True confessions

Do you live near me? Like, next door, or within earshot? If so, I want to apologize for the ungodly sounds that likely passed through the windows and walls of my home this morning. I had a breakdown, and it came out in wretched gut-emptying cries and screams, waves upon crashing waves of them. I could not hold them back. I’m sorry to anyone who experienced any part of it: Rob, and maybe unlucky you. In case you’re worried, Moxie was not present, and only saw a couple of my quieter tears fall before the real trouble began.

I don’t write this to make you uncomfortable, or to be an exhibitionist, but to be honest. I’d like to be able to go on like nothing happened. I’d like to think that nobody shared in the upset this morning, but since as I sit here by my window now, hearing a child’s little voice from more than half a block away, and the front door of a house being shut somewhere, and the rap of a hammer one of my distant neighbors is using to fix a thing, I can only imagine that my volume and vehemence likewise carried on the breeze, to my shame. 

This is not a new feeling. Early on in my marriage, I had some deep issues rise to the surface and really shock me, and there were times when Vesuvian emotions erupted. Always there followed the burning fear that someone had heard me (or us) passing through my hell, and sometimes people did. The worry of it only compounded the terror and the shame of whatever I was going through. I could almost hear devils laughing at me and my distress, and my pain which had been so gracelessly broadcast to the world. 

I am coming out of the worst of this now, and I’m trying to put myself back together. Moxie is playing in the shop with Rob while he works, and I’m locked in the bathroom, deciding to come clean, as it were. 

It got so bad today that I found myself hyperventilating, sinking, starting to black out. I lay down on the cold chipped tile of the kitchen floor and tried to slow my breathing and the pounding of my heart. When the hot lava had all been spewed out and its flow was slowing, I kept still there a long while, then fragments of prayer began to form in my head. I talked to God in broken bits of language about feeling lonely, disordered, ignorant, unskilled, and disconnected. A scripture came to my mind: “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.” —Isaiah 53:2 That scripture is about Jesus Christ, the sweetest, strongest, and most perfected of us all! And yet He felt what I feel.

There wasn’t much else that came to me, except that as I lay there, recovering, I was reminded that I have words. Maybe they aren’t educated or imaginative, my words, but I have been given something of a gift of expression with writing. Their main purpose may only be therapy for me. Occasionally I know they’ve helped me share something of value with others. Words. There was no divine negation of the validity of my feelings, not a hint of correction. In the stillness, on the ground, I breathed and understood that I had two things going for me: I have a Brother who knows what I feel, and I have some words.

This is why I’m writing now, because it’s what I’m able to do. I hope you find something about this useful.

Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.