If you need someone to listen

If anyone reads this and wants to get in touch with me for any reason, my email address is hiddeninjesus@gmail.com. God really does love you and He really can and wants to heal you. And I love you, too.

Still here

Since my counselor and I agreed I didn't need counseling on a regular basis anymore (December), a lot has happened. I have had a number of what I have come to consider "God-induced crises." These are events or conflations of events which produce in me critical mass. I sometimes wake up trembling with such fear I am afraid I will have (another) stroke. Or I'll have bursts of uncontrollable anger. Or times of deep depression. In each case I am taken beyond all my own resources and feel helpless, out of control.

I know now God allows these crises to stir up the unbearable conflicts in me caused by one or more lies I still believe--which He wants to heal with truth. When I have feelings way inappropriate to what is happening in my life, I have learned to recognize that God is about to give me more revelation about who I think I am or Who I think He is. I stop and ask Him, "What are You trying to tell me? What is it You want me to learn?"

At those moments, as Scripture commands, I take "every thought captive." Rather than running away from them I turn into the feelings and the scary thoughts behind the feelings and I grab and hang onto them. As they increase in intensity, I let God first identify what I am feeling, then the lie I am believing that is causing those feelings. Then I ask Him to take me back in time to when I first believed this lie. I ask Him to speak truth to that lie so it will have no power over me anymore. Sometimes insight and healing comes instantly. Sometimes the process is lengthy and painful and takes lots of tears. But it always moves me forward toward healthier communication, a healthier worldview. It is always worth it.

One of my recent experiences was realizing that my mother (in those early years) did not love me. From what I have shared in these posts, you probably think I must have realized that before. But because I so much wanted and needed to believe she loved me, because she tried to believe it herself and have me believe it, I had never really put all the evidence together and faced the fact that neither of my parents wanted me.

The pain of that truth was excruciating. I had to let myself feel it out into all its corners and ramifications. But eventually the pain eased and the fact became just a knowing, one of millions of bits of data about my past that I could assimilate. I was then (not before) ready to see how she came to love me, how we became best friends, how the Lord redeemed all that went before. When I had told myself that too soon--"But we had fun together! She supported me in my writing! She was my best friend and biggest fan!"--it was to avoid the truth that my existence in those early years was an imposition on her, kept her from her own goals, and that I knew it instinctively from every angry jerk I felt when she brushed my hair. I couldn't jump to those later truths to justify or cover up the earlier truths. She changed. We all do. Parents of unwanted children can grow up themselves and learn to embrace and delight in them.  

I just realize, writing this, that accepting the earlier truth enables me to let go of that bone-deep guilt, that sense of never having been good enough to earn her love, that shame of "something's wrong with me." It wasn't about me. I was just a normal little girl starved for a mother's acceptance, approval, cuddling. I had a God-given need for and right to it! There was nothing wrong with me.   

I am still working on letting go of other things--having to take care of myself, not trusting others to be there for me--and letting in the love, acceptance, joy, delight that is all around me, longing for me to open up to it. I'm still in progress. But I'm still here.

"Happy Birthday(s), Jessica" by my brother Ted

Ted, me, Tim

       

Yesterday was the 101st day on which I posted a poem [on Poetry and Beyond.]  I was going to stop now, so I could call the whole ensemble “Poetry 101″.  But my sister pointed out that it was her birthday [April 12], and she thought that I owed her a poem.  Actually, since I never  remember birthdays, I owe her dozens.  Here’s one.

For My Sister’s Third Birthday
(66 years late)

                                                                             ***

Brave little troll,
Big rounding eyes,
Hands ever moving,
Then pausing; alright, grab it!

“If she does it, I can do it. If she says it, I’ll say it too.
Maybe if I pretend to cry, I’ll get it.
Oops, I forgot I was pretending, now I’m really sad.

 “There’s something I haven’t touched yet.
    There’s something, I don‘t know what’s in it.
    Wait till everybody’s out of the room,
    Then, very gently, touch it all over.

“Would you do this for me?
Do it again for me.
Oh, I see how he does it  .  .  .
No, keep away, I’ll do it myself!

“Ted is nice to me when I’m naughty, I love him.
Tim is scary sometimes, but he’s funny too, I love him.
But Mummy is always Mummy, so I love Mummy best of all.”

Must keep parents happily deluded

     I was three years old.
     It was Christmas Eve.
     I had been put to bed early but I got up to tell or ask Mommy something important to me. I took a few steps down the stairs and peered through the banisters. Mommy and Daddy were standing at the fireplace, taking turns leaning down and then reaching up and doing something with their hands, speaking to each other in low tones. I had three unhappy epiphanies at once.
     Daddy and Mommy were stuffing our stockings.
     So there was no Santa Claus.
     And I had better forget about whatever I needed to tell them and creep back upstairs without their knowing I had seen them.
     Because believing I believed their lies was important to them.

Inner tube with hole

I help people and I hurt people. First I help them, really go out of my way for them, genuinely care about them. Then, when they like me and trust me, I let them down. I don't think I mean to. But after being there for them until they count on me, I'm--not. To the degree that I was a rock for them, encouraged them, supported them, blessed them, I lose interest or I can't anymore. Then I lacerate them with words or just walk away. Because we have developed a relationship, it hurts them much worse than it would have otherwise.

I warned Jerry I was like that. I told him he'd be sorry if he fell in love with me, if he married me. I warned him I would hurt him. But he did anyway. And I have. Just like I hurt my first husband.

I am cruel and mean-spirited. I don't seem so at first. Even I don't believe I am--at first. I told Jerry about a dream I had that hadn't materialized, a dream that was impossible to realize now. He worked hard, in secret, and made it happen. I was thrilled, I thanked him profusely and sincerely, told him how amazing he was. But the day came when I turned on him and said it hadn't worked after all. It had been a lot of work for me and gotten my hopes up and nothing came of it; I wished he'd never interfered and it was all his fault.

Although he always tells me, "There's nothing to forgive," you can't undo something like that.

My response to wounding people so deeply, against my own desire, is to want to cease to exist. I don't think I should never have been born, exactly. I just wish I could become a ghost, inaudible, invisible, cease existing. I am expendable. If I never go out of the house, out of the bedroom, if I don't talk to anyone, maybe it will be as if I don't exist. Maybe if I don't move and barely breathe. But Jerry is in the house. Jerry is in the bedroom. I can never be that invisible.

Paradoxically, my trying hurts him worse. When I explain that it would solve everything if I just removed myself from the situation, disappear from his life so he can recover and go on with it, it wounds him more. He has even wept over it. That makes me crazy. And so, so guilty, like a knife in my gut.

If only they would listen when I warn them at the very beginning, This won't be good for you. You'll be sorry you were drawn in to loving and trusting me. And it will be a Catch-22 for me because I cannot extricate myself from your life without destroying you.

There's no way out that doesn't hurt them worse.

"I've got you."

I haven't been all right today. No sense of purpose, no motivation, just a heaviness, a terrible, empty hurt that isn't physical. I want to go Home.

With an effort, I stir myself to show interest in something other than me. "Are you all right?" I ask Jerry.

"I'm fine," he says, squeezing my hand cheerfully. "I've got you."

After a minute I ask, "Do you always say that because you really are fine or because you want me to think you are?"

"When I have you, I'm fine. When I don't have you, I'm not fine."

I consider that. "How can having me make you fine?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your having me is like a man in the middle of the ocean having nothing but an inner tube with a hole in it."

"How are you like an inner tube with a hole in it?"

"No one can lean on it. It will take you down."

"You don't take me down," he says.

But I know better.

Analogy

We were sitting at a long craft table in a kind of warehouse, which was lined with shelves full of objects one could paint or decorate. We were visiting with family while the children played on equipment in an adjoining room and there was a woman we didn't know sitting near us. I think she said her name was Susan. As we talked, a woman approached Susan, holding in both hands a battered shoe box bound with masking tape.  

She held it out, saying, "Do you think these are too fragile to--" The box slipped from her hands and hit the floor with the crash of things smashing to smithereens.

Stunned, none of us moved--until the woman who had dropped the box and a man somewhere behind her began laughing uproariously. Susan joined them.

It was all a practical joke. We were filled in on the back story. Susan is a glass-blower and makes things with molten glass. She needed to take a lot of her stuff home and the couple, known pranksters, had offered to help her pack it up. After one missed heartbeat, Susan knew the box held nothing of significance, nothing but junk.

The battered box bothered me more than it did Susan. I keep remembering it and identifying with it. I am like that ugly box all taped together, all the parts of me inside now, no longer separate. When we fall we fall as one unit. Although we sound as if we are smashing to smithereens, we are actually already smashed. There is nothing of significance inside, nothing but junk.