Pitching fits and trusting God

I had a better day today. I even got out of bed and sat on the floor of my closet room and surveyed the utter disaster it is currently in. I wasn’t able to “clean” but I was able to sit for a bit and stack articles of clothing into piles. My most important pile was the one I have started in the suitcase that’s bound for KC. I am close enough to be preparing to leave now. My brain doesn’t handle change well anymore so I thought the best way for me to adjust to this trip was to use the same methods I once used on my preschool students. For instance, having a trip bag open and ready to toss things in as I think of what I will want to have.

It also helps for me to have a working list of things I want to make sure and take written out and right there to add to as thoughts occur to me. We also ordered the Garmin GPS system for the car trip to KC. Why are we driving the almost 12 hours instead of flying you ask? Well, because my central nervous system (from here on I am just going to use CNS because it’s bothersome to type it out every time) cannot handle the noise and crowds of an airport or the confined space of an airplane. Not to mention the 4 or 5 hour layover before the next leg of the flight so really time wise, it all comes out in the wash. We are planning on stopping halfway and staying a night at a hotel so the drive won’t wear me or M out too bad.

We also ordered the digital recorder for the meetings with the KC doctor. She recommends that all patients record their sessions with her because she normally gives you an overwhelming amount of information and she says that taking notes, while encouraged, just can’t cover everything properly. She knows that most of her patients are like me & reach “brain overload” rather easily too. All these preparations are helping me to focus on being as prepared for the unknown of this trip as I can be. I have no idea what she will say or recommend and I hand that over to God, but I know my control issues and the trip is fast approaching (THANK YOU GOD!!!). We will be leaving in 13 days in order to have a full day in KC before seeing her on the 10th which will allow me a day of rest to get myself and my thoughts in order before “the big day”. And the car ride also allows us to take along little m, my furry child, the toy poodle. It might not be the best idea, but I have a feeling having him there will bring me more comfort than inconvenience.

Now, here is the big worry that I am trying my best to hand over to God. I am not sure they will have space for me in her treatment facility for me to start treatment immediately. However, whatever course of action she deems best will be based on the results of all her labs and her complete physical and consultation. That’s what she covers with us on the third day of the evaluation. I’ve spoken to current patients of hers who tell me that she’s repeatedly talked about just how many people are trying to get in to see her. Apparently the growth, even over just the past year, is tremendous and it’s causing her to have to turn people away. She wants to see everyone but she is under time constraints and therefore is confined to seeing only those who are the most symptomatic or need treatment the most. There is a chance that even if she does want me to start treatment immediately there may not be clinic space available. SO, new prayer request here, please pray that if it’s God’s will for me to receive treatment in KC that a spot for me will be available so I can start ASAP! I’m ready to get on the road to wellness!

Now, on another note, I have been reading some more C. S. Lewis lately. When I discussed in an earlier post about getting 3 books a few months ago at Barnes & Noble, one of them was Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” and I must say – it blew my mind. I absolutely loved it. The beginning was slow and somewhat tough reading, but from the middle to the end I was spell bound. I wish it were required reading for every Christian. It really made me question where my “ideas of God” come from – are they truly Biblically based or am I thinking of God as He was taught to me as a child in Sunday school and going no further, no deeper than that? I found in my case it was a little of both which made it all the more necessary for me to read it.

Last night I read his book “A Grief Observed” which is basically a journal he kept after the death of his wife. He married his wife knowing she had cancer, but there was a remission, there was a hope that it had gone away, and then there was its’ return leading to her eventual death. Many people think this is Lewis’ best work because it is not his typical “intellectual argument” but rather, it is exactly as the title states – we observe his grief and the process he goes throughout his grief. He realizes he is no better than anyone else when his “house of cards” (his phrasing not mine) was knocked down – he doubts God, gets mad at God, questions WHY a lot, and then eventually, he comes back to God with a stronger or perhaps renewed sense of faith. I wanted to share some of Lewis’ thoughts because I know my last entry was depressing and I hated writing it, well that’s not exactly correct. I didn’t hate writing it rather I hated HAVING to write it. Because it forced me to be as open and honest as I can be without bringing myself further down the spiral which often ends in what I hate most, self-pity.

I thought perhaps reading the words of a much better writer than I might demonstrate better the back and forth of these emotions, the rollercoaster of feelings. I’m not grieving the loss of my spouse and I don’t claim that my pain is more than his (or anyone else’s for that matter). It’s just that I’m learning that pain, whatever its’ cause, seems to have a cycle and grief is a big part of that cycle. I’ve been grieving the loss of my former self, my stronger self, my old life. But, I have to let go of that because you cannot grieve forever. I think that grief is a gift in a sense. A time where we stop the “niceties” or “formalities” of prayer and begin to allow ourselves to tell God how we truly feel about our situation. God already knows how we truly feel of course. Yet, I think it’s important to note the difference of God knowing how you feel because He is omniscient and God knowing how you feel because you tell Him in your own words to try and communicate with Him what your honest feelings no matter how scary or ugly they may be. I think this is exactly the relationship that God desires to have with us. He wants us to come to Him with our joys and our sorrows and be honest with Him about it all. We don’t always pray “honestly” and when you think of how silly it is to try and hide how you feel from God, you see why He may desire something more of us. Instead of pious prayers I believe He wants something REAL.

In “A Grief Observed” Lewis begins his journal how I think any widow or widower would – he is angry. Here is one of the most famous quotes from the book:
“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be – or so it feels – welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when you need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?”

When I first read that I must admit, it hurt my heart. I realized it hurt my heart because his thoughts were so similar to thoughts I myself had years ago. That I had prayed and prayed and found nothing – no answers and at times I had not felt even comfort. It hurt my heart because now, as I look back on that time, I know how very untrue those statements are because it is as I have gone deeper into the valleys that I have gotten to know God on such a more intimate level. I had read that quote before in other books and hated that is was used because I felt it was so one sided. Having read Lewis I knew him to be a man of such strong faith, not to mention a great debater, so I thought surely there was something else missing. Some thought that must have occurred to him after that one. Some thought that would allow him to see God as I now see God – always with me, always there for me, even in the deepest of valleys.

I believe I was right too because as Lewis works through the horrible stages of his grief he later writes:
“You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I MUST get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? ‘Them as asks’ (at any rate ‘asks too importunately) don’t get. Perhaps can’t.”

He continues with:
“And so, perhaps, with God. I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear. On the other hand, ‘Knock and it shall be opened.’ But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac? And there’s also ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.”

And there it is – it is not always on God to answer us immediately, or at all sometimes. I have found though my own experiences that it’s at times when I, like Lewis, am “hammering and kicking the door like a maniac” seemingly get no response at all. Later on, I often find God whispering the answer to me of the very question I was kicking down the door for to begin with. I have wondered, “Why now? Why not then when I really needed to know?” and I have come back every time with the same feeling. The feeling that had God given me the answer at that time, when I was kicking and hammering, that I wouldn’t have seen it as “a good enough answer”. I had to step away and accept that God’s will happens in His timing, not my own, no matter how frustrating that may be to my human brain.

I think we, as humans, have to go through the “fit pitching” stage before we reach a rational state of mind where we can understand His answers. I said before that I got an idea that God might often see me as I would see a 3 year old child who was frustrated. Any of us know that a 3 year old in the midst of a temper tantrum cannot possibly understand logic or reason. They might be pitching a fit in the middle of the grocery store for an ice cream cone and during that fit they cannot understand that you are buying the ice cream and the cones and that you plan to make them one as soon as you get home. Nope, instead they throw a fit of major proportions and as they do that ice cream is melting and they are, without realizing it, only delaying their own enjoyment. I have a feeling that’s what we are like on this earth. We see what we want, or even sometimes what we think we deserve, and we don’t understand why God isn’t giving it to us. As we mature in our faith I believe we learn to trust God more and that keeps us from pitching a lot of those fits. But, in the beginning, and sometimes in times of tragedy, loss, or just plain fear, I think we are again like children, pitching fits all the time. If we didn’t pitch the fit maybe we could understand that either what we want wouldn’t really be the best thing for us in the end. OR, and this one really gets me because it’s happened to me before, that He IS planning on giving us exactly what we want, but in His perfect timing.

I pray that my fit pitching days are getting to be fewer and my days of trusting in God and having faith that ALL of this, the good and the bad, are becoming more frequent. That all of this is part of His master plan which is always better than my own. So yes, I had a better day today. I hope you all had good days and I pray that each of you continue to have good days and have fewer reasons to “pitch fits” :)

Oh - also, I know I have told you all about how my mental capacity is failing me miserably at times. It is, and I sometimes have to point out a word to M to have him pronounce it for me. I want to state this again because it just makes my writing all of this even more miraculous to me. I know that without God I wouldn't be able to write any of this. I pray and He dictates as I try to type and not mess up whatever message He wants to send through me.

In closing a couple of verses that mean a lot right now. First, one that makes me think of each and every one of you who read through my ramblings:
"I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers" Ephesians 1:16

Second, one that makes me realize yet again that fit pitching is not needed:
"The Lord is faithful in all His words, and gracious in all His deeds" Psalm 145:13