Thursday, November 6: Hello, Darkness My Old Friend

Depression hasn't killed me so far, and at this point, I'm pretty confident it won't. Because at this point, while it's still painful, it's also familiar. I've learned to ride out its occasional visit. 

This, too, shall pass.

Except in fall and winter, depression—never a welcome guest—tends to overstay. As daylight dwindles into early nights, that old familiar darkness creeps back and settles in, unpacking its portmanteau of pain I feel but can't touch, can't escape, and can't completely explain, despite the fact that I understand it's woven from the threads of my abusive past.

Face cupped in my hands, eyes closed, I chant my mantras: I can't do this again. Why do I have to do this again? or simply, I can't. Other incantations include, I don't want to be here anymore and I hate this life, which, when I stop to think about it, is probably shorthand for, I hate feeling this way and having to live this way.

Because this way is such a bloody struggle. Every damned day. Nothing, it seems, comes easy—a truism that applies even when I'm not in depression's grip. At 74 years old, life's struggles, large and small (some so small they're ridiculously trivial), have worn me out, and that weariness keeps the door to my psyche cracked, giving my least favorite visitor access. 

But this, too, shall pass.

I know this, because, time and again, God has brought me through, so I'm confident God will bring me through again. It's what They do. (They being the 3 Persons). I might wish James Finley was talking through his hat when he said, "God spares us from nothing," even though he continued, "but sustains us in everything," except personal experience—which includes childhood sexual abuse, parental emotional abuse, spousal abuse, and psychiatric abuse—seems to bear him out. I wasn't spared, but I was absolutely sustained, or I wouldn't be here.

Sometimes I wonder if being sustained by God is actually a mercy. I mean, when you know you're going to receive the strength and stubbornness to get through, you understand there's no escape; you just have to endure. Those self-destructive moments when I imagined—even half-heartedly attempted—to leave under my own power didn't, thank God, last long enough to see me gone. God's grace, timely intervention, and pure, preordained stubbornness kept me here.

Today, suicide no longer has so much as a toehold.

Because those thoughts, too, have passed.

I know I can win this round. I detest knowing I'll have to win bouts again and again, but I'm confident I can and will.

Because now I understand, in a way I couldn't before, there are people who need me. Focusing on someone else lifts me out of the abyss for a while ... or at least, gets my attention off it. So even though I haven't done the dishes or cleaned house or mowed my lawn or done a hundred other things I should've, I'm somehow able to (reluctantly) check in with friends and family, participate in my online spiritual group every Tuesday morning, volunteer at Hospice a couple times a month, and maybe volunteer at the local food bank. 

Make no mistake: I have to force myself. Every. Time.

But I'm able to exercise every day and get out of the freakin' house once in a while to treat myself to an iced coffee, despite the fact that I never, ever want to do that or anything else.

Do I actually enjoy any of the healthy things I do? Not often, although I do experience satisfaction. It's the doing in spite of myself, the helping others no matter how minimally, the beating depression at its own friggin' game, that are important.

See, after decades of acquaintance, I'm onto depression's tricks. If I stop doing what's good for body and soul (mine and/or others'), even for a day, I'll get sucked into darkness so deep, I won't be able to move at all. Movement requires enormous force, but the power behind that force doesn't come from me. I suspect this is where God's sustaining comes in—feeding me willpower when pain and darkness whisper about the seductive comforts of isolation and complete inactivity. 

So far, I've written about what I've learned along the way. Today, I maybe got a hint that there's more. I read Mary Oliver's poem, "The Uses of Sorrow," and I started to wonder, for the first time, if my own box of darkness had given me gifts. If so, what are they, and why haven't I seen them before now? What if recognizing and appreciating my gifts from darkness will lead to its ... and my ... redemption?

Something to meditate on ....

I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten .... and ... you shall praise the name of the LORD your God. (Joel 2:25, 26)

Tuesday, October 28: One Beautiful Thing

 

My childhood was steeped in negativity. As an adult, I married into it, then passed it along to my children, like a genetic fault. Or a curse. So at 74 years of age, I'm completely awash in the stuff, and I've recently realized I've lost the ability to bathe in anything else.

I skewer the world with a dissatisfied gaze and simmer with indignation. Sometimes, my indignation isn't completely selfish or unproductive, like when I seethe over injustice and feel moved to take action against it. But more often than not, my indignation is petty and self-absorbed—against the driver who tailgates, the jar lid that won't unscrew, or the handle on my freezer door that some bright designer positioned perfectly for repeated, painful head knocks whenever I straighten from loading the vegetable bin down below.

I mutter to myself in anger and with an ongoing sense of injury, grousing mole hills into mountains. Not that you'd ever know it if you met me. You'd probably see me as a nice, funny, little old lady—and at my best, in the company of others, that's exactly who I am. But I'm also someone who's become an expert at keeping my complaints about the unfairness of it all to myself and hugging my negativity close, like a secret friend. Even though that "friend" has sucked most (if not all) of the joy out of my life.

Unfortunately, nobody told me that anxiety is the flipside of negativity. Viewing life through a jaundiced lens—and, to be fair to myself, through the lens of decades of abuse—always seeing the worst, leaves me vulnerable to the what-ifs. Waiting for the next shoe to drop or sword to fall, because I know it will. So I find myself living with a constant, vague dread, an ever-present fear that something wicked this way comes. 

And I'm convinced I deserve what comes, because the most virulent strain of my negativity is reserved for ... me. I'm a continual disappointment to myself—not spiritual enough, not brave enough, not every-damn-thing enough. Or maybe I'm too much—too all-in for a friendship I assume arose out of a casual conversation; too gung ho when someone asks me to research medical care options, and I immediately, feverishly bombard them with more information than one person could assimilate in a lifetime ... and don't stop there. (Dad used to say, "Kathleen, you go at everything like you're killing snakes." He wasn't wrong.)

As a 1980 G.I. Joe cartoon character famously informed children after every educational PSA, "Knowing is half the battle." Maybe he was right, and that gives me hope, but then I remember what John Heywood said: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks," and I remind myself that I've spent seven decades internalizing my old tricks. Is it too late to change?

Not talking about the kind of change where you hitch up your willpower pants and buy a book called Seven Strategies for Developing a Positive Outlook. I'm talking about deep, lasting spiritual transformation, a transfiguration I believe only God can accomplish: Eyes that see beauty, even among the ashes. A heart that dares to hope. Joy, even as those eyes recognize injustice and that heart bleeds for real, overwhelming worldwide pain and suffering.

I do think I have a part to play, but not in that old "God helps those who help themselves" way. I mean, God already helped me by letting me see all this so clearly, when I clearly didn't want to see it at all. But that first step in faith (obedience?) also has to be taken; it's not enough to kick back in the recliner and say, "Okay, God, I see what You're saying. Now give me positive outlook. By Tuesday, if possible." Looking my negativity in the eye is probably the first step. Giving it a swift kick and offering it up whenever I catch it grumping in would be another. (Honestly? I get tired just thinking about that battle! Makes me want to lie down and take a nap.) 

This morning I decided I would try to think about and appreciate one beautiful thing every day. I often skim the surface on this, settling for a brief nod to some blessing or other, but I want to try to change my approach by stopping on one thing and looking deeply. Pausing long enough to let my heart catch up and rejoice in that one beautiful thing. I don't know why, but I feel this is the way ....

Sunday, October 26: 'Tis a Gift

It would be so much easier—and, God knows, more pleasant and comfortable—to close my notebook and move over to the couch to read books that take me away from myself. Journaling when I'm in this frame of mind is rarely uplifting and often smacks of self-pity or self-absorption. But I wonder if there aren't bubblings beneath the surface, thoughts and fears I use reading to suppress, that might effervesce into the light if I take a moment, pay attention, and give them a chance.

My old friend darkness is edging in. Again. It always does as winter approaches, dragging both pain and sadness behind it. The other day I asked God, "How many times in my life am I supposed to go through this?" 

Does writing about it make it worse?

Of course, the dark times are when I experience a greater need for God and cry out to Them most desperately and sincerely. So there's that.

Still, the child of God I want to be and the child I God I am are so very far apart. (Or is it the child of God I think I'm supposed to be and the child of God I am? I honestly don't know.)

I can't forget contemplation. By that I mean, I can't entirely shrug off the idea that contemplative is a very good way to live and a good way to be. But my interest seems distant, my desire a degree or two below lukewarm. I think it was Merton who said contemplation is a gift. Yeah. (I just looked it up.) He said contemplation is a gift, a theological grace, not a psychological trick that can be achieved through techniques. Well, I don't think I've been given this particular gift, at least not yet. The only thing I've experienced so far during my nightly (that would be 200 nights and counting) 10-minute sit is hope that the bell will ring soon.

Am I trying to put the blame for my own spiritual poverty on God? Or am I simply acknowledging the fact that these virtues—sincere delight in God and contemplation—are gifts only God can give? Again, I honestly don't know, but I always suspect my own heart.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for fish, will give him a snake? If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

Do I have faith enough to believe this? And if I do, will my asking, seeking, and knocking be sincere enough or my motives pure enough? (Merton's assertion that with God a little sincerity goes a long, long way gives me hope.) As it stands, I can only ask as who I am, right now, with whatever faith I have right now—not as who I might wish I could be. I'll have to leave heart changes up to God. 

The Path

 

"Do I want this, or do I only want to want this?" In other words, am I a seeker, or do I just want to be able to call myself a seeker? Am I on a journey or an ego trip?

Those are the questions I'm asking myself when I ... you should pardon the pun ... contemplate contemplation.

Merton:

Tepitidy, in which the soul is neither 'hot or cold'—is a state in which one rejects God and rejects the will of God while maintaining an exterior pretense of loving Him in order to keep out of trouble and save one's supposed self-respect. It is the condition that is soon arrived at by those who are habitually ungrateful for the graces of God.

I love contemplation in the abstract, but I'm very afraid I'm tepid in practice. ("The spirit is willing, but ....") I suspect (fear!) I'm just plain tepid at heart. Tepid love for God. Tepid desire to personally experience Them. (Habitually feeling virtually no gratitude for Their graces.)

Worse, I'm crippled by an almost nonexistent belief that my heart will ever warm.

Contemplating the path leaves me—I was going to say cold, but it's worse than that. It leaves me unmoved (or ... you guessed it ... tepid). Sometimes it leaves me skeptical, sardonic, and/or resistant. 

And yet ....

My tepid heart paradoxically, stubbornly, persistently insists there must be More. More than dogma. More than theology. More than the Bible. Just More.

So while I resist stepping fully onto the path—or edge onto it halfheartedly—I can't completely turn my back on it.

James Finley likes to say that if you're reading the mystics, you're already on the path. But how can I be, when my heart feels so dry? When I'm only halfway committed to the possibility of mystical communion with the Divine? 

Who am I resisting? Why am I resisting? And why, in a real sense, can't I resist?

Ay, there's the rub.

Thinking too much again, no doubt. Trying to apply egoic logic to that which the ego can never figure out.

Bottom line, I can't do anything but what I'm doing, halfhearted though it may be, for now. The More I sense, the More I can't help but believe in, will, I hope, warm my tepid heart.

The he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones [or in my case, dry heart], hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.'

Create in me a clean heart, O God ....