Kirkepiscatoid

Today’s readings are about struggle...about the marks and scars and pain of struggle, as well as about its dual potential to destroy us or heal us.

Reflective questions:

1. Meditate on the “crossover points” in your life where struggle has brought you. As a result of the struggle, how did you change? Did you become “worse” or “better”? Why?

There are several crossover points in my life. Each of them changed me in a unique way. Sometimes it resulted in a freedom I didn’t have prior to that point. Sometimes it resulted in a “closing down.” Some struggles have made me hypersensitive to certain types of pain, or “avoidant” of them, where others have taught me to be less afraid. It is truly a mixed bag. As far as the “better” or “worse” goes, eventually it gets “better” and I ultimately get wiser, but that doesn’t mean it won’t put me through it, and there certainly can be a period of “worse” before it gets “better.”

Some of the struggles have brought me very near the breaking point. One of them brought me very close to ending my own life, but ultimately, thanks be to God, I thought better of it. Oddly enough, I have a certain amount of “survivor guilt” over that. What makes me so special I turn away from such a bad decision but others follow it out and tragically kill themselves? I realize I’m NOT special, I’m NOT any more deserving. But it is a good reminder of grace. Accepting grace is not always easy for me but with every “crossover point” in my life I had to accept some amount of it.

2. Have you identified the shape of your own enemy within? What gives you courage to confront and transform that enemy? Who helps you in the struggle?

I think my enemy within is very deeply rooted in “fear of rejection.” Sometimes I think my fear of rejection is worse than the actual times I’ve experienced rejection. This fear has a tendency to cause me to attempt to control things, people, and situations in which the parameters are not mine to control. It has a tendency to affect my closest relationships b/c my need to control can lead me to inadvertently exploit our normal levels of love and care. My inner circle wants to attend to my fear of rejection when I am upset or sad...it’s only natural. But when I am upset or sad, I also develop a hyper-acute sense of the pain of rejection, which can also play on my psyche a little. Someone just wanting to put a normal amount of distance in a situation can become “disloyal” in my mind. Their perceived “disloyalty” can anger me, or create a false sense of betrayal, and I become hurt by it. The other person is doing his/her damndest to “make me feel better” and nothing is good enough, so eventually THEY get angry and we might let words fly or go off and sulk, and risk damaging the relationship.

Only in the last year have I even begun to confront that enemy, and I think some of it is “confront-able” for me now because part of my soulwork has been to wrap my mind around the concept of Heaven as a “place with no need of conflict.” Not just “a place of no conflict” but no NEED of it. There are plenty of things in this world which would not operate properly if there were no conflicts. Healthy conflict is ok in this world, and can lead to wisdom. But it always runs the risk of being unhealthy because of our own bugaboos and quirks. To imagine a place with no NEED of conflict had helped me try to maneuver through conflict better.

I think God helps me with this struggle but the trick is I have to sit still, and listen. Sometimes getting me to sit still when I am struggling is not easy!

I have also gotten great help from one friend in particular, and it’s because of what, on the surface, might appear to be a weird reason. I am slowly learning to openly talk things out because this particular friend’s own struggles and scars has left him unable to handle anything beyond a minimal level of anger, even if the anger is not aimed at him. I am certainly not perfect at it, and slip up now and then, because I grew up learning to fight, not talk. But the simple fact that my angry explosions can, at time, literally hurt him, cause him to drive deeper into his own inhibitions, and literally squelch his own inner voice, is slowly teaching me to become much slower to anger and to talk before getting angry. It teaches me this simply because I want to honor the degree of love and care he puts into our friendship, and respect the sensitivity of his own scars rather than pick at them. Wow, that is not easy some days for me because of MY issues about “rejection.” But I’m learning!



3. List what have been the “marks and scars trouble hews out the flesh of our lives” in your experience. Does healing feel possible? Why or why not?

One of my scars is my tendency to shove away the things that hurt and never look back...to cut these people out of my herd, to kick them to the curb, and keep walking. Another is the paranoia that springs from “fear of rejection”. I become paranoid that someone MIGHT reject me in some way so I overblow the significance of an incident or episode. Another is a fear of “opening up” in unfamiliar situations. It takes me a while before I will let someone see something other than the outgoing, gregarious, superficial me.

I think healing is possible...in fact I think it is slowly happening...but it is hard for me to maintain the level of vulnerability to do that for a great length of time. It’s just very slow going!