You Told Me

You told me to believe, have faith, trust.
You told me to ask, seek, knock,
You told me that the door would be opened.
You told me that I was loved so much that I was enough to die for.
You told me that heaven's riches were mine...
Health
Wholeness
Healing

Healing
healing...

That I only need ask
have faith
believe
You told me it would be mine.

You told me that I would not be given anything beyond what I could bear.
Endure.
Enduring
Endurance

You told me
I believed
trusted
hoped.

With the passage of time the endurance
and patience
and hope
and trust
Eroded and fell into the dust.
Pleading, ferverent prayer gave way to angry fists shaken at the silent heavens.
Heavens that offered no deliverance,
comfort,
solace
or relief.
Just the echoing silence of unanswered hope.

The anger burned and the fire raged,
pointless in it's severity.
For heaven was silent.
Even rage prompting no response.
Rage gave way to resignation.

The yoke was not easy as promised, nor the burden light.
Mine to carry, not His.

Wisdom was gleaned from the fathers of old
Those who went to the pits of hell
to wallow in the shit
for dreams never realised.
Abraham
             Isaac
                    Jacob
                            Joseph
                                      Moses
All believing in dreams
and dying without seeing them realised.
Never knowing if the dream was real or the delusions of madness.

Believing something contrary to ones own truth is madness.
Is it madness to believe in a benevolent god when the reality of existence screams the truth of the contrary?
To believe in divine healing in the face of death

Day
      after day
                  after day

A gamut of things contrary
                                          to
                                           what
                                                  one
                                                      has
                                                          been told.
Until I no longer believe in the goodness of the benevolent god
And it becomes easier.
logical
intellectual
to think of it all as meaningless and random
and the task is to let go
                                   enjoy
                                          and simply exist
                                                                   and end in blissful nothingness......
And yet...
When I let go of all you taught, told, insisted was true...

Something calls
Promising nothing
No visions of the future,
No riches
              nor health,
                             healing
                                       nor deliverance
Nothing.

Just the gentle calling of Spirit to spirit
Logic to logic
Heart to heart
Expecting nothing, assuring everything.
I breathe, slow, cease
and become part of something bigger than everything

Nothing is confusing or contrary.
I breathe and again face the reality that remains unchanged
but has somehow become less burdensome.
The yoke still not easy
nor the burden light,
but the delusions have gone;
the hopeless hope released and scattered to the four winds.
And I find peace in what is beauty in the journey.
Strength in the struggle.

Quoting scripture

The Bible was quite a significant influence in my early life - and up until recently I suppose. In fact, as a child I can't remember not knowing Bible stories and verses. I remember reading Genesis to Deuteronomy in a King James Bible when I was all of seven. I read it like a story; simply fascinated and intrigued with the story of Moses and the exodus of the Hebrews out of Egypt. My Nanna also had comic versions of the Old Testament in book form - kind of manga style, but not. My brothers and I simply loved those books, devouring them every time we visited.

We also knew a lot of "memory verses" due to the fact that we had a lot of LP records of a little doll named Marcy who would sing a lot of songs that were either pure scripture or Biblical stories in song.

It all seemed so real then; simple, uncomplicated, straightforward. God loved you. Jesus loved you. That was it. No more. No less. We were children. We accepted it all and there was no pressure to be good or do good or reach any ideals of Christian behaviour. You could believe in both Jesus and Santa Claus without one compromising the other. You could engage in the mystery and magic of childhood made up rituals without the fear that you were entering into something sinister or evil.

I don't know when it changed...or do I? Adolescence? Going to a place where all things spiritual became incredibly intense? Seeing too many "out there" things that we should never had witnessed without at least a good debrief afterwards? I don't know. Maybe a combination of everything.

Religion has left me confused and conflicted. It claimed to have all the answers and yet left me with so many unanswered questions. I still can't reconcile events and circumstances in my life with the things I was presented with as "truth". Looking at things in the cold, hard light of day there seemed to be a "formula" to sowing and reaping and yet despite sowing what I was told to sow I never seemed to reap what I was told I would reap. 

Scripture quoting sometimes seemed like a bandaid when things seemed to hard to deal with. God has not given us a spirit of fear but of love, power and a sound mind sounds great in theory but what if you're struggling and have always struggled with an anxiety disorder? What about if your anxiety is so bad that it stops you in your tracks, freezes you to the spot and renders you so dysfunctional that you think you're going to lose your mind? Continuing anxiety seemed to be more of a statement about a lack of faith or trust which then fed into the idea that you weren't a "good" Christian, that there was something wrong with you, that then became a part of the anxiety cycle.

What about if you pray and pray and believe for the healing that you're told is yours in Christ and yet you still have to hand your precious babies over to into the hands of surgeons time and time and time again? What about the woman down the road who prays for a little red haired baby and gets one and all you pray for is a healthy baby, unaffected with a particular genetic condition and yet your precious, amazing, wonderful baby has had to endure more medical interventions than you even care to recount? 

Sometimes "Don't worry about anything, instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and don't forget to thank Him for his answers," just feels like a slap to the face when you're feeling that providing the red haired baby seemed more important than providing you with your healthy one.

I don't think I've ever gotten over that one. Obviously, by the fact that I continue to revisit it.

So here I am. Out in limbo. That's what this feels like. No Mans Land. Neither believing like I did and yet reluctant to extinguish that flickering candle that has always burned for as long as I remember. Even now many of those scriptures come back to me and I turn them over in my mind as one would examine a shell on the beach. I wonder about their significance and application to my life as it is now and whether there can ever be some kind of reconciliation between what I was taught and what my experience actually is.

This is a very lonely place to be in for I feel there is no one to talk to who might relate. There just seems to be these two opposing camps - those who are completely enmeshed and sold out to "the truth" and those who are either indifferent or don't believe at all.

Surely there is a place where the two can live in harmony?

Loving conflict

I grew up in a home where we didn't see conflict between our parents. I never saw or heard heated discussions or disagreements or fights. I remember feeling the undercurrents of tension, I remember silences that scared me more than yelling. I remember a hissed, "You make me sick!" which scared the beejebus out of me at the age of nine. I remember Mum putting a dint put in the car and Dad yelling about it. But open conflict and then the road to resolution? Never.

Whilst you would think this would make for reasonably peaceful living and a harmonious outcome, it also had a detrimental effect. My siblings and I don't seem to know how to successfully undertake confrontation and conflict resolution within the context of family. It's "niceness at all costs", "don't rock the boat", "don't get involved." We skirt around issues, we put up with unacceptable behaviour, we stand by and watch the ones we love become mere shadows of the vibrant spirits they once were - all in the name of keeping the peace.

Whilst I don't advocate all out yelling and screaming and arguing in front of your children, sometimes I can't help but wonder if allowing your children to be witness to minor arguments and disagreements isn't a good thing? Conflict in good, strong, stable relationships can often serve as a means through which relationships are tested, ideas are shared, solutions can be found and the relationship strengthened. Isn't it better for a child to learn how to successfully navigate confrontation, conflict, compromise and resolution from the two people who are supposed to love each other most? Wouldn't it be okay for a child to know that their Mum and Dad can disagree and argue sometimes but it's okay because they love and respect each other enough to work it out and *this* is how they did it?

I never saw that. I never learned how to do that...and so when injustice or negative experiences happen in my adult life I simply do not know how to navigate it. How do I approach people with my concerns? Do I even involve myself? Is it any of my business in the first place or is it the conflict/issue of someone else that they need to address without my interference? How do I navigate being put in my place if my insights aren't welcomed? How do I receive the criticisms and "negative" feedback from others? Do I immediately fly to my own defense or do I listen, go away and think and then learn from their insights? How does one learn how to do these types of things and explore these issues when one was never taught or given an example?

I long for more authentic and honest relationships but my inability or reluctance to engage in honest and loving confrontation and conflict seems to hinder that. My relationships seem to linger on the surface and I allow them to dissolve when the tension of remaining nice at all costs is a burden that becomes too heavy.

Maybe it's time just to bite the bullet and try? Maybe it's time to be brave? Maybe this period of learning to know myself, accept myself and love myself has given me the strength to start doing what I know to be right?

I'm about to find out. Wish me luck!