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I am a Follower in hell, and I have no interest in false, hollow or elementary cooings about Jesus. This is not a blog for diaper wearers or the spiritually sensitive. For those who wish to be goochy-gooed about Jesus, there are plenty of those types of blogs elsewhere in pattycake cyberworld.
6 comments:
felt lead poisoning
Did you move to Bismark? What's with this oneliner crap...You can't just be all longwinded and then drop that bomb. You defied my expectations. I feel so betrayed. Judas Iscariut Hogwallup. How dare you interrupt the flow of my day by not providing me with much needed literary validation and further fail to provide me with food for thought other than this ambiguous bullshit that I have to now attempt to unravel. Hope all is well, just had to pick on ya!
I have retreated so far back in my cave I haven't wanted to see anyone, say anything or have any type of interaction with the world whatsoever.
Damn this blogger which emails me when something is posted, and damn your perfectly worded post which made me laugh and peek my head out of this shithole for thirty seconds.
New wounds. New layers. Fresh hatred. Indescribable despair.
These are despicably weak words to describe the last five days...
And no, that's not a 'cry for help' or pity-party bullshit--I grew up with a guilt-trip minded parent, so I go as fast and far as I can away from that shit.
It is simply transparency.
I've fallen under the weight of this cross, and there is absolutley zero wherewithal to do, move, rise or do anything right now.
Okay, I'll humor you and tell you what I almost posted yesterday. Here's what the post would have been;
"Job 3. Job 3! Job 3!! Job fucking 3!!!!"
Blessings and prosperity to everyone.
Hey man, Guilt is my choice and you can't make me feel guilty. In my universe, I am the queen and no-one "makes me feel" anything without my signature on the deal. I can appreciate that "guilty parental" crap being Italian. I call my family the guilt economy and it is higher than the Dow Jones by far.
In my perception, retreating is far worse than trying to pass on guilt. You are depriving the brethren of opportunities to serve in the capacity we are created to. Would you refuse to allow your legs to stand for fear of overwhelming them?!!!!! I can understand the need to retreat in times of great pain. That is typical male behavior. But you can not stay in that place if you wish to be a healthy conduit of peace for yourself and those around you.
One of the things you need to do is stop being so self-conscious about your needs and expressing them. If you were throwing a pity party it is my choice to RSVP. I can stay home and eat cake and let ya suffer if I feel like it. So don't do anyone any favors by isolating. Grief is supposed to be a shared burden. It is carried, mutually, by a band of brothers and sisters. That is scriptural. Your pain can and should only be looked upon as an opportunity to clothe Jesus when he is naked, feed him when he is hungry. And if you resent interdependence, are you better than a Christ that would require us to clothe him and feed him?
I know you are in pain, but I challenge people, pain not withstanding. This is no pity party. It is a time to grieve. You will get through it. You are in my prayers.
And, yes, you are right. I am a pain in the ass. But I think I am taking the leading of the spirit on this. or I'm just a big meany picking on while you feel like complete shit. But I'll leave that to you to figure out.
Essentially my vocabulary the last five days has been reduced to literally MF and GD, so I thought "why just blog nothing but MF and GD?"
When the pain goes up to this level I find MUCH solace in going ALL the way back in the cave. That means no one is there but Jesus.
It doesn't get this way often, but it has been these past days. I have also gone through three previous "valleys of death" in life alone, and quite honestly I relished them.
Last spring & summer ('05) was another valley, unlike any of the others, and I said "okay, I'll concede and join a small/cell group at church. I'll give the Body a shot."
That was very therapeutic for about 5-6 months, then when new layers of anguish started coming on early this year (and since), things drastically went south.
The folks in the group are good people, they have good hearts, and they mean well. I like them all. I found myself, though, leaving our gatherings getting in car and screaming "you just don't fucking get it!"
It was then I asked God if He wanted me to be an emotional guinea pig just so I wasn't "forsaking the assembling of yourselves together".
He didn't answer, and I envisioned Him giving me the silent, eyebrows-raised-shoulders-shrugged-palms-opened look. It was either that or His head was buried in the palm of His hand as He silently swayed His head from side to side. Either way He said nothing.
I think a couple of months ago I posted about that, and mentioned "don't give what is sacred to the dogs, don't cast your pearls before swine".
Again, I'm not literally calling these folks dogs or swine. They are good people, in a church who has more sincere compassion than most I've ever been in.
The kicker is despite their honest and compassionate hearts they are unfortunately being influenced by something much bigger than what resides just within that particular brick & mortar building.
It's all the pseudo-Gospels which I am painfully aware of.
I wish I had simply read about them in a book.
By God's pen, though, I am instead finding out about them in a way that doesn't lead to my casual acknowledgement of their existence, or make them easy to brush aside, or easily ignore them so I can instead "focus on the Cross" (boy, I've got a post forthcoming on that one. Katy bar the door.)
So anyway, in my usual drift off the topic self...
I've yet to on this blog talk about some things from my past, like the liberation from the guilt trips.
After growing up not knowing anything but seeing guilt used as the ultimate trump card to rule out all reasoning and reality, and never to that knowing life to be any different, man was that a day. I'll never forget it.
Something deep inside had given me an awkward feeling about it, intrinsically knowing it wasn't good, but it was all I knew or saw.
What you said about "no one can make me guilty without my signature...or my RSVP", right on the mark, baby.
That's why I bristle at guilt trips being slung my way, and that's why I NEVER use guilt to attempt to induce anything.
I remember the helpless, 'can't put a finger on this but something ain't right' thoughts I had for the first sixteen years of my life, and I'll be effing damned if I'm going to contribute to those thoughts/emotions/feelings going on in anyone else on this earth.
Being transparent, instead of manipulative, goes far beyond honesty. It also shows and gives dignity to the other person--as opposed to, let's be honest, treating them like a whore.
And that's one of the things I love about Jesus, and how opposite the world He is.
I absorb and revel the dignity He shows the bums, the outcasts, the sinners, the money-mongers, the crooked, the puke of life. And then on the heels of that He tears those who "know God" a new asshole.
Gosh, I wish time permitted right now to get into more of your post. So much in it that sparks thoughts: I DON'T look at "fellowship" the same as most humans, most Followers. I am perfectly okay with being an island (outside of my job, of course, which mandates interaction). Yes this retreat has been due to extreme pain. No, I've never thought of me as being the naked one for others to clothe, and no it's never even crossed my mind along that line that somehow in that I trump Jesus. GUFFAW!!!!!!!
I'm gun shy on being an open book when the pain is like this. In my view, when I'm the one with the problems I don't need to rain on anyone else's parade. Why piss on everyone else's blessed life with my shit? I'm not that selfish. To do that WOULD be to reek of narcissism: "Oh, let me interrupt your life so I can tell you about my shit." No thanks.
When it gets like this, Jesus alone in the back recesses of my cave, not saying a word but just hangin' there with me, works for me. There's no eclecticism in it, actually quite the opposite. It's not "no one else understands", rather it's "I'm a fucking Tasmanian Devil of shit right now, so let's not render that to anyone else."
You can't piss on anyone else's life with your shit though. That's just you turning the guilt you were taught in on yourself. We all are fucked up. You being transparent gives everyone else in the room the freedom to get real too. They may recoil (and that's what I think you are really afraid of). But the truth shall set you free. Not everyone liking the truth, not the truth shall give you warm cushy lovey feelings. The truth will make you free.
It's like I said on my blog, I'm not here to make you comfortable. I will talk about sexual abuse, I will talk abou the violence I saw, I will talk about general neglect. I will talk about disappointment with myself and I really don't give a shit how you or anyone else responds to it. Love me, hate me, think I'm a freakin' heretic, lunatic, etc. The truth will set me free and I have lived too long in a cage to be willing to comprimise my freedom for the sake of not "shitting on people's lives" I don't have a right to decide ahead of time how my stuff will be perceived and how God can use my pain for his purposes to bless others.
The problem with the gritty, yucky, nasty truth of life is that there are those that are uncomfortable with it and so they prefer to avoid it and if they see you confront your demons very publicly they resent it, because ?how dare you not repress your emotions like I do" and they harbor all kinds of resentful crap because they don't accept the truth and therefore do not recieve the freedom. But it is not God's will for us to let the needs and the perceptions of others to govern our behavior.
You want to be in your freaking cave with Jesus, scream piss moan whine yell, kick punch do what you gotta do to deal with your shit if that's what you think you need right now. But realize that's a temporary fix and eventually Jesus is going to press you out of hiding. No cave, No grave, can hold him. Amen
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