Burdened
I am sad today. My 15 mo. old had to watch me cry for about a half hour. She poked my eyes like something was wrong with them. I am overwhelmed with a personal family crisis, I wrote about before here. I don't even know how to pray. To me, illness of a saint is far less grievous than the destruction wrought by the disease of sin. There is a deep, but in some ways sweet sadness of loosing a loved one who was virtuous. These is absolutely no ledge of sweetness for me to tiptoe on as I watch sin rot away my sister's life and body. I would prefer to think of it as a mental illness than despair over her own choices.
I am not very coherent, for I am grieving. Again, all I can picture for prayer are the gospels when someone would run up to Jesus begging, please Lord, my daughter, my sister, my love is ill. Please, come. I know that one touch from your hand could heal her. Thus, the Lord seems short handed to me today. I have labored in prayer as well as actively with my sister for at 10 years. I have labored with the perpetual crisis of my family all my life. I am tired. I have indeed seen some of the Lord's redemption in my family. I am a living miracle in my own opinion. And I have seen the Lord work with my parents and grandmother and other sister. But today the tragedy seems greater than the small victories I have witnessed and my heart aches.
Ah, me of little faith. I keep debating free will and election in my head. Is she walking a living death because she has chosen to and I must await, despairing that she may never "choose" to hear the Lord's call? Or is God totally sovereign and I must trust His time and plan? I know she is driven by emptiness within her into all sorts of compulsive "self-medications". (Or am I just deceived by our therapeutic culture?) So I pray for the Lord to please, go and touch her, fill her, make her well. And still I wait. And I can't sit around and try to figure out why. Here I agree with Chesterton that reason will make me mad, but the art of faith, the hope of glory, will keep me not only sane and functioning, but healthy and absurdly, quietly joyful in the midst of sorrow.
Here is that Chesterton quote for those of you who have not had the true pleasure of reading Orthodoxy.
There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable . . . . Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go man; but chess players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I only say this danger lies in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality . . .
Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything is a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into that heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. . . . The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. His mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions.
3 Comments:
At 7/28/2005 8:12 AM,
Anonymous said…
thank you for sharing a part of your grief with us. i agree that the death of a godly person is so much easier to grieve than something ongoing like you have to deal with. i guess that is what scripture refers to when it speaks of "travailing" (prob. KJV) in prayer over these 10, 20 or more year situations in our lives.
i remember reading elisabeth eliot's book on grief years ago (the title comletely escapes me now) and practically the first thing she hit me with was God's sovereignty.(many aspects in reference to grief.) it really blew me away! that was in the 70's when NO one was talking about that especially in a book on grief! it was VERY helpful. i had to listen. this was a woman who had been widowed twice, knew her subject matter well and better yet, knew how to write well.
in the last few yrs. i also read (and have been comforted by the fact) that we must always balance all of God's attributes when we look at one of them. we can't look at one in a vacuum. His sovereignty must be balanced with his love for us that is completely self-sacrificing...but not to the exclusion of his perfect justice and holiness and on down the line. we don't ever see a human version of this so it is hard to imagine how a loving God can allow something (for ex.) that could cause us so much pain...until years down the road when we see an area of character that it grew in us that we KNOW would never have been there w/o that pain.
i see it all the time in people in the churches we serve. when they are in the middle of suffering, they don't see the changes but those around them who are praying for them and loving them, do. that is the wonderful thing about God's economy. He uses suffering to change us and many others in the life of the person causing it and sometimes down the road, He even changes them. we can sit and worry about whether they are chosen or not, but that is not our responsibility or even our job description. our responsibility is to pray for them, love them and be the people God wants us to be in relation to them and pray for God to open their blind eyes. we also pray that He will bring other christians into their lives and start/continue the process of drawing them to Himself. those tears do not go to waste! only God knows what is truly happening in her heart. meanwhile, you are learning endurance, patience, trust in your heavenly Father and much, much more.
i love that beautiful passage in Hebrews 4:14-16 where it talks about Jesus our High Priest, b/c he became human, is One who can sympathize with our weaknesses and temptations. (summary) "Let us then draw near to the THRONE OF GRACE, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time need."
At 7/28/2005 3:48 PM,
texashimalaya said…
Marla, Monika, Martha - Thank you so much for your encouragement. It does bless me and help me have greater faith. I have definately seen that I am much softened by all this. Naturally, I am a pretty stoic person.
At 8/03/2005 2:01 PM,
Unknown said…
Annie, my wife and I have struggled with a sister (hers) who's been immersed in substance abuse for nearly 15 years. She did fairly well after the birth of her first child, she held it together at one level or another for around 7-8 years; then relapsed hard, nearly causing her children to be removed from her and her husband's home. They have both struggled with substance abuse, so it has been a very difficult relationship. I think that they are still married, but we don't hear much from them even though they chose to designate us as 'Godparents' to both of their children.
My wife Laurie has found comfort in a personal understanding that the 'victory' spoken of in scripture does not necessarily reflect something that's going to be accomplished in the span of this lifetime. My own theolgoy of substance abuse is weak, incomplete and full of holes, even thought I worked as an Addictions Counselor for some time. My own father was an alcoholic and ultimately committed suicide. In the thirty years since then I've come up with no 'hard' and 'fast' answers, other than to trust that God's mercy, grace and sovereignty will play out in the life of the one you love so much...and seem to be losing.
Our love and prayers are with you...
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