didn't feel safe, God was holding me in a place of safety. He was loving me through others -- my husband Gray, my three sweet little girls, my big brother Chez, my friend Rikert, and many others -- and through the therapeutic skills of my therapist Pendragon. He kept me safe from myself on a number of occasions when I despaired of anyone who cared or loved me. Eventually, He also loved me through providing spiritual healing through the ministry of the Church and my spiritual director, Fr. B.

I still have moments and even whole days or weeks when I feel unsafe and abandoned, but I am beginning to know in a more powerful way that even when I feel that way, He hasn't left me drowning in the aftermath of the evil that wreaked such havoc on my life. I still have a long journey ahead of me, but I feel better able to weather the storms of this illness and this thing we call life (because goodness knows life has tons of storms even without mental illness!) than I have felt in a long time.

Until next time...

Pax Christi!