Tears and Silent Screams

I'm having a bad day. It's Wednesday, my day off when I am supposed to be enjoying a break from the stress of work.  The sun is shining brightly, the wind died down from yesterday, and it's a beautiful autumn day, my favorite season of the year. And yet...!

These feelings began to slowly creep into my life about three weeks ago, but no one sees the sadness behind the laughter and enthusiasm when I'm playing "the game" each day. I should have chosen comedy or acting as my career, as I surely can hide behind a lie. I used to tell myself that I wasn't a depressed person, I was always so happy as I bounced through each day. I was always busy doing something for everyone else, concerned only that my family had what they needed., or trying to cheer someone else up who was feeling down and discouraged in life. I can quote scripture better than a preacher. I should be able to spout it off, because I memorized it when I was young, and I have trusted in the words my entire life holding onto my faith even when I saw no evidence of anything changing. I still do that. I try to hang on, but the truth is I am going through one of the hardest trials of my life. It's not one thing, it is several coming all at once at record speed. So when I don't have structure in my day I fall apart easily. It only takes one small thing to trigger it, and I am a helpless mess.

So what can I do to "help myself" on these melt down days? I have to chuckle as this is the same crap I ask my clients. Senseless, irrelevant questions that signify nothing! Who comes up with this stuff anyway?! Plus as I said before I know the scriptures. I can read them, acknowledge the truth, but really sometimes it's not what I need. I think the best thing for me when the intensity of my feelings try to crush the life out of me sending me spiraling downwards into the black abyss is to hop into my car with my bike strapped on and get as far away from everyone as I possibly can go in a day. The noise emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually is deafening, and I realize that what I need is only the sound of the still, small voice heard softly in spite of the tormenting sounds around me. Some music soothes, but I need His voice. So in spite of the external and internal voices or this shrill shrieking noise I hear continuously in my ear piercing my brain I can find peace...alone...with Him.

Some information was shared with me yesterday, actually several bits of information including e-mails, that I really did not need to finish me off. The family information was so distressing as it involved abuse to a young child - my young child at the time - another secret that I just couldn't cope with, the agonizing question of "Why didn't I know this happened?" And the obvious response still does not remove the horror of yet another encounter with evil and the struggle to overcome. I fully understand why children do not tell, as I did not tell. Besides which if you tell you may be called a liar to protect the pervert who attacks the innocent one. To learn that someone had been told, but in fact was called a liar, consequently I was not told, does not help. It makes it worse. It makes me angry all over again, and I try so hard not to be angry. I feel as if I failed at the most important job I will ever have - motherhood. And in my mind I hear the words over and over spoken to me..."You don't know what I've done." I have tried to interpret the meaning of those words spoken to me in my adult life by another so many times, or to understand why a message written on the back of a letter I penned, written in a handwriting I know but cannot remember, had a message "Keep this to remember me." There are so many things I have blocked out, and suddenly I am remembering or finding out. It is tormenting, and yet I cling to the only hope I have...Jesus.

I bought a movie a few weeks ago called "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." It is an excellent expose of the lives of senior adults trying to rekindle their lives when everyone thinks their lives are over after a certain age. Oh how I fight that mentality each day of my life dealing with the precious people I encounter on a daily basis. Age should not be a detriment to enjoying and living life to the fullest. Regardless of whether you are healthy or not. I can say that, because I am living my life in spite of everything that tries to knock me down or tempt me to take a gun and blow my brains out. Even the more subtle attack by satan to have me fall asleep at the wheel in my travels. It hasn't worked, because I am grasping hold to Jesus even if it is finger tip to finger tip, and I am hanging over the edge of a crevice. He holds me and bears me up physically and spiritually.

In the movie one of the characters, Evelyn, writes a daily blog. Sound familiar? She wrote on Day 51 that "The only real failure is the failure to try. And the measure of success is how we cope with disappointments, as we always must. We do our best, nothing else matters." The events of each person's life in the movies was being challenged in one shape or form, yet in each instance life continued and was strengthened by the resolve.

I don't know why I am sharing all of this, as I will more than likely be quoted scripture by the well-meaning saint or the opposite effect of condemnation. No me importa. It has to be so in order to develop a thicker hide (so to speak spiritually) or to walk more closely with Jesus. I shouldn't care what anyone thinks or says really. I've certainly weathered several of those storms. I am honest about who I am and that I struggle with some pretty serious stuff. There is no shame in that, and who knows it may help someone else who is struggling yet is afraid to dare speak. I am brave enough to say it for all of us, and we will succeed, and we are not failures. We will "cope with disappointments, as we always must."