My Grief

My grief has many colors. Sometimes it is red and hot, sometimes it is yellow and warm, and other times it is grey and cold. I long to use these colors to paint a picture, but these colors do not seem to match.

My grief is very small. I do not grieve over the world, over wars, over global injustices. It is just about me, my problems, my tiny realm. And yet my grief feels very big. It is about me, my problems, my realm. I wake up every day feeling my grief. There is no escaping this grief of mine, it follows me around, demanding my attention. If I try not to think about it, it simply ups the ante and turns into physical pain.

My grief sits on my chest, squeezing my lungs and my heart. No matter how deeply I breathe, the grief will not abate. Oxygen only makes it grow and spill -- out of my mouth, out of my nose, out of my eyes. My grief flows freely.

I want nothing more than to hide my grief. Not so much to protect myself, but perhaps to protect those around me. Grief makes all around me feel so helpless. For there really is nothing to be done -- there are only so many words to be given, so many prayers to be uttered, so many sympathetic looks and hugs to be doled out. Every one of these little efforts provides a welcome, but momentary comfort. I long to reward each effort with signs of getting better, with signs of life, but I find myself unable to.

I fear my grief will bring rejection. It is an ugly fear, one that when voiced will bring great protests. How could one be rejected for their grief? And yet, it is not a fear unfounded. For grief does not bid drawing close. I will more often than not appear closed off, negative even. Mostly, I will appear a little lost, as if I am somewhere else rather than with you. For some, the rejection will come naturally, it will even feel justified. "It's too much," they will tell themselves, "She needs more help than I can afford to give." For others the rejection will feel more helpless, "I don't know what to do. Perhaps she needs to be by herself."

For the most part, no one rejection will come completely from one party. My friends will phase in and out, each taking turns walking me through my grief as they are able. For this I am grateful. I know the weight of my own grief and no one should have to bear it alone, not even me. But for some, my grief will be the catalyst that births a goodbye. I will never know whether to dismiss them, or release them, both feel equally painful and disappointing. Such is the reality of my grief.

My grief often confuses me. In many ways I feel like I have a choice not to grieve. Afterall, whatever has been lost, been broken, been damaged is not permanent. There is always an opportunity for redemption, no matter how seemingly impossible. So why not cheer up, chin up, move on with the full knowledge that whatever happens, happens for good? And yet, when I take a deep breath, it feels like stepping off a cliff. My heart, no matter what I tell it, remains stubbornly sad. It can not be happy. It wants to grieve.

I ponder about laying my grief at the foot of the cross. It seems to be the right thing to do, the solution, if you will, to receive comfort from God. But it occurs to me that I am quick to lay only the negative things at the foot of the cross -- my pain, my grief, my selfish desires. I am also quick to lay down hopes and dreams at the cross, but in a way that bargains, "God, if I lay it down, will you let me pick it up again?"

I wonder if I should instead be laying my whole self at the foot of the cross, no questions asked, no quid pro quo. Here I am, God, grief and all.

I wonder, what would happen then?

Mornings

There's that moment between sleeping and waking that is perhaps the purest moment of the day. In this moment, I am most vulnerable, I use this time to pray, cry out to God. In this moment, my heart is unfettered by fear, unfettered by doubts of whether my motives are pure, if what I'm praying for is indeed for the "greater good" or "what God wants for me." In this moment, I just talk to God like a child who believes that her Father listens.

The moment between sleeping and waking is also perhaps one of the cruelest moments of my day. Because in that moment, as my body rouses from sleep, my mind hasn't entered the reality of my day or, my situation. For that one moment, everything seems perfect, nothing seems broken, for that one moment it's like everything that once was still exists.

And then I fully awake, and reality sets in. My heart sinks. It's in that moment of great disappointment that I make my decision. Do I mourn, or do I pray?

These mornings, I do both. I don't quite wake up praising God, but rather, crying out for mercy. Mercy over my day, mercy over my body, mercy over my spirit. Most days, all I want is for God to ease the shallow breathing, racing heart, and back pain. Everything else I consider icing on the cake. Everything else, I can wait for Very Expensive Therapy to process through.

I know the Bible has lots to say about mornings. I can't imagine that the Bible greats like David or the prophets didn't wake up crying out for God as well. So rather than say "mercy, mercy, mercy" over and over again, I decided to let Scripture do the crying out for me. Here's my new favorite for the morning:

Lamentations (yeah, I know...) 3: 19-25
Remember my affliction and wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers and is bowed within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. "The Lord is my portion," says my soul, "Therefore I have hope in Him." The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, the the person who seeks Him.

Affliction? Check! Wandering, wormwood, bitterness? Check, check and check!

But more importantly, the writer of Lamentations is correct, the Lord's lovingkindesses never cease. He never fails to have compassion over me. I'm seeking and waiting... and He promises to be good to me.

Netflix Speaks

I logged on to Netflix this evening to see if there was a movie I could watch online. The genre recommendation that poped up on the top of the list?

"Dark Foregin Dramas"

Description, premonition, or did Netflix get the memo about my Dark Night of The Soul?

The Reading List

Just as I was starting this depression dip, I had a great urge to read. Read anything and everything. My mind wanted to be stretched. I craved the richness of language. I scoured the shelves for copies of The New Yorker, Newsweek and Time Magazine. I couldn't get enough time and space then. There was too much going on.

But now, here we are. All the time in the world. So here's what I've read or been reading:

Angry Conversations With God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir by Susan E. Isaacs
I found this purely by accident at Barnes and Nobel. Isaacs is a writer and performer who does improv and writes pieces for NPR. She's quirky and when I grow up, I want to be just like her. Tired of feeling abandoned and neglected by God, Isaacs decides to take God to couples counselling. Each chapter is chronicles her journey from Los Angeles, to New York, her search for God in the American church, and her search for love. I love this book because Susan begins her journey feeling exactly where I am now: completely and absolutely devastated and wondering if God is just out to get you. And, like me, she finds pat Christian answers completely useless. My favorite passage: "Be careful to whom you bare your grief, especially if it's someone churchy, like Martha. Because the Marthas of the world can't leave a question unanswered, a problem unsolved or a sorrow unhealed; they have to fix it....But then when your pain doesn't go away -- when it feels like your intestines are being ripped out and God has abandoned you, or worse: he's there but doesn't care -- when you realize that God himself has orchestrated your collapse -- then Martha will wish she hadn't come to be Jesus to you, because now she's stuck in some crappy midtown cafe listening to your horrifying thoughts about God -- the kind of thoughts she successfully dodges in the the midst of her everyday life. But you're not in everyday life. You're in hell."


The Shack by WM. Paul Young
Made me want to eat scones. Seriously. I must have missed the bandwagon when it came around, because I vaguely remember the book being all the rage. But it was recommended by a friend who read it in her time of depression. The main character, Mack, receives a mysterious note, apparently from God inviting him back to the shack where Mack's daughter was brutally murdered. Mack goes, and God shows up, in the form of an African American woman, a Jewish guy, and a small Asian Woman. (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). There's a lot of cooking and eating in this book and a reference to scones and pastries -- hence my craving for scones. But other than that, the book explores the nature of God, our misconceptions of Him, and His heart for humankind. It touched, in a very thought-provoking way, on topics everyone struggles with -- freewill, why a good God doesn't stop pain and suffering, forgiveness, expectation, disappointment, how we judge God. I liked it well enough, but it wasn't life changing.

A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
I'm still trying to get through this one. Written after the death of his wife, C.S. Lewis examines his own agony and sorrow over loss, death, and God's place in it. C.S. Lewis is heady, which was what I was craving. I love the rawness of it. C.S. Lewis, great Christian writer, wonders about God. It comforts me to know that even the best and brightest, especially the best and the brightest, wrestle deeply with God. I really identified with his opening line, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness. The yawning. I keep on swallowing." Erm.. depression, anyone?

Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies
I first heard a review of this book on NPR. Written by actress Isabel Gilies, most famous for her role on Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit as Detective Stabler's wife, it tells the story of how the marriage between Gillies and her poet husband Josiah falls apart after they move to small-town Ohio so Josiah can take a teaching job at Oberlin College. I know it sounds macabre to read something like this when you're not only depressed but your heart is broken. But strangely, it felt comforting. Sometimes you can't see things coming. Sometimes, life does indeed just suck and it's not your fault. This made me smile, "When your marriage falls apart, some very distinct things happen to you. One is you lose about twenty pounds very quickly. Ironically, even though you feel terrible, you start to look pretty." I didn't have a marriage that fell apart, but I think I might have lost a few pounds these past months. And yeah, I got to say, my boobs have gotten really big.

Where Is God When It Hurts by Phillip Yancey
Answer: Around. I know it sounds very flippant, but that's what it comes down to -- God's around. This is my second go-around trying to finish this book. Can't get through it. I also forget that the book is really focused on physical rather than emotional pain. But I've always loved Yancey and his writing style, so I'm going to go back to it and try and finish it this summer. Which brings me to...

Disappointment with God by Phillip Yancey
I just got this in the mail today -- it was a $3 purchase from Half.com. This one's about emotional pain, so I think I might find it more applicable to where I'm at.

The Bible by... erm... God?
Lest you think I'm not "going to the source." I am reading Scripture. The Psalms more specifically in both The Message translation and the New American Standard. I've never sought more scripture in my life, mostly in a bid to just calm my soul. My new favorite is Psalm 77 in The Message version. It begins like this: "I yell out to my God, I yell with all my might, I yell at the top of my lungs. He listens. I found myself in trouble and went looking for my Lord; my life was an open wound that wouldn't heal. When friends said, "Everything will turn out all right," I didn't believe a word they said." But don't worry, the Pslamist goes on to remember God and His goodness, pondering over what God has done. I like Psalm 77 because it's so real. I know God is real and I know God is good. Hell, I even know God is here. But because my wound is so open, I just need to yell a bit. I'm in pain, ok?

Fight!

I am so angry I want to scream. I am so angry I want to have a fight. An all out, yell at you, throw plates at you, shake you to the core kind of fight. I realize I have never, in my life, had this sort of a fight. I've always held that my ability to be calm and relatively controlled was a strength of mine. Except now it's turning to a weakness. It's turning into shut down and avoidance, and depression.

Even as I get angry, I wonder about permission to fight. Am I allowed to have a fight? Anger expressed in a journal is one thing. Anger expressed to God is one thing. Even an email expressing my anger is one thing. But an all out, face-to-face, you make me so angry I want to scream, say something you moron kind of anger? Is that what a Nice Christian Girl is allowed to do?

Christianese, misconceptions and lies echo through my head, bouncing back and forth. Be slow to anger. Take your anger to God. Feminine girls don't fight. Is it fair to be angry at someone? Did you misunderstand them? Aren't you just wrong?

I think about the futility of the fight. The One With Whom I Am Angry will likely not want to fight with me. It would be like fighting with a Dead Person. What's the point of a fight if the other person won't respond? Wouldn't that just make me more frustrated?

Apparently, the point is me. It's about standing up for myself. It's about hearing myself say these things. Say what makes me angry. The other person's response, supposedly doesn't matter. Except to me, it does. It matters. It matters a great deal. A non-response in the light of my great emotion would be humiliating. A non-response would mean I didn't matter.

Yes, that's broken of me. Yes, that's my issue. Yes, it's twisted and crazy. Yes, that's why I'm in Very Expensive Therapy. But it's a big deal to me, ok? If there's going to be a non-response I might as well just keep journaling and keep my pride. My false sense of pride. This fraudulent pride that is slowly killing me.

The Therapist sees my hesitancy but wants me to continue my "Anger Work." Keep writing those Angry Letters. It's supposedly energizing me and helping the depressive state. Some days, I wish I just opted for the drugs.

The Therapist offers me a gem as I'm walking out the door, "You think The One You Are Angry With is a dead person? Then dance on their grave."

If I Thought About It Carefully

There are always clues. No matter what they tell you, there are always signs, hints, and signals that something is about to happen. Unfortunately, hindsight is twenty-twenty. As The Therapist says, "You only have the information you have at the time, so we move forward with what we know."

If I thought about it very carefully, the first sign of this depression came in February. I was listening to NPR's Day to Day on the way to work. The show was being cancelled due to budget cuts and it was the last week it would be on the air. All week, segments centered around saying goodbye and endings.

On this particular morning, the person being interviewed was David Seltzer, the screenplay writer of Willy Wonker and The Chocolate Factory. In its first draft, Seltzer left the ending of the screenplay exactly as the book ended, with the word "Yippee!"

Mel Stuart, the director, calls Seltzer while he's on vacation in the middle of nowhere, saying, "Yippee? That's not a screenplay, that's not a movie!" As Seltzer tells it, the call completely takes him by surprise. Stuart is right in the middle of shooting the scene, the crew is waiting, it's costing the movie $30,000 an hour.

Seltzer takes a moment, and what emerges from his mouth becomes the classic ending for years to come. Willy Wonka and Charlie are going up in the spaceship. Willy announces to Charlie that the chocolate factory is now his. Then he says, "But Charlie, you do know what happens to the little boy that suddenly got everything he ever wanted, don't you?"

Fear comes across Charlie's face. "No, what?"

Willy says, "He lives happily ever after."

The host asks Seltzer to leave the listeners with a happy ending, of sorts. And this is what Seltzer says, "They all lived happily ever after. That's you, that's your crew, that's everybody who does all this good work in spite of this particular moment in time. You shall."

Listening to this man, a complete stranger to me, proclaim a happy ending with such surety and such compassion, I started to cry. I thought about my own life, my own desires for a happy ending, my own fears about what the possibility of one, and part of me just wanted to take his word for it. I was going to live happily ever after. In spite of this particular moment in time. I shall.

Looking back, I realize I was looking for hope, even back then. I knew some things -- I wasn't happy with where I was at with my work. I knew I had dread. I knew something was missing. What I didn't know was that in a few weeks many things would change and that the journey was actually beginning that morning, in my car, listening to a seemingly benign story on NPR.

Today, I think about living happily ever after. That's not a promise of the Christian walk, unfortunately. But there is something to be said about that surety, that declaration on your life. Maybe it's not happily ever after that I need said over my life. Maybe it's something a little simpler.

What that is, I'm not so sure.

Everything

Over the weekend, I have a vivid dream. In my dream, I am pregnant, and the doctors take the baby out of me and show it to me. It's a cute baby. It's six pounds now, they say, but it'll be eight. They put the baby back into me.

Later in the dream I bump into an old boyfriend who asks me how pregnant I am.

Three months, I reply.

He says, Well, it's not my baby.

Of course it's not your baby, I say, it's not mine either. I'm carrying it for my brother.

In the midst of sleeping and waking, the words Pregnant with Promise come to me. It seems so hopeful, until I realize that the baby I am carrying in the dream isn't mine.

It's not mine either. I'm carrying it for my brother.

I wake up wondering, whose stuff am I carrying around? And what the hell am I carrying?


The Therapist takes me through a breathing exercise on Monday. She asks me to identify as I breathe deeply (and cry), what parts of my body are in pain.

My shoulders, I say. She asks me to describe the pain or discomfort. I identify a heaviness.

What does it feel like, she asks.

Like I'm carrying something.


What do you feel like you're carrying?

Everything.


Everything. From fear, to worry, to frustration, to expectation, that on which I put on myself, that on which I perceive others put on me, that on which I think God has for me. Can I hear God? Do I hear him correctly? Am I doing the right thing? What is the right thing? Am I wrong? Am I petulant? Am I stubborn? What do I want? What does God want? The Therapist writes all this down on a legal pad.

How does it make you feel when I say, you don't have to carry this on your own?

I take a deep breath, my heart squeezes, tears start to flow.


You don't have to carry this on your own.

What do I feel? Fear. Anticipation. Sorrow.


After the exercise, The Therapist and I do a little processing.


That's alot, she says to me.


Yeah, I get that, I reply, sniffling, That's why I'm here.

You seem like a really conscientious person who just wants to do the right thing. There is a lot here to go over.

My voice begins to rise, I start to talk with my hands. You know what's stressing me out? The thought of waking up, every day, knowing that it's going to be like this. That I can't breathe and that I'm going to be anxious. Just that thought that I'm going to be like this for the rest of the summer makes me want to lie in bed and not get up. And we only have an hour and I always want to make sure we use it well.

The Therapist ponders. Sounds like you're just getting by, and a week is too long to wait, and an hour isn't enough time.

Something like that, I concede.

Would you consider coming twice a week?

Therapy, twice a week. I laugh. And then I start to cry.