lost voice

I've lost my voice. In more ways than one it seems. It seemed to slowly be dieing on Saturday night - the results of the third cold I've had in five weeks. I figured it was just because I was talking a lot while I hung out with friends that night. But, I woke up yesterday morning, and all I could muster was a low rumble paired with the occasional whisper. I went to work anyway, came home, went to church, hung out some more. It got progressively worse through the day - only a sort of higher-pitched squeak by the end of the night.

I woke up this morning, and there is no pitch at all. I can whisper, and if I really muster all my strength, can make a slightly more audible cracking, squeaky sound.

The funny thing is, I usually don't really worry about not being able to be heard. A lot of the time I'm content to listen, to just hear what others have to say, and make the occasional comment. But, now that I can't be heard, I resent it. What if I suddenly had something to say? I had to have a friend order my drink and food last night - the waiter wouldn't have heard me over the crowd of 15 or so of us hanging out at the pub. My friend called this morning for our daily conversation, and she couldn't really hear or understand what I was saying.

And I've been trying to get this term paper done. I seem to have lost my mental voice as well. It's not going well. I'm at something like 700 words. It feels unfocused, and I need to hand it in sometime today. Nasty. So, I'm here, blogging instead. I've worked on the paper off and on for the the last three hours, and made little headway. I'm going back to this method where I set the timer on my watch for 20 minutes, and I have to work for those whole 20 minutes, and then I can take a break. Only something like 1200 words to go! Alright - back at it!

mmmm....

I've definitely hit a new low in titles, but I'm just not sure how to head this up.

I was driving to church tonight, and the phrase "fully present" popped into my mind. I immediately wondered where I'd heard it recently. It was in a blog post here, that Hope wrote. It encouraged me to read her thoughts that day a week or so ago. I was thinking about my crazy week, about calling my friend every day to make sure things are still okay, about hanging out with some really good friends last night and the powerful time of prayer we had for our mutually hurting friend.

To be quite honest, when I went out last night, I was exhausted. I was stressed from my week. It was a week that could be colorfully described as frantic - like a hamster on speed running around in it's little wheel! I was feeling heavily the weight of my friends problems. When the guys picked me up to go out, they commented that I was quiet. I told them (much to their amusement) that I was just tired and glad to be out with people who weren't going to dump whole loads of their problems on me. (One guy immediately said, "oh, well, I was hoping to talk with you about some problems I've been having. Yeah, comedians my friends - all of them.) They asked me again at the end of the night how I was doing, and I was so relaxed after having no demands for the last several hours - just fun and refreshing company. Because I was relaxed I was able to share coherently what our friend has been facing this week, and we were able to pray. And God was there. And it was good.

But, to continue being quite honest, I was still feeling somewhat resentful that God's call on my life to bring healing to the broken seemed so demanding and draining right now. I fielded yet another negative phone call from my friend this afternoon, and was feeling frustrated again.

So, I'm driving to church, and I start thinking about the idea of being "fully present" and about how I love the idea, and I want that, but I'm not sure how to do it, and that I'm not very good at it. Most of the time, I'm only partially present - I'm distracted by what's going on around me, by my own thoughts. There are very few people who can command my "full" attention. I'm thinking about this stuff, and I'm driving to church, preparing myself mentally to see my friend - to give, to do whatever she needed, and to try to be present to her. But I'm still resenting the energy demands of this calling for the broken.

A girl spoke at church tonight. I know her a little, and her life has been impacted hugely in the last year as God has called her to minister to the homeless on the streets of our city after church every week. She and several others feed, talk with, occasionally clothe, etc. those who call the streets of our city home. She shared a lot of her story, and basically challeneged the church to action - to get up, to answer God's calling, and to take joy in it.

I have to admit I groaned a bit at that last part. I was sitting with one of the guys from last night, and he smirked at me and patted me on the back in mock sympathy - he reads my mind and facial expressions pretty well, and usually knows when something is hitting me close to home. And it was - hitting me close to home I mean.

I am convicted of my need to not only be "fully present" to these people God has placed in my life and asked me to care for, but of my need to do this with joy. Yes, there are a lot of issues involved in some of these people's lives, and yes I need to be careful as I provide support and obey God, and yes, the issues are big and draining. But, God has called me to this. He has given me a heart for these women I am caring for, and He is calling me to take joy in His calling.

I'm not quite there yet. I still find myself lacking equilibrium from the work God has done in my own life in the last month. I struggle daily with the fine balance between caring for a person, and taking their problems as my own - I'm not very good at letting God carry them - I seem to think that things will go better if I devote my considerable obsessive tendencies to the issue of the moment. I find myself frustrated that instead of healing me first, and then calling me to help heal others, God gave me one tiny little piece of ground, and then sent me headlong into the tumult of another's life. And yet, my desire is to take joy in this. My prayer is that God will intervene between my head and heart, and grant joy in this which He asked me to do for a season. And somehow, I believe that God will be faithful to provide the joy.

my plans vs. God's plans

My plans for tonight looked something like this: Write the midterm in abnormal psychology. Skip the lecture that follows the midterm. Catch the bus home, relax in front of the television or a movie for a couple of hours. Maybe take a bubble bath for an hour or so with a great novel. Head for bed early, and sleep in late tomorrow since I don't have to work until 1:30.

I got to the catch the bus home part before God or life or fate or something intervened. (I think the midterm went ok - won't be a stellar grade, but for the time I put in, it should be fine.) I got another crisis phone call while on the bus. I spent 20 minutes talking to my friend, and determined that this was not an emergency that could be solved via phone. She was going to be near the station where I get off the bus, so I arranged to meet her there.

After hanging up with her, and before arriving to meet her, I made several calls down my list of "crisis" response/prayer response people. I called home, to let them know I was changing plans, and to get my mom's advice on the situation I was about to walk into. I called several friends and begged them to pray for my friend and I over the next couple hours. I called our pastor and left a message saying that a crisis was happening and please call back. Then, with prayers on my lips, I turned and met my friend with a hug.

I think the crisis has been averted for at least one night. I'll phone her again tomorrow, and every day after that for as long as it takes to walk her through this time. I think she realizes the scope of some of the things in her life, and will seek help. I pray that she will begin to believe truths instead of lies, and that light will break into the overwhelming darkness she is inhabiting right now.

Mostly, though, I'm thinking about how rarely my plans for my day, my week, my life seem to match up with what God has in store. The number of times these last two weeks that I have dealt with situations like this are stunning. And God is there. But I am overwhelmed by my own ill-equippedness. I have just barely begun to heal myself, and I have been called on to be a voice of love and healing and life that I don't understand in the lives of others. I think it's good that God knows what he's doing, because I just look at this week and wonder if anything I've said has mattered, if I even have anything to say, and I know that God is orchestrating things anyway, and I am grateful.

Crashing

One midterm down for the day, one to go. I'm exhausted. I was ill-prepared for this morning's exam, but by a stroke of luck may have done alright. I'm ill-prepared for tonight's exam, but can't quite bring myself to cram more information into a brain that is refusing to focus for more then ten seconds at a time.

I'm exhausted - physically, emotionally, maybe spiritually. It's been a crazy couple of weeks, and I'm feeling like I need to regain equilibrium. I'm struggling with emotional overload (darn those "real" emotions!). I haven't slept well for a couple of weeks again. And I can't quite figure out what it will look like to regain equilibrium.

The trouble is, I don't want to go back to the low point I was at just over two weeks ago. The last two weeks and a bit have been insane, but so good. I have known God's presence in ways I would never have expected, or even wanted, but I am tired. I don't want to go back - I'm loving this new place in my journey - loving that breakthroughs are finally happening, but boy is it tiring. I think I know why the ancient monks spent so many hours alone!

I've been so stressed this week about school on top of everything else. After I finish my midterm tonight, I still have a paper to write - it was supposed to be due today, but I begged, and my professor was gracious enough to grant me an extension. The trouble is, the extension is only until Monday. I work Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I also have church Sunday night, and will hopefully manage to see friends Friday or Saturday night or both. I also have a midterm next Tuesday that I need to prepare for. Somewhere in there, I have to produce a quality 2000 word term paper on Dietrich Bonhoeffer - with my computer still located in the loud and lacking privacy common area of our basement. I've been more stressed because I haven't been able to summon the energy to prepare properly for the midterms today. And, when I finally managed to gather myself enough to study, I was interrupted by a variety of things, including a friend in crisis.

Can I just say that the middle of December has never looked quite so appealing as it does this year? As much as I love school, I can't wait to be done. I think I'm going to spend the whole month of January reading nothing but novels or whatever happens to strike my fancy. I'll be working full time, but it's shift work with strange hours, so I'll have lots of quiet time at home to read. I'm also going to take the time in January to renew some friendships that I haven't had the time to properly maintain during the crazy months of this semester. Maybe I'll take a road trip somewhere, just for the heck of it! In short, I plan to RELAX! And then get down to the business of figuring out what to do with my year off, and with the rest of my life - nothing stressfull there!

Alright, with all that said, I'm off to find some supper and do a little studying before my next exam. Or maybe I'll just read a novel and try to stay awake enough to show up for the exam on time! Either way, know that as soon as the exam is over I'm headed for home. The mind numbing blessing of television is definitely summoning me tonight! One evening to regain equilibrium before plunging back into the fray tomorrow morning. Not enough, but it'll do!

"When the bottom falls out..."

I've been reading a large number of spiritual memoirs or autobiographies lately, and yesterday I finished one entitled My Faith So Far: A Story of Conversion and Confusion by Patton Dodd. Like Renee Altson's Stumbling Toward Faith, Dodd's story doesn't resolve. And, I have to admit to a great deal of confusion regarding my thoughts on what he had to say about his faith journey, about the Christian church, and especially about the charismatic portion of the church.

However, I do want to share some excerpts from his last chapter with you. While I'm not as much in this place at the moment, I certainly have been here in the last few years, and even in the last few months, and I found his comments insightful. I've pared them down, giving you only a few sentences here and there. He expounds on each of these thoughts somewhat longer than what I've chosen to include. However, you'll get the gist of what he was experiencing from what I'm including here.


When the bottom falls out you free-fall. You clutch and grab. You scan about for some place to stand, some small piece of firm ground.

Whn the bottom fall out, you form a new library. "Read this book" people suggest, offering C.S. Lewis or Max Lucado or the Pope...

When the bottom falls out, hands are laid on. The accompanying prayer can be a deep and lasting solace, but it can also aggravate because the way things are prayed only adds to the questions...

When the bottom falls out, the Bible is an unwieldy book that is impossible to read. You read it anyway because you feel guilty if you don't...

When the bottom falls out, you realize that all your questions are banal. They are overasked... People tell ou that Christians have been struggling with these questions for years, and you can see that, yes, it is true. But why do the questions persist? Why do they feel so vital?...

When the bottom falls out, you stay home Friday nights and pray. You fall on your face and scream to God for mercy, for a supernatural gift of faith. You ask why what used to come so simply now has to be so hard. Was it something you did? You ask for some assurance, some indication of His presence...

When the bottom falls out, you are not sure how to conduct yourself in worship services...

When the bottom falls out, you fantasize about what life might be like if you had no faith...

When the bottom falls out, you want to reconstruct it however you can.
(My Faith so Far, pages 155-157)

This section was perhaps the most insightful of Dodd's entire book. Would I reccomend the book? I'm not sure. It was an interesting read, raises valuable questions, particularly about the charismatic movement. It was an easy read - I polished it off in an afternoon and an evening. Dodd's writing style is straightforward, if occasionally complicated by theological and scholarly language. But, it left me unsatisfied. I'm all for not resolving everything in one grand "my world's now perfect" chapter, but I wish Dodd had given some indication of how he was seeking to answer his own questions - of how he had continued to live a life of faith, despite the "bottom falling out." In short, I would have liked a Stumbling Toward Faith type of ending - some hope that this faith is something that can be valuable and lived, in the midst of the unresolved. Worth reading? Yes. But unsatisfying.