That's what I read today. I read it and waited for that rush, that wave, that washing of hope, joy, peace. I know that cleansing. I feel it often. I seek and thirst for a Word from God on a daily basis. It IS what sustains me. I waited. But today it didn't come. I read that verse and I read Psalm 23, and I waited. I waited for that rush, that wave, that washing of hope, joy, peace. I waited.
Today it didn't come.
Less than a week ago, I felt so much better - body, mind and soul. But then, I was on progesterone three times per day. I've been off since Friday, in anticipation of my cancer screening this afternoon. No artificial hormones or supplements have been allowed to touch my bloodstream for three days now. It seems like an eternity.
Sometimes I curse my mother for birthing me. Sometimes I curse my mother for the situation she put me in. Sometimes I curse myself.
I've never been normal, hormonally. I never really had a chance. From womb to tween, the most formative years, my stress was always at maximum level. I never really had a chance. My doctor and dear friend has said that my first two children are simply a miracle of God, and nothing short - I should never have been able to sustain them on such low progesterone. Baby #3 was a miracle in her own way, but very planned. Very artificially sustained. A joy. A blessing. A gift. I feel eternal debt and gratefulness. Baby #4 was a different kind of miracle. By then we knew the circumstances. We saved him just in time. Yes. We saved him just in time.
This isn't only my fault.
My mother chose drugs over me. My mother chose sex over me. My mother chose her gods over me. She should have been choosing me. But she didn't. She chose for me a life of imbalance and a life of fighting and a life of clinging with white knuckles. She chose a life that wired me on the inside of me and the inside of her. She took my choice, and gave to me a daily battle for all of my life. There are times when I know and fully understand the peace of God...but if I'm not helped along with the artificial crutches, it is so much more difficult. It is a struggle, a grasping, a clawing, a weeping, a gnashing of teeth, a crying out in agony. It is a hunger for something my body rightfully desires. Something natural that was stolen from me.
The anxiety will win if I'm not balanced. I am unbalanced today, and I feel that unbalance in the depths of my soul; it's an aching from within my toes and up my tense, tense back and neck and shoulders and throat and tight, aching chest and pounding, pounding head. I didn't take care of myself this time around. I let myself go. I didn't do. I didn't trust. I didn't hope. I didn't pray. It IS my fault.
I let the ingrained, birthed, carefully nurtured anxiety win over. So now...screening. I did this. I made a choice. I chose to turn my back on joy. I beckoned Cancer, and maybe she willingly came, and maybe she didn't, and maybe I begged her even, and if she did obey, I soon will see.
Most days seem so long, and I'm not quite sure where to begin. Wandering aimlessly from one task to the next twenty-five. I stare. I wonder. I lament. I worry. I stress and stress and stress and stress and stress. And then maybe cry. If it's a good day. If it's a day for releasing, I cry. If it's a day that ends with profound peace and joy and hope and knowing and believing and loving...I will cry. And then I will choose joy. I will push through all of this messiness and the uncertainty and the not knowing and the failing and the criticism in my own head that hates me if I'm not so very careful. If I'm listening to lies instead of believing Truth.
I plan to cry tonight. I plan to seek joy and push past this. Not tomorrow, but tonight, I will make the choice. The choice of Joy.
I read a poem by Ann Voskamp, who wrote "One Thousand Gifts - A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are." It's how I feel. She says it perfectly. I think, perhaps, she is the most kindred person I've never met.
It only seems canned,
like that dented tin you pull
off the markdown shelf,
this life
tucking in cotton sheets, chopping
onions,
clipping socks to the line with wooden
pins
grooved grey by sun and wind and
spinning earth —
and there are days, the drowsy ones,
that I blithely buy it,
pay my dollar ninety nine and think
that none of this is shockingly cosmic,
not a quest, not one wild crusade
for
the holy grail that has to be found
before
time winds down, pops a spring,
ceases here.
Really what I keep doing is searching the shelves for grace elsewhere,
for some of that good stuff
somewhere else,
that a smiling salesperson is
handing out for free
at the end of aisle six,
samples of that elusive potion of
God and joy,
something filling for that quicksand
in the pit
of my stomach that never knows
enough.
But somewhere between scratching
crusted burnt rice off
the bottom of the saucepan, and
wiping down child
burning up with a fever in her
bones,
I find Someone
at a half past six
handing out now, dented and dinged
up,
handing now out as grace,
that it’s all grace, this too,
and I’m not sure if I buy it.
But when I lay out my palm,
lay it right flat out, the
palm, me, the will,
to take, give thanks, eat even this,
in the dented moment that presses
into my open hand
I feel the pulse of God.
