posted by missmellifluous at 11:04 pm
Saturday, March 3
Previous Posts
- For the word lovers amongst us...alternate title: ...
- Anybody know of some good books on Christian Ethic...
- I found Jesus in Kmart!I can't quite decide if thi...
- Cricket 101: What is cricket?For Beck and Kim who ...
- For Island Sparrow, who asked me what a Tim Tam is...
- Taking Comfort in a Metaphor Today's mighty oak is...
- The Poms Rain.SCG, February 11, 2007England kicked...
- NO time to blog, life is crazy busy but just by wa...
- Tipped, I'm It!Its fashionable, tight enclosure of...
- Students return to school on Monday and I am spend...
5 Comments:
Blogger is not playing nice. For now I'll post in the comments.
In Which I Moan And Vent ABout Wrecks Both LIteral and Metaphorical
This week has been kinda blah! The 28th of February is traditionally a BAD day for me. Two majorly bad events have happened in my life on the 28th of Feb and so when it comes around each year, even if I don't realise the date at the time, I feel really blah on that day. Now I'm not a superstitious kinda person so it amazes me that somehow I instinctively know and feel awful when this day approaches. It's a hard day. A very hard day. This year the week surrounding the 28th was awful.
One terrible thing that happened on the 28th of Feb, many years ago, was that I got married. This was not a bad thing at the time, in fact, it was a wonderful thing. But as my marriage ended in a rather spectacular and bloody mess the day has come to remind me not of the joy of getting married but the tragedy of a broken marriage.
Another terrible thing happened to me on the 28th of Feb one year. It's kind of unspeakable so I won't write about it here, only to say, it gives me extra reason to hate the day as it reminds me of an event I would rather forget. Would rather forget but never will.
This year I hoped the 28th would come and go without me realising it. It almost did. I'm getting better at feeling it less but the day still sucked for no particular reason except for the haunting memories and the building angst.
I had a funeral to my marriage when I divorced. This made me feel a bit better as I felt like I could express the deep pain I felt at losing something precious. They say that experiencing a divorce is worse than experiencing the death of a spouse because all that is left is the pain not the happy memories and you know that although your partner, the one you thought you would be with forever, is still alive, you will never relate to them again. And even though this can be a good thing, it's a soul destroying realisation. So I had a funeral to my wedding to mark the end, recognise my loss, and begin again. It helped.
I don't miss my ex anymore yet somehow when our anniversary comes around, I cringe. I wish I could not feel the pain.
Last week I found a poem I wrote about the end of my marriage. Here's an excerpt. It's a work in progress.
so lucky was he
to be good at deceiving
when I was so
very good at believing
and believe him I did
for a good heart will
and will and will
till that good heart beats
still
beats still beats still
while he beats my head
and my warm blood flows red
from this head that conceives
that he still loves me.
he loves me he says
but my heart is not blind
to the lies that he speaks
for the lies that can bind
two hearts that once sought
to love each to the other
I do
but those cold arms bought
the arms of another
and another and another
and another still more
oh my God! my love’s
fled to the love of a whore
where he beats and he beats
for he truly loves me
so he cheats and he cheats
where he thinks I can’t see
but I see in his moan
and I groan for I see
he’s not here with me
when I cry for that tree
where he first loved me
and we’d sit on the branch
at our window to heaven...
...and the poem goes on building like the tension within me did during the week. It was kind of fitting then that my week ended with a crash in which wreckage was strewn all over the road just as I felt it was in my life. It also gave me a reason to cry.
People have been telling me that wrecks are just inconvenient. They slow you down for a while. Yeah, they do. But they're exhausting. I'm tired. I'm tired of feeling the effects of crashes years on.
The Mardi Gras is on in Sydney tonight. It always falls on the weekend after the 28th Feb and is closely related to my second reason for hating the date. The Mardi Gras brings out the worst in people. Straight guys feel the need to prove their masculinity and express their hetrosexuality in ways that hurt others which is directly related to the hated event of which I will write no more except to say, Grrrr! Big Grrrrr!
Like the car crash I had this week, I have walked away from major crashes in my life bruised but not defeated. It has not always been a comfort to have walked away with my life still intact yet now I see that it has been good that I have. Hard but good. Exhausting but good.
Right now I should write something about how surviving the wrecks make us stronger and is part of God's plan for making us who we are meant to be. I should say how we're not abandoned in the wrecks, how it's good to let God take the wheel and trust Him even if there's a crash looming, especially if there's a crash looming. I should write something profound but as true as I believe these things to be, it all sounds trite. I believe it. I don't feel it and I'm tired.
Dear Mell,
I wish my words were an arm around you which could comfort you....
Men do my head in. Over and over again I am left breathless by their utter, utter crassness. Not all of them, and not all of the time - but far too often. We are supposed to bear God's image - but so often what I hear about is faithlessness, selfishness, violence, indifference, insensitivity. There is nothing I can say, and I'm really conscious that anything I add will do no more than add to pain.
But the Bible does sort of have a remedy for pain, maybe - if you are brave - more brave than I hope I ever need to be. Please bear with me - this isn't a trite answer; I am writing with eyes full of tears. It's in Job 38-42. What can anyone say to Job - whose life had been ruined - his family wiped out, his friends indifferent, himself reduced to scraping himself with pottery on a rubbish heap? What possible answer is there? The answer is not from his friends, but that God speaks to him, to show Job what he is like. And it transforms Job - his circumstances haven't changed - but he sees them and himself in the context of the most amazing picture of God. I don't know how it works, but somehow losing himself in who God was helped him to bear his situation.
Mell, I fear the day when I need that vision of God - because I can see the pain that Job experienced before he got there - but that sort of pain is yours already. So I pray that God will speak to you also through the storm, and that even in the hurt, the true Lover of your soul who loved you so much that he gave up everything he had, even his life, just for you, would be close to you and that you would know his arms around you.
There is a second part to this. Job gets back what he has lost. Isn't that a con? I mean, in dramatic terms - "and they all lived happily ever after". But the thing is, IT'S TRUE! The writer to Job knew that Job's situation couldn't be the end of the story - God wouldn't allow that, it is completely not his character. In the same way that Job was blessed in the end - in the same way that Jesus knew resurrection after death - you will one day be in the place where there are no more tears, where the pain that you know now will fade like the darkness at sunrise, never to return.
And one more thing. To hold onto something when you can't feel it is the heart of perseverance. If you can do that when you can't do anything else, then you are doing what you need to.
With love,
Paul
UPDATE on my depressing state of affairs: I just discovered that someone has tried to break into my car. My crashed car. Both locks have been pushed in. They didn't get in because everything is still there, but they have clearly tried. It could be worse. Sigh.
Ultimately we are also works in progress. And in spite of crashes, we are headed to a joyful destination.
I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. (Rev 21:22-27)
Hope that as February fades away, you will feel the peace of God.
-- Radagast
Thanks for your beautiful words, Radagast. I'm touched.
Post a Comment
<< Home