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. 

How God is Becoming More Real to Me

How is God real to me?  It sounds like an odd question to ask, maybe *gasp* like something a seeker friendly church would have a little pamphlet on.  I can't help any similarities there may be.  I must remind myself that God cares and look for those ways He shows himself to be real, not just a far off God who doesn't hear.  I can't reconcile my pleading prayers when I was being abused and His apparent deafness, to the teaching that God is present and hears our prayers and loves us.  When I try to think through both things I get trapped in a loop of flashbacks.  It's not a good place to be.

What I can do is to look for God's hands in my life today and then in the more recent past.  If I go back too much farther; I run into problems, big ones like: does God love me, did he love me back then, what about protection, is God really good, how sovereign is he anyway, and God was present but did nothing.  The way I can skip over those type of questions is for me to look at all the evil in the world being done to people of all ages and then remind myself that I'm nothing special to rate some divine protection.  There are Christians being murdered and abused for their faith.  I had it pretty easy in comparison. Somehow I'm not sure this is the way to handle it.  It ends up with me viewing God as a distant and uncaring God who is big into consequences.  So then I'm back to completely ignoring my own past, beyond the last few years, and disregarding today's present persecution of Christians unless I put it into a "suffering for Christ" category.

Today I look for God's caring in my life.  I see it in the meals brought to us by families in our church; in the freshly mowed grass because all of our mowers are broken and my husband now works out of town; in the concern being shown to us as one of our children is suffering from head trauma; texts, phone calls, getting together to just talk; in so many kindnesses big and small; and the fact that I can't disappear from church or blend into the background because I have become a part of this body. All this and so much more are evidences to me that God cares.  I see it through the tangible touch and actions of Christians who are God's arms around me in difficult times, in times of change and in the mundane of everyday life.

Another aspect of God that I see is that of Him working in me to change in a myriad of ways. Something is said repeatedly over a long period of time in many different ways and places until one day I hear it again but now it is accompanied by that uneasy feeling of guilt.  It's a different sort of guilt than the one that goes along with being abused.  It's one that causes you to realize this is talking about me and this is my sin.  To avoid dealing with this sin guilt is not a good thing.  Slowly my eyes and ears are being opened.  I'm sure this is God at work showing me what needs to be confessed and repented of.  Easier said than done, though.

God is becoming more real to me through His church, specifically and mainly the church I'm a member of.  I'm thankful for mp3 players, blogs, facebook posts, email, texting, and twitter.  All this tech provides more ways for me to hear again what God is trying to tell me.  It doesn't sink in the first time around I hear it in a worship service or in counseling.  God is patient with me and I've seen His gentleness towards me in the last two years.  I can be in church now and rarely dissociate anymore, and the triggers are seldom a problem.  A lot has changed in the last six months from what my church experiences were two years ago or one year ago.  May God continue His work.

Life Together with Christians in my New World

I haven't written a blog post in a while, although I've been writing a lot for my own sanity elsewhere.  I've started reading another book, just a short little one, but it is packed with a whole lot of things new to me in some ways.  It's really not new, but reflects the cry of my heart that I've done my best over the years to bind and gag and bury it deep so I can't hear it any longer.  The book I've begun to read is Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Enter the idea of Christian community and confession.  Why in the world would I read such a book?  I don't know, I suppose it has something to do with the things I've been wrestling with for the last few months.  In good ole IFB language these would be the things I would mention as "unspoken prayer requests" back in the independent fundamental baptist church I grew up in.  Thankfully I'm not in that world anymore, but I still don't quite know how to safely navigate in the world I find myself in today.  Life Together is given as an example of how we should live life together in our Christian community.  Therefore I find myself reading it to see just what that entails.

There is a great amount of tension between confession and daily community life that I see lived out before me.  How much of your story should be known?  What sort of things do you confess and to whom?  Who can handle the really big stuff, you know, the type of things that you do need help with in overcoming, the struggles that are too hard to carry on your own?  Not too many people fit that description.  And the incredible risks involved are enough to drive you back to isolation and denial.  That's a lonely and emotionally frozen way to live.  I want to be thawed out, but I'm afraid I may be "freezer burnt" and never be able to function as a normal person in the community I am now in.  The big things like major depression that cycles around to various degrees of suicidal thoughts all the way up to the point of deciding to attempt it or not is not something most people can deal with.

Of course the ones who are "trained" to deal with it are the ones who have no answers.  What kind of help is that?  Listening to the Godless drivel that comes out and yet is called help, is enough to drive me to really go through with it.  Talk about truly depressing!  Yet these are the people that I would be referred to in the throes of being suicidal because evidently pastors, who are thoroughly trained in the scriptures and theology, don't have the answers I am in desparate need of during the times I am suicidal. (Did you notice the sarcasm here?)

QUOTES from Life Together:

"The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer." p19

"The believer feels no shame, as though he were still living too much in the flesh, when he yearns for the physical presence of other Christians." p19

"The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God." p20

"He knows that God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel that he is righteous at all.  The Christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God's claims and God's justification." p22

"God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man.  Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him.  He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth.  He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation." p23