The one in which she collapses

Tonight I am haunted by a song from way back in the whenevers.

The Catholics have a saying (or so I'm told).

"Give us a child until the age of seven......"

(I'm not sure of the rest so I'll leave it there.)

I grew up in the Pentecostal church. It's pretty much all I knew church to be, even though we had a three year stint in the Presbyterian/Uniting church in the mid- 70 ' s. I liked those years best. Good people, uncomplicated, not scary.

But my early, formative years were with the Pentes,  as were my teens...and the rest.

Tonight I have a song going around and around in my head that is, in fact, doing my head in.

I've found a new way of living
I've found a new life divine
I have the fruit of the spirit
Abiding, abiding in the vine.
Abiding in the vine
Abiding in the vine
Love, joy, health peace
He has made them mine.
I have prosperity
Power and victory
Abiding, abiding in the vine.

That mindset, dear readers, is what was drummed into me from an early age.

It's that mindset that is doing my head in.

Tonight (actually, it's morning. It's 1:30am) I don't have any of the glorious things I was promised.

Oh yes, it was a promise. Don't try and tell me otherwise.

Come to me all who are burdened and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

I can possibly quote you a dozen of them.

But, as Elliot (Henry Thomas) says from the movie E.T. "This is reality Greg!" and my reality is nothing like the abundant, joyful life I was promised.

I've spent a good part of my online life here on this blog trying to present a positive, hopeful woman, telling you the quirky, the ordinary, the interesting and informative things about my life - both as a woman living with difference and...well, an ordinary woman on the other side of 45. I've not wanted to be inspirational. I've just wanted to tell stories that may, just may, get people to see things from a different perspective; to make them think, get conversations started.

Behind the scenes though I have been slipping further and further into the pit as inner voices just keep getting louder and louder, demanding my attention, screaming at me. I've found the hurt and pain and rage just keeps building as the reality of life conflicts so violently with the ideals that I was told would be mine if.....If only I simply believed.

I did believe.

And it never came.

Not for a year, not even for a day.

And tonight I can't help but look into the future and I can't ever see it coming.

I was told that there was healing to be had. I heard stories of people being healed of cancer, of being delivered from addictions, of bones miraculously healing, of babies being born to infertile couples. I heard women praying for a baby with a specific hair colour and receiving it.

I prayed for miracles. I prayed for spines to straighten, for limbs to strengthen, for fluid to stop building up.

And yet I had to hand my babies over to surgeons so many times....I can't even count anymore.

I prayed for a job to come his way......for over fifteen years.....

I went to courses called Inspirational Woman and read books like You can be the wife of a Happy Husband. They were pretty much all about servant hood really; putting his needs ahead of my own, how to be a wonderful help meet,  how to create an atmosphere of calm for your husband....

I just can't seem to get it all right.

Tonight i had one of those straw that broke the camels back incidents that involved a sick dog being left in the house all day and me coming home to a veritable tidal wave of canine diarrhea all throughout the house.

It's usually the non related things that send you over the edge....although the consequences of shit soaked carpets ties in with the prosperity thing. I have $5 in my purse, $13 in my bank account, vet bills to pay and now the cost of someone to come in and steam clean the carpets. (Oh yes, it's that bad).

The Pentes teach that I need to tithe 10% to access that prosperity.....so you know, I've probably brought this upon myself.....However when I DID tithe I was just as poor. I know all the stories.....particularly the woman and her two coins....however,  when you look a little closer at that story, particularly the bit before it, I realised she wasn't giving because she wanted to. She was giving because she had to. It was compulsory.

Tonight i am so incredibly tired. My marriage is in the toilet (yet we still keep trying to flog the dead horse and expect it to get up and win), I have NO MONEY before the week has ended (I don't smoke, drink, take drugs, go out or constantly buy clothes), we have two wheelchairs out of commission and my dog has been vomiting and has diarrhea for six days. There's more involving employment, but I don't feel right about sharing those stories. There will always be concerns involving disability. Always. I get that. I accept that. But it's the constant pressure of having to fight the systems that is exhausting. Society reminds us every day that those disabilities are obvious and real....and that's ok (kind of).....but CONSTANTLY having to prove it to places like Centrelink or support agencies is exhausting. There are a series of never ending hoops one has to jump through to prove that the disability exists and that one is eligible for support. Sometimes I wonder if the system is so hard in the hope that one will just give up and cease trying.

Sometimes it just makes me feel wrong for even existing....let alone.......

I can't finish that thought....

I don't know where to from here. Tonight all I know is that I need space to get my head together. I don't know if it ever will be. There are some who might think I am the Queen of Avoidance; not wanting to deal with things. Thing is, my head is constantly trying to deal with things, think ahead, plan for the unplanable.  I look at Centrelink forms and I am paralyzed with anxiety, with rage. One. More. Thing. It's never just easy or straightforward.

I try and think of possible solutions to existing problems but the existing problems cause problems for the solutions. I feel trapped; being unable to move forward and yet not being able to stay in my current situation either. If I do......the pit yawns in front of me.

I don't think this would feel so bad if I hadn't been presented with the idea of the abundant Christian life. I think that if the aspects of the fact that people like Abraham never saw the enormous family he was promised, that Moses died before entering the Promised Land, that God's chosen people were enslaved and wandered in deserts for 40 years were highlighted....then, maybe then....

But what I was promised and never seen has done nothing but fuel this........rage.......that threatens to consume me and finally break me. It's not easy feeling this. I live with the terror of doing something to finally offend God so much that I'll condemn myself to hell.  It's not a case of simply not believing anymore, although the thought of there being absolutely nothing after death no longer holds the terror it once did. I'd prefer oblivion to the concept of hell which, I'm told, is my fate if I turn my back on everything and choose not to believe.

How does one do that? I can't imagine choosing not to believe. I can't imagine anyone coming up with anything convincing enough to sway me. There's just something inside me that....responds to a Creator at least. The jury is out with everything else.....