Pre-Written Prayers Are Reusable and Helpful Too

Growing up IFB(Independent Fundamental Baptist) I was taught that the only real prayers were those you prayed on the spot.  It was clearly said that any accidental recordings of prayers weren't able to be prayed again because they could only be prayed once.  Of course the Psalms were never seen as any type of prayer.  The "Lord's Prayer" wasn't a real prayer either; it was just a model of how we were to pray.  The older I grew the more restrictions and rules there were that applied to how to properly pray to God.  I didn't have to use thee's and thou's, but if I did evidently God required grammatical consistency in order to be pleased with my prayer, and I couldn't mix in a 'you' anywhere.

By the time I reached my early 20's I stopped praying.  I was too afraid I'd do it wrong and incur God's wrath for my presumption in prayer.  I would pray for specific requests for people in great need or pain.  Eventually pastors caught on that people prayed for things and weren't praying all the other proper sorts of prayers that were divided correctly into whatever the right way to pray was.  So for a while in my 20's and early 30's I heard more about how wrong it is to use God as only someone to ask things from, but not talk to him in any other way in prayer.  Big push on prayer, not prayer requests.  Once again I altered the way I prayed and only prayed for life or death issues. 

Imagine my surprise when we began going to a different church and I observed men going up to pray from the pulpit with their prayer already written out.  Now I knew that sort of thing happened at Bob Jones University in chapel, but I counted that as a speech requirement for the 'preacher boys' and never considered they were praying for real.  But here this was a real church and they had written prayers?  Baptist love to talk about the slippery slope, but seeing prayers written out and prayed in a meaningful way in public for the first time was a first step in a long theological journey away from fundamentalism.

I still don't pray my own original prayers, except on rare occasions, but I'm learning to pray the prayers that others have written.  Here is one that fits me pretty well right now.

Sustain Me in the Coming Then

O God, empty me of angry judgments,
   and aching disappointments,
         and anxious trying,
and breathe into me
   something like quietness
         and confidence,
that the lion and the lamb in me
   may lie down together
         and be led by a trust
as straightforward as a little child.

Catch my pride and doubt off guard
that, at least for the moment,
I may sense your presence
   and your caring,
and be surprised
   by a sudden joy
        rising in me now
to sustain me in the sudden then.

from Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder

The Light at the End of the Tunnel is NOT an Exit

Events occur that most wouldn't understand how that seemingly unrelated thing would have any effect on me.  It's complicated to explain and when pushed to do so, even though it's also said that I don't have to explain, I feel compelled to explain if it's someone that I think I might be able to trust in some smallish way.  So I explain, a little.  A testing of the waters. A testing of the light.  It could be another instance of setting myself up to be devoured by following the light of apparent friendship with the bait of a much-needed hug.  I just might have some trust issues, but not without cause. ;)



I get entranced by the "light at the end of the tunnel" and continue moving towards the light, all the while I'm actually moving deeper into darkness.  I discover I'm not in a tunnel but rather my whole existence is surrounded by darkness, punctuated by flashes of light whereby I barely escape alive, but certainly not unscathed.  The light moves where ever it needs to in order so that even when I move towards the light I descend farther into darkness.  I retreat from it and too late realize it now is between me and the true light.  No matter what I do nothing makes a difference for long.

For an all too brief period of time I moved out of the darkness I have been surrounded by for most of my life.  I believed I had escaped the darkness.  For a time I was free of it, but a vortex from the depths pulls me back.  I see a light above me but its not the light of freedom, its the light of that ever present trap moving closer to me as I sink deeper into the darkness I'm well accustomed to.  Between me and the true light of the freedom I have tasted is the light of the false hope of healing from PTSD and all that goes with it.  The darkness and coldness of a life numbed to emotions is safer.  And today all I want is to be safe and for this anguish to be over.

A Perfect Easter Sunday...except

Easter Sunday... It's supposed to be a day of hope remembering Christ's resurrection.  In some ways I am participating in Easter, but I feel more like an outside observer this time.  Not belonging, but this time of my own choosing.  I made sure everything ran smoothly this morning and the whole family made it to the sunrise service on time and even a little early and then on to the breakfast at church and then the worship service.  Dinner is in the oven the potatoes are cooking and the gravy is standing by ready to be made at the last minute.  The boys are all down and actually sleeping for naptime.  It's been a perfect day thus far.  After naps then everyone will get their Easter baskets and then we will have our Easter dinner.

Sounds great and it is except...  I dissociated through most of the service which made me rather fuzzy headed afterwards.  Someone asked me if I was sick because it seemed I was walking like I didn't feel well and seemed off.  I thought I was hiding it well.  Evidently not.  I am out of practice in hiding how I feel.  People are used to seeing me fully engaged and not in shut down mode.  She also kept asking and guessing what was wrong until I told her the short version of the story, which was the PTSD is back and I thought I was over it because everything was so different this time.  I also told her about the two local counselors who couldn't handle my "multiple traumas" and one of them has been counseling for 30 years and has PTSD with trauma as a specialty.  Somewhere in the conversation I said a few times, "I'm done."  She asked what I was done with.  I couldn't give her a good answer.  I didn't want to.  Church? was one of her guesses.  I wasn't sure how to answer that question since that is something I've been thinking about.  She and another lady who came back into the conversation a bit later both hugged me and said they would pray for me and some other comforting type statements.

Another conversation in the parking lot with someone else, more hugs and encouragement to not blame myself or carry guilt for considering or deciding to not adopt the boys.  The only people who know at this point in my face to face life are the pastors and elders at church, and at least one of their wives. 

So, it's a perfect Easter Sunday.  We have the pictures to prove it.  I wish I didn't have a different narrative running underneath it all.  The one that says, "This is the one and only Easter you'll have with these boys.  The last holiday.  They will leave with their Easter outfit, but maybe will never want to wear it again because of the association of the last happy holiday with us.  Everyone sees how well they are doing and the improvement in behavior.  No one will understand why I can't do the mom thing, why I can't pull it together, why I have an inability to parent them all, why all of a sudden I can't handle the improved version of these boys or what my problem really is.  God is sovereign but why so much pain?  Am I supposed to tough it out and somehow stop leaning on my older children for help?  The more times a day goes well and I survive it, the more I doubt myself."

Then again, with the almost constant dissociation during church, dizziness, blurry vision and the lingering headache and evidently odd way of walking around afterwards, can that be called a successful day?  I am surviving it, but that's it.  And this day is going so well compared to others!  I just want to sleep it off, but if I dare go to sleep I will easily be out for the next 4-5 hours which would ruin the day for everyone else.  So I inflict upon a few people another rambling blog post chronicling my journey through life. 

I'm Too Young to Lose My Car in the Parking Lot: except I did. Too bad my hyper-alertness didn't remember where I parked.

Today the lights were too bright.  The noise was too harsh.  I couldn't put together one of my child's toys by following the picture directions.  The ability to concentrate and hold on to thoughts was diminished.  It was all about being overloaded.  I went shopping today.  By the time I finished at the third store I was finished.  Too many people.  Too much everything.  The cashier said something to me three times and I couldn't understand what he meant.  Another customer repeated it to me in a simpler way and used fewer words.  I replied with some sort of response back that I hope made sense.  I'm not sure if it did.  The cashier looked at me oddly, but still tried to carry on a conversation.  I think I had one semi intelligent sentence.  He kept looking at me strangely.  I wonder if he knows me from somewhere, or if maybe he thought I was high or drunk. 

I left the store and looked for my vehicle.  I couldn't find it for quite a while.  I think I went up and down half of the aisles at Wal-mart looking for it. 

Today was a mix of dissociation and being hyper-alert.  Hence my inability to find where I parked.  The headache and tiredness came from just being alive today.  It's a different kind of tired.  It's being wore out from the inside out.  I may be doing a decent job numbing my pain, but I haven't been able to turn off everything else yet.  I'm still dissociating and having PTSD symptoms.  It's hard to get all areas shut down at the same time.  Like right now as I'm typing my eyes are doing funny things and going all blurry and not letting me focus.

Turning Off Emotion: it's what I'm good at

There is no grace, no redemption, no hope in this post.  If you are having a bad time of it right now then this isn't what you should be reading.



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Sadness

Regret

Hollow

emotion and tears well up...I flatten them down and refuse to feel

and then nothingness

 

 

Maybe there is a chance that things will change for the better someday, but I can't see it right now.  Truthfully, I don't want to see it either.  I'm out of hope and my pain meter is maxed out.  I just want a way for it all to stop.  I only know one way to stop it and to stay alive, nothing else has worked long term.

Everything I do is on my list. My secret “how to live life so no one knows you aren't really here” list. I haven't used that list for two years now. For two years, plus another four months if I count my inadvertent thawing, I have been waking up to my own emotions, feelings and pain. Lots of pain. I've dealt with it and had much needed help doing so. I spent several weeks feeling and a few being suicidal. I think I was in that dark place again for about five weeks . I thought it would be a long time, maybe 3-5 years before I would cycle back around to being that bad off again. I was wrong.

I got to the point I could be in church and the triggers and dissociation didn't necessarily happen every service and when they did it was manageable. It took the better part of two years to get to that place. Even then there were plenty of days where I didn't function well and was checked out and not able to do the mom thing.

NO. MORE.

I'm done.

I'm done working so hard to be okay and honestly thinking that this time it will work. This time, because the message is so different and I'm believed and and and... There is just no fixing me. Not a real fix, not real healing, no truly getting past the PTSD and dissociation and the failure of being a good mom, who is truly and always here for my kids. I can't give them these two years back or all the other years where I was trying to find help, but I can give them a well programmed mom who does the right things at the right times(with just a little bit of lag). This I can do. This is what I'm good at. I've done this my whole life except for those times when I longed for something more, something real and for the experience of having real emotions besides anger.

I've done the emotion thing now for the last year or so and it's just not worth it. I've experienced the good emotions in what I think are genuine feelings. It was amazing to feel, really feel happiness and to laugh spontaneously without thinking about it and cuing myself to laugh. As great as all that was I can't keep those good emotions without also keeping myself open to their opposites. The price is too high and I can't keep paying it.

Tears are turned off

feelings are being dampened

I'm starting to look ok again.

 

The true test will be when we tell the boys and we send them away.  Until then, I practice for the big day.  The day when I rip my heart to shreds and pretend it doesn't hurt.