Cancer and the Incarnation

I didn't do anything different today. I was just praying for someone who has cancer. And then the tears started. Having long been jaded that god is willing to perform miracles, I sobbed, "Lord, I have a mustard seed of faith; please, please perform a miracle and heal him."

Then later I replayed my Georgia mama's final, laborious, horrible breath (due to cancer). I hadn't witnessed it but was told about it in great detail and can barely bear to imagine it.

I am coming to terms with mystery, particularly divine mystery. You know the answer I got from my prayer earlier today? Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Like trying to move the Great Wall of China.

I googled the etymology of "mystery" and it surprisingly had a lot of religious influence as being some thing hidden my god.

I used to hate god for being mysterious, but now I think he might be doing the hiding for our own good. I'm slowly warming up to the idea that god might actually, in fact be good.

I don't understand, but in the spirit of exhaustion and Advent, I listened to a local church's Christmas album, well, one song in particular, that seemed to budge the Great Wall of China.

Here is the link to Earth & Stone by Alex Priore sung by TJ Lents:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah09d1ED6Cw

I don't understand much about the harder parts of existence on planet earth, but the Christmas story, the Incarnation seems to meet me and say, "That's okay."

In loving memory of Lynette Washington 

What It's Like To Have A Manic Episode

My breathing is slow and shallow. I am trying not to have a panic attack. I forgot to take my morning meds and that's a big no-no in the world of big pharma. I didn't notice it til I dropped my last friend off. This pit in my stomach. I got home and curled up into a ball under my duvet. Oh, did I mention my new necklace got a lot of compliments today? It made me feel nice, not good, but nice. Anyways, I knew it was time for the psychosis playlist (I didn't make it explicitly for psychosis but it really helps). I entitled it Slavic with Oriental Influence because that's what it mostly is with some Debussy thrown in there;). I for sure over-romanticize Trans-Siberia, but when I listen to Russian composers I can't help but imagine myself as Anastasia Romanov escaping imperial overthrow via the Trans-Siberian Railway. It helps a little. I was just with some of my very best friends talking louder and faster than usual. Now I'm just trying to move breath between the air and my lungs. I am scared. I called my friend to pray over me. I described it like feeling like Alice in Wonderland: everything was shrinking or I was getting larger or maybe both. Tears well in my eyes but I don't let them stay there long because I know if I let one fall they will never stop.

Scars

I don't know how I had gotten to that point. The only warning sign I knew for sure was that I had wanted a beer once we got home from my friend's wisdom teeth surgery at a military facility.

I had the surgery at a military facility. As I waited and waited, the sight of surgeons confidently striding about later sent me into vivid flashbacks of getting called back by my own surgeon to go over the details of my highly-invasive Whipple procedure... the one that would change everything.

I called my dad as I waited in line to pick up my friend's meds at the pharmacy across the road. He said I sounded nervous, anxious. "Huh? I'm fine!" I chirped. Little did I know that with each passing set of fatigues, I was coming closer and closer to an encounter with my PTSD.

My dictionary app defines a scar, firstly, as: a mark left by a healed wound, sore, or burn. But it defines it, secondly, as: a lasting aftereffect of trouble, esp. a lasting psychological injury resulting from suffering or trauma. Bingo.

That night, as I spiraled into a drunken stupor to escape the pain, I did remember my scar hurting in the waiting room. A counselor once told me that our bodies hold memories, too. Maybe my body knew this was a bad situation before my brain.

I hadn't gotten drunk in months. I had my drinking firmly under control (praise God). But this, this was too much.

Physical scars fade, but they can still hurt. What if it's the same with emotional, psychological scars. We think we're better but we end up tearing open the old wound. Besides flashbacks, I get nightmares that my nine-inch scar is wide open and I feel the pain of trying to hold my stomach together.

I asked my counselor if I would ever be a fully functional, contributing member of society with all that's fucked up in me. She said she didn't know.

Tragedies, "extreme" cases

I just copied John 1:1-14 in the NIV to "High and Dry" by Radiohead. It was subconscious and coincidental that I did the exact same thing in high school calculus when my first boyfriend broke up with me.

I remember that first month of college at Virginia Tech reading the passage aloud alone in my dorm room.

And now I did it again.

This week, I went to a highly recommended counseling association and they declined me because my case was too "extreme." I froze when the sweet counselor shuffled me out of her office. I told one of my friends today and she said she probably would have cried if that had happened to her. But I guess I'm used to it? Used to being different. As a quote Enneagram Four, some would say I thrive in situations like these. But mostly it just made me sad.

Sad that I was rejected because of a past I had no control over. Sad because of the pasts, presents, and futures that have, are, and will happen to people. Tragedies, "extreme" cases.

Anxiety

"In the sickness of his agony, the will of Jesus arises

perfect at last and of itself, unsupported now, declares--

a naked consciousness of misery hung in the waste

darkness of the universe--declares for God, in defiance

of pain, of death, of apathy, of self, of negation, of 

the blackness within and around it; calls aloud upon 

the vanished God."

George Macdonald

These words always chill me. I once had an experience, while deeply, clinically depressed of laying in an empty church chapel and crying out to God that I would be able to feel anything, even pain, because the depression had left me bereft of feeling. I cried out, I cried; nothing. I felt absolutely abandoned. The difference between my hour of great grief and his is that Jesus was truly forsaken by the Living God while I had his Spirit living inside of me and just couldn't "feel" him in that moment because my brain is a little screwy.

Currently, I'm sit-laying in my bed, surrounded by a dozen books that I've already read but bring me comfort in my anxiety. On a surprising and hopeful note: I left my room to go downstairs to the kitchen right off my room to get the dinner my dad made me. It lies uneaten, but still a victory in my book.

What is not a victory is that I practically live in my bed in PJs due to my anxiety. I'm not kidding. I rarely leave my house or change into normal people clothes. Only Starbucks and alcohol/dancing/psychic escapism get me to leave, occasionally a health appointment like a PET scan, but that's it.

Tonight was one of my best friend's birthday's about 40 minutes away in Norfolk. I had tried to drive to see her earlier in the week on her actual birthday to give her her gift but touched my car door handle and immediately walked inside, defeated. 'Maybe this night will be different,' I thought. Nope. I sunk deeper into my bed beneath the books that I've read a thousand times. Beneath caffeine, klonopin, and adderall: my crutches. I stare at the beautifully wrapped gift (I am an Enneagram 4, you know ;)) and am deeply saddened by my inability to celebrate my friend. But, on a deeper level, that my mental illnesses has won the day again. I thought Bipolar I, psychosis, and PTSD were enough to keep me busy for a lifetime, but throw in anxiety and it's a strikeout.

Karl Barth writes, "We must realize that all the paths of life upon which we walk are the same...in that they all lead to the edge of the precipice, We cannot bridge this precipice but its bridging has been made manifest in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Who would partake of the resurrection must first have seen this chasm, have discovered the pit. And life is not easy; on the contrary, it becomes deadly earnest and difficult whenever the word 'resurrection' resounds. Resurrection proclaims true freedom to us and lets us painfully discovery our personal chains [something I am thankful to all my health issues for] It tells us that the one and only refuge is God." Threatened By Resurrection.

In concert, but slightly less morbid, German theologian (and my favorite theologian-I would recommend his book The Crucified God) Jurgen Moltmann writes, "Is there an answer to the question why God forsook him [Christ]? Is there any answer to the agonizing questionings of disappointment and death: 'My God, Why? Why...?' A real answer to this question cannot be a theoretical answer beginning with the word 'Because.' It has to be a practical answer. An experience of this kind can only be answered by another experience, not by an explanation. A reality like this can be answered only by another reality. It is the answer of resurrection...Our disappointments, our loneliness, and our defeats do not separate us from him; they draw us more deeply into communion with him. And with the final unanswered question, 'Why, my God, why?' we join in his death cry and await with him the resurrection." Prisoner of Hope 

I may be paralyzed beyond rationality by some part of my brain going wonky (maybe it's the PTSD?), but I certainly can worship, pray to, and lean on God right from the edge of the precipice-my bed. 

Anxiety for no reason is not fun and is especially frustrating due to the lack of origin to blame it on. I truly am sorry if any of this applies to you.

But I find my only hope in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I pray you could, too.

"Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

Christ will come again."

Advent

My favorite liturgical season is Advent. Concurrently, my favorite natural season is Winter.

I think there is one reason for my preferences: hope. Yes, I love carols and gifts and FAMILY, just as much as the next person. But I am so wretched that getting an opportunity to actively wait for the arrival of my salvation each year makes me shed more than a single tear. To contemplate the wonder of God becoming a human to suffer an excruciating death and then raise again, well, that could take me all of eternity to contemplate.

It's currently rainy and windy from Hurricane Dorian (9/6/19) in Southeastern Virginia which seems the perfect unofficial way to begin this journey of active waiting on the newborn King. We are all so full of pain and hurt. Some of us would claim that that's not the case, but, in my short 24 years, I've never met a person who wasn't nursing some type, some degree of a wound. Wretched men that we are! Who will save us from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (ref. Romans 7:24, 25).

One of my favorite, if not my favorite passage of Scripture, is Luke 7:36-50-the story of the woman of the streets (my favorite name for her since an old mentor called me a woman of the streets once as an insult... solidarity, y'all) anointing Jesus' feet and washing them with her tears and hair. Her heart was prepared to meet Jesus, clearly, because of her actions towards him. They were right.

Lord, help me await your Advent actively. Prepare my heart to meet you with my costliest spikenard in an alabaster jar, all I have to give.

Love,
Anna

"Future Days" (You Came Deep As Any Ocean)

I'm sitting here at 5am listening to "Future Days" by Eddie Vedder on repeat. I'm wearing my favorite hat-the purple one with the hot pink flower..my second mom Mrs. Amy got it for me in the Sea-Tac airport after she noticed that I just had to have it. I can see the array of purple flowers my sweet dad bought me after I was praying in my room and wanted a symbol of the royalty of Christ (the color purple). I'd been praying against persisting sleep paralysis and nightmares and all of a sudden just knew I needed purple flowers.

Anyways, I'm also writing this from my new computer; I'd had the last one for 8 years prior to this so my fingers are just getting used to the different spacing of keys. I had a green case on the other one that I bought at the VT bookstore.. I wrote most of my blog posts on that computer. Kinda bittersweet.

Last night I also listened to this song on repeat and cried myself to sleep. I do that a lot when I think about the cancer... watch or listen to things over and over again. I guess if I can control it, I want stability. Because when you're told you have cancer, all autonomy goes out the window. I'm reminded during my now only yearly PET scan. I'm reminded when I have to take tums just to drink a glass of water and not puke it up (yeah, Whipple surgeries are no fucking joke).

Cancer will always be a part of my story. Pain, immense pain, will always be part of my story. But, irrevocably, so will God. Gosh, I just started crying again, what a wimp lol.

As I listen to "Future Days", I always imagine Jesus and I taking turns singing the appropriate parts. Here are the lyrics:

"If I ever were to lose you
I'd surely lose myself
Everything I have found here
I've not found by myself
Try and sometimes you'll succeed
To make this man of me
All of my stolen missing parts
I've no need for anymore

I believe
And I believe 'cause I can see
Our future days
Days of you and me

Back when I was feeling broken
I focused on a prayer
You came deep as the ocean
It's something something out there here
All the complexities and games
No one wins, but somehow, they still play
All the missing crooked hearts
They may die, but in us they live on

I believe
And I believe 'cause I can see
Our future days
Days of you and me

When hurricanes and cyclones rage
When wind turned dirt to dust
When floods they came or tides they raised ever
Closer became us

All the promises at sundown
I meant them like the rest
All the demons used to come around
I'm grateful now they've left"

My favorite line to sing to Jesus is this one, "Back when I was feeling broken / I focused on a prayer / You came deep as any ocean".

He is truly the one my heart desires and through cancer, through pain, and I have found him.

Perhaps he's writing a new song over your journey through the exilic land of hurt. Maybe you could let him.

Much love,

Anna