Subscribe viaMy friend Susan posted a comment to my February 18th Lent post that moved me. Suz and I played volleyball together at Liberty, and I feel — like I do about so many of those girls I played with — as though we grew up together. Surviving ages 18-22 in each other’s company, away from home, binds you to one another like little else.
Suz wrote that she wants to hold on to her daughters and be present with them, but the day just seems to get away from her. And before she’s had a chance to act on her intentions, the day is done. In her letting go category, she mentioned the word “despair,” which is the exact word I’ve been thinking about lately.
Last year, I read Kathleen Norris’ Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life, and it profoundly challenged me. It’s a somewhat dense book that you really have to wade through at times because the concepts are simultaneously very new and very old and always very relevant. Even though I read the book months ago, I’m still hanging on to so many passages. In fact, after I completed the book, I spent a whole day at the Coronado Library typing up underlined sentence after underlined sentence and I keep them on my computer. I’ve quoted her endlessly since.
Norris talks about the seasons in her life when she has been overcome with this cloud that just hangs over her life and renders her numb or depressed or despairing. Some of this she attributes to the “demon” of acedia, originally one of the deadly sins that is still commonly named and experienced among monastics. She likened her writing life and her married life, and ultimately the caring for her terminally ill husband, to the daily life of the monk who must begin anew each day and who often finds despair in that infinite task. Somehow that book reached inside me, a very new mother and a very new author, and gave words to my propensity for escapism and numbness and the general blahs. Kathleen, if you’re out there, you saved me! You really did.
And now, I find myself circling back to some of those same feelings, and I know I need to be proactive in caring for myself and my soul. Perhaps, more proactive than I’ve been lately. That’s part of despair, isn’t it. It lulls you and then you realize your life has lost some of the luster you love and crave.
I cried at my Growth Group on Tuesday night when I said I didn’t want a single day to go by that I didn’t appreciate the gift that my babies are to me. Some days I just lose track of myself and of them, like what Susan was saying, and I forget how magical it is that they are mine and I am theirs.
Additionally, Steve has been gone two of the last three weeks, and I always feel a little more spiny and ruffled and vulnerable when he’s away. I feel his absence for myself and I also feel it for the babies, which makes it a double hit. I was buoyed by all the help I got this week, all those who reach out to me even when I don’t know to reach out to them. I think of all those military wives/mothers who are far from friends and family, and I wonder how they do it.
Every year for Lent my church invites a handful of us to write devotions that are posted on the church’s website. This year I wrote three: “Trouble on the Parade Route” (Feb 21), “When Life Doesn’t Resolve” (Feb 22), and “Unspokens” (Feb 23) that you can read at http://www.diveintoflood.com/impactblog/archives/category/impact/resources/lent2010/page/2. I’m especially resonating with “When Life Doesn’t Resolve” today because I want so badly to give you a clean resolution to this post, but it’s not in me. I guess what I will say with certainty (maybe this is a resolution of sorts) is that God’s invitation for me today is to participate. The despair makes me want to check out. But God is inviting me to participate. In healing. In grieving. In beauty. In truth. I don’t know how any of these big feelings in me will resolve or what it will take to get to the other side of them, but I just know I have to participate. Those are my marching orders.
I’d really love to know how you participate, how you handle those creeping feelings that seem to blow in like a cloud-cover and hang over your soul. Where do you turn when you feel that way? What helps to let the sun in? How do you choose to participate in your life even when you don’t feel like it?
Q,
I just read the posting on the Flood blog you referred to here…I could not agree more! I think that what you are talking about, lack of resolution, etc. is all part of the journey of life. God wants to be on the journey of our lives with us! As a “destination person,” someone who thinks we can/should/will arrive at the destination, I find myself frustrated and discouraged becasue I can’t seem to “get there.” But “there” is the journey–the journey is where we meet God and those He has put in our path. I just need to sit back and enjoy the ride, traffic jams, beautiful scenery, and all….and not let it all pass me by!
Still traveling….
Loach
So true, Loach. So true. Such an important reminder. It’s a perspective we have to choose every single day. Thanks for being such a gem.
I also went and read your devotions on Flood’s site. It seems a lot of us are on the same journey of BEing more than our habitual ways of DOing. I LOVED the story of you and the horse (or lack thereof). Thanks (especially today) for coming alongside as I sit in that similar space for the time being. Praying we all get little moments of truth that help us experience the big picture a little more clearly.
See. Hear. Love.
It’s funny to me that you ask us to share how we participate in life when that numbness and despair starts to creep in. Your reference to escapism jumped right off the page and directly into my lap when I read it. What I like to do most in those dark times is crawl under my blankets with a good book and a large bag of peanut m&ms and read myself into another world before I have a chance to analyze my emotions and actually find their source. I don’t want to face them, but not facing them has really left me empty, fat, and probably in need of a good dentist.
Your suggestion to actually participate in life when I feel that way was tough to take bc that’s the last thing I “feel” like doing when I’m sad. The thing is you’re right – God does want us to participate and reach out and do, and I’ve found that when I do DO life as He intends my perspective on it changes. I find that I crave God – really knowing Him. I’m desperate for Him but having avoided His presence for so long I have no defensive or offensive strategies to fight through the fog that blocks my view of the goal. And remembering that goal is crucial if I expect to be motivated and passionate about my purpose here. Hmm – I think I’ll put those m&ms away for awhile.
I love you, Lee. Thanks for your honesty and encouragement!
Dearest Leeana,
It was soooooo Providential that I sat down to “clean out my INBOX”!!!!! It is Spring Break here. Mary katharine and Rand are off for a week from college and so Rachel and I are, too. I receive Elisabeth Elliot’s daily Devotion……Do I get to read it daily……HA!!! So I have just been reading through them and I save them. Rand says, “Print them off. We won’t always have her around and we need her writings for Mary Katharine and Rachel.
You can find her at elisabethelliot.org. She is a dear friend. I have been in correspondence with her for over 25 years and sending her cookies and she sends me books and CDS.
BTY……YOU are AWESOME!!!!! I have not sent an official thank you note yet, because I read soooooo slow. MK sat down the other day and read three chapters in 20 minutes. She said, “WOW! Mom she is so detailed!!!!” She is an artist, you know!!!! It just leaves me sometimes in chills and sometimes in a cold seat….knowing that you were over there all by yourself——–sometimes——-and yet knowing you were completely “SAFE IN THE ARMS OF JESUS”!!!! I know Gran is so thankful you are back and can love on these babies. Thank you so much for this treasure. I love you so!, Miriam
Great advice you’re speaking about it so the rest of us will know! Will use for sure. Also, what I finally figured out is, you got to reignite the environment that first attracted you both and also stop doing a ton of mistakes we all naturally make if you want to save marriage alone
I follow your website for quite a long time and truly tell that your content articles often prove to be of a high value and quality for readers.
Good_For_shared_I_certainly_like_your_web_site_simple_to_read
Thank_you_Cool_Content
Hi, . I believe this website is very useful for me, Like it a lot, tks for the advice