My Christianly Duty

It’s hard to say. It’s simply hard to say!

Blessed be Your Name when I’m found in the desert place,
though I walk through the wilderness, blessed be Your Name.

This week has held many days of wind, rain, and cold both within and without and yet when I’ve been able to pop out of the storm, it’s always been the Lord who has invited me or called me or helped me or held me--whatever the term is.

On Thursday, I think it was the most abrupt popping out of the whole week. It has felt like heaviness. It has felt indescribable. Heavy, dark, cloudy, rainy, dead, stupid. Everything is stupid. I’m tired. I want only to sleep and eat and die and find whatever will work to get me out of this spot. Several times this week I’ve felt at the end of my rope, feeling like I would finally “give in” and take that pill the doctors gave me to beat the pain. It felt like defeat and weakness to finally succumb.

But the real trouble was that there is no such pill. I’m taking all the medication I’ve been prescribed, and yet this week I have felt utterly, discouragingly out of options. I'm willing even to cheat! I'm willing to eat junk food (but it seems I don't really want to), I'm willing to watch movies (but they don't take over my mind sufficiently enough), I should be willing to call my friends (but I don't remember who they are). So... I haven't tried everything. So... the pain is my fault. Guilt is stupid.

I digress: on Thursday the day was murky enough but then mysterious trachea pain led me to speak with a registered nurse whose advice cast me into deep frustration. [If I write it out I will re-frustrate myself and that seems a waste of energy.]

But, the noose was tightening. My inner world was apocalyptic. It was the end. It was devastated cities, billowing smoke, wailing mothers, darkened skies...wasteland. Stupid wasteland. I was angry and stuck. I had about a three-percent capacity for social politeness--and I resented that the three percent still remained! I sat like a stone in the passenger seat as a friend and I were given a lift to a lecture/discussion series event.

I sat like a watery stone on the floor at the back of the lecture/discussion series event room because we had slunk in late and I didn't care enough to find a chair or table. I sat on the floor and stared without seeing at the speaker's knees. [This is so much like grief.] When I realised there was no point in me being there if I didn't pay attenion (and that I didn't actually want to go home), I pulled out my journal and robotically started taking sparse notes. Everything was still stupid and watery and dumb and HOWLONGLORD and strangling and drowning and noose and what is the point?

In God's grace I got a little warmer, gradually by gradually. At break time, I took four cookies because I thought I could eat some of my pain but I had no appetite.

Also at break time my friend dragged her chair over to me from the socially appropriate spot she had carved for herself at a table of people. She made me stand up and made me hug her. She asked me what was going on and I found something else to joke about that had happened at the moment of her asking, and the question was successfully diverted. I am a joke.

Then she let me sit in silence and a vacant stare. Then some well meaning girl came up and tried to be friendly. The red light was still flashing on my dashboard: my social capacity had dropped to two-point-five percent. How I struggled! It's not her fault. I tried, and then I tried to incorporate my other friend into the convo so I could duck out. (It worked.) I used the diversion to muster some more social courage and managed a fake smile along with fake lightness. Phew. A shield.

Five minutes later, ready to explode, I told my friend about the piles of frustration and about the week of murkiness. I told her how often I had thought about strangling and hanging--not that I am serious about it but that this is the image and the action that my mind keeps presenting as some kind of solution. I told her how it feels like drowning to be like this. I told her that it's Psalm 13 all up in my mind. It's the How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? My tone betrayed me: I spoke with real weariness. My tone was sharp as I said that it's one thing to deal with a month of rehab, but it is quite another to never know the end. Healing from a bad burn is one thing but chronic pain? I don't know how those people do it. I don't know how they keep their sanity with pain that seems gratuitous and like it will never end.

The evening wore on; I warmed up a little here and there because the content of the lecture was good. By the time we were leaving, a smile had broken through on my face as I interacted with the lecturer (whom I have known since my undergrad). I don't know what it was but a sneaky smile broke through and I let it.

Then it was time to leave. Yes, let's leave. Let's go home now. As soon as we exited the building, all smiles were gone and dark-heavy-swirling came back.

And then, thirty yards up the sidewalk I started listening to the song that had been passively playing in my head since we left the building. It started at the first verse and then I guess when it was the refrain, it was that thirty-yard spot up the path.

A [different] smile asserted itself. It wasn't huge but it was sure. And, because though there's pain in the offering blessed be Your Name, I turned and started spilling to my friend. I didn't even give my introverted brain time to process and privately worship.

"You know how I told you that sometimes God will speak to me through songs in my head, like how it'll just start playing and then BAM, I know what He's talking about?" Before that sentence was done, a knowing smile was creeping onto her face. "I just got the song Victory in Jesus."

"Huh," she replies and then asks me what the words are. A tiny, rebellious part of me resented this question because if I have to say it out loud I have to say it out loud.

I fumbled through the first verse because it's tangled with the second in my mind but then I skipped to the chorus, the meat.

  Victory in Jesus, my Savior forever;
  He sought me and He bought me with His redeeming blood.
  He loved me ere I knew Him and all my love is due Him.
  He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.

She says with a twinkle in her eye, "'He plunged me to victory'!". I like that this hymn seems new to her.

"Yeah!" I affirm, wheeling around with a light bulb. "Talk about feeling like you're drowning...!" and we're both silent for a minute. I like the Lord. I like His creativity. I like that He turned my images around like this.

He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.

It's all good. That hymn is all good but all I needed at that time was to hear "victory in Jesus". All I needed was for the Lord Himself to remind me that He will do it. He will win it. He will be victorious.

  Selah. [Author's note: I legitimately forgot where this blog post was going because I'm so Selah-ed.]

I was out. I was out! The Lord--in His mercy--had broken through. He changed the weather. And I remember the distinct moment I decided not to try to sleuth out what had done it. I wasn't going to bother with the magic recipe because I think this was just Him. This was just from His hand. Just His mercy, just His love, just His goodness. Me, I can't replicate bupkiss. (Though I did make a very strong note to worship no matter what--my Christianly duty.)

When we got to the bus stop a few minutes later I asked my friend if she wanted to hear the third verse. That one I know because (as I later explained) I have developed real soft spot for the the "death verses" of hymns. So many of them capture the poignant longing of a Christian to leave this sin-filled world and be with the Lord forever. We long but we wait. We yearn but we work.

Sigh. Oh, selah.

  I heard about the mansion He has built for me in glory.
  And I heard about the streets of gold beyond the crystal sea;
  About the angels singing and the old redemption story
  And some sweet day I'll sing up there the song of victory.


Some sweet day. And since I just looked up the lyrics to be sure I had them right (which I didn't), I'm going to write out verse two.


  I heard about His healing, of His cleansing pow'r revealing,
  How he made the lame to walk again and caused the blind to see.
  And then I cried, "dear Jesus, come and heal my broken spirit,"
  And somehow Jesus came and brought to me the victory.


I don't know what all is wrapped up in that "somehow" but I cherish the thought of it.

 Selah.