Angry

I am tired and I am angry tonight. My very act of sitting here at my computer and writing is an act of defiance – an act of rebellion and frustration. I have been hit hard by depression again this week. I noticed recently that my patterns of writing have changed from the early months of this depression. Then, everything stirred me to write – every frustration, every triumph, every worship service and house church, every time I had a spare moment there was a pen in my hand, chronicling the moments and emotions. Now, there is little that drives me to write. My love affair with words has not faded. What has happened is that, as time has passed, there have been fewer and fewer new ways to describe this time. What were once daily and even several times daily entries are now one or two a month, often jotted on my computer for speed, rather than with a pen on paper for the cathartic release of making the words appear.

Thursday nights have become my time for musing. I have an evening class that ends at 7:45. From 5:00 until 7:45 I sit and learn about abnormal psychology. At 7:45, I pack up my books, and head outside (after bundling up appropriately!). While I stand and wait for the bus (which arrives at 8:04) I hum worship songs to myself, trying to center my mind away from the school work that has consumed my day. Once I board the bus, I use the 45-minute journey to muse, to reflect, to read scripture or whatever meditative work I’m currently working my way through. I know that once I get home my mind will be taken up with other things – it’s Thursday night after all – there is television to watch, emails to read, things to do to get ready for whatever I have planned for Friday. But, those 45 minutes on the bus – those are mine, to quiet my heart, to allow my mind to wander, to wait for God’s occasional voice.

Tonight, I alternated between reading, and reflecting on things I’d written earlier in the day, and things I’d contemplated on the bus journey to school this morning.

The most accurate sentence I’ve written all day is the very first one of this entry. I am angry. It has been building all week, perhaps even for months. This is an anger I have faced before. The circumstances of my life are making me furious at the moment. I am twenty-two years old. I am physically healthy. I come from a very good family. I was never abused or neglected. My parents and siblings loved me and I knew it. And yet, I have spent at least the last two years struggling with a depression that refuses to be satisfied. And it makes me livid! My siblings had the same experiences I did, and they turned out healthy. Why me?

Did you know that a woman who’s mother was depressed stands a 30 percent greater chance of being depressed herself? I’m part of that statistic. But my mother has recovered, and I am still floundering. Why did God intervene there and not in my life?

Maybe that’s the biggest part of all of this. I am furious with God. Do you have any idea how long it took me to admit that for the first time? Probably a year ago, a good friend listened to one of my many rants about my life, and asked me if I had told God how angry I was. I told this friend that I couldn’t possibly tell God that, that I couldn’t yell at God in that way. My friend just looked at me, and told me I needed to do it. It took me until a couple of months ago. It’s still crazy hard to say.

Some time ago I journalled about a book I had just read. Stumbling Towards Faith by Renee Altson. It was, at the moment I read it, incredibly liberating. I was reading it again on the bus tonight. I have carried it with me often in the intervening weeks, always knowing that the truth contained in Renee’s words was something I would come back to. Tonight, as I read, her words were once again cathartic – a balm to a soul that was wondering if I was the only person alive who felt this way about life and faith. I want to close with her words, so freeing in their expression of my soul’s cry tonight….

a god who wants my woundedness but not my covering – WHAT KIND OF GOD IS THAT? a shivering god, a jealous god. “give me yourself,” he says, “trust me without those protections, trust me with your pure vulnerabilities.”

and I laugh.

“and what will you do with them?” i wonder, knowing all too well what this means.

the rage wells up within me, like fire.

“and what have you done? what have you saved me from? i have spent a lifetime yearning for you, aching, longing, desiring to be whole more than any other thing. i have brought as much as i could to your feet – passed them over, surrendered my will, and all i have received is silence. this much i have given, and would give more, but for a word, an acknowledgement, a sense of comfort. and yet there is still nothing.

…i am so angry. i have been so angry for so many years, yet i walk a fine balance between anger and fear. which feels safer? which will get me through? often i fear the anger itself, the way it rises up in me, clutching and desperate and needy… (Stumbling Towards Faith, 45-46)


There is so much more to that passage, but due to time, space, and copyright issues, that’s all I’ll include. Go buy the book, and then email me and I’ll give you the page numbers for several other passages that spoke to my wounds tonight… And Renee, if you happen to find this entry – thanks. You can’t know how many times your words have encouraged me to keep journeying over these last months.

Re-evaluating - Again

I feel sometimes like the last two years have been a time of continual reevaluation. As the depression that has been so much a part of those years has ebbed and flowed, so have the questions, my personal satisfaction, my ability to understand who I am and see that as part of a larger context.

This week the depression is strong, and I have spent most of my hours bombarded by questions that don't seem to have answers and by questions I thought I had answered long ago. I find myself exhausted (sleep has once again become an illusory concept) and angry.

I have wondered again this week if it's worth it - this current method of pursuing God that I have chosen. I read a book this week (one I highly reccommend - Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner) that described a lifestyle of study and liturgy that I could easily fall in love with. Winner is currently completing her doctorate in the history of American religion from Columbia University. She also did her bachelor's degree at Columbia, and spaced the bachelor's and doctoral degrees out with a master's degree from Cambridge in England.

At some point during her college experience, Winner converted from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity, and while she was in England, was baptised into the Anglican church.

I read her book, and wished for her bankroll - I have pursued a history degree, focusing primarily on the Protestant Reformation in Europe for the last four years. At Christmas, I will graduate, not only broke, but $11000 in debt. I would love to pursue a master's in this, but know that I do not want to spend my life as a university lecturer. Studying further is simply not an option. But, the cerebral, academic life, ensconced in books and stimulating discussion is greatly appealing to me.

The liturgy of churches like the Anglican church is appealing as well. I find so much beauty and meaning in the rituals that have lasted for hundreds of years. Something comforting in knowing that the order of service has not been greatly altered since the Elizabethan era. Something sustaining in all that history - the good and bad, but the unending nature of it.

I have spent the last two years pursuing a more "charismatic" understanding of relationship with God - one as far from the deliberately liturgical as possible most weeks, and I find it exhausting. I don't quite fit in this circle - I am far too cerebral, far too interested in thinking deeply. I tire easily of the rhetoric that seems to say that this is the only "true" way of expressing the church of the New Testament. I feel caught between my conservative family members who don't quite agree with this pursuit of mine, and the friends who keep promising that God has something "more" for me if I just keep going.

I have met God there, and I know with certainty that my "charismatic" friends meet and hear from Him on a regular basis. But, I feel as if I am still slogging through muck. I have watched with great interest the beginnings of an "urban monasticism" but have not felt that this is the life for me either. I hestitate to mention this, but my experience in watching these "urban monks" (some of whom are dear friends) is that there is an intense emphasis on prayer (something that certainly holds true to the medieval models they emulate) but very little emphasis on learning (something completely untrue - it is because of the monastic committment to learning that we have many of the great works of religion and philosophy available for modern consumption.)

I feel stifled intellectually at times. I cannot deny the importance of "experiencing God" but I wonder why it takes such great precedence. Surely, God gave me a mind and a love for learning for a reason. Is it not possible to incorporate both? My beef is this (and I admit it is a beef greatly colored by my current state of depression and frustration) - why are so few people interested in understanding anything beyond the experience?

I could fill pages with the knowledge of history that has greatly enhanced my relationship with God and his world. I could give you fascinating information about Count von Zinzendorf and the Moravian movement - one of the areas I've studied and researched extensively over the last year. I could tell you about a wide variety of religious movements, each one designed to correct some fault in a previous movement, and I could point out that each of these movements is eventually replaced by someone who thinks that they, too, are wrong, and that this pattern has continued into the present day. But few are interested. Most want only to have that "crazy charismatic" encounter with God, not to really know about him, to realize that what he is doing in the world today owes so much to what he has done in the past.

Meh. I'm done. I'm sure some of you have responses. Please know that my intention is not to criticize. My intention is simply to blow off some of the questions floating through my muddled brain. I have a very fond relationship with all of the things that I have chosen to comment on here. But, I still find myself asking questions about them, wondering if they could not be made bettter. Perhaps, I am the opposite of a forward-looking visionary type. My understanding of God will always be rooted in the history that I have studied so intently - not living in the past, but greatly influenced by the myriad of wonderful traditions that can be found there.

With all that said, I'm off to buy cookies. I need sugar to sustain me through three hours of lecutring on "Abnormal Psychology" for the evening!