Kirkepiscatoid

Here is what I am starting to surmise in my middle age about stress. It's different than the stress of your youth. When you were younger, each life stressor was new and different and it was hard to sort their importance in the grand scheme of things. Think about it--once upon a time, not having a date for the Homecoming dance was a major "my life is over" thing. Now? Pfffft.

Middle age stress is different. It's more often "new permutations of the same-o, same-o that constantly invades our lives." In some ways, I feel as strong and fit to handle stress as I ever will be. I've lived it. I know it. But the stressful part is that the stakes seem to get bigger, and the upping of the ante is what scares you. Financial stress at age 28, when you did not have the proverbial pot to piss in nor window to throw it out of, was not that big a deal, except for the newness. You had very little to lose then. Financial stress in middle age is a much bigger deal, because you find yourself already thinking about your retirement. Family stress in middle age involves more family members and often more in a "dependent" role. But you get the drift.

I have a feeling old age stress will be even different. It will be tempered with the realization your body is failing, you don't have forever to fix things, and some things will have the grim reaper hanging over your shoulder like never before. I see that in my mom a little. I get frustrated that she, at 70 and in poor health, can no longer handle what she handled well at 60. But it is the poor health that causes this, not "her" per se. It is hard to remember that at times.

But I spent some serious time today in Psalm 88...I've decided to add my interjections between the verses in bolded italics (see below)

Psalm 88

1 O LORD, my God, my Savior, * by day and night I cry to you.

2 Let my prayer enter into your presence; * incline your ear to my lamentation.

3 For I am full of trouble; * my life is at the brink of the grave.

Oh, tell me about it! I can write a book! Much of my life has been "poised on the brink of failure." Much of my life was staring at a house of cards and being handed a deck and being told, "Here, put these on and don't screw up." But in recent years, I am starting to realize an odd fact: I am still dealing with the house of cards, but I just recently noticed I'm doing this in a temple. What does that mean? I'm not sure. Does it protect the house of cards from falling down? Probably not. But I sense some level of protection I never saw before. I just, at this point, am not sure what it means.

4 I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; * I have become like one who has no strength;

5 Lost among the dead, * like the slain who lie in the grave,

6 Whom you remember no more, * for they are cut off from your hand.

This is a very typical feeling when I am down in my "sinkhole of pain." I want to get out but I cannot muster the strength; there is this sense of true separation from myself and from God. No light. No voices. Just pain. Then over time the pain seems to give way to strength and I can move again. But it is like when they put people on the ventilator in the hospital on pancuronium to get them to stop "bucking the vent." I feel like I've been drugged specifically to stop fighting and have to just lie there till it wears off.

7 You have laid me in the depths of the Pit, * in dark places, and in the abyss.

8 Your anger weighs upon me heavily, * and all your great waves overwhelm me.

This is very close to something Wallace and I talked about once regarding my penchant for strange things triggering my anger. He once told me that there is a quality of my anger that is not just "the thing I'm mad at", but also a quality of "feeling the pain of a broken world." I wonder if this is not what "the wrath of God" really is...not some imperious asshole God running around smiting folks, but a God so pained by His broken creation it just has a bit of a short-circuiting effect on the universe. Misguided energy. But of course, that brings up the possibility that God makes mistakes...that should send the fundies running!

9 You have put my friends far from me; you have made me to be abhorred by them; * I am in prison and cannot get free.

Oh, that's simple. No one likes me when I'm in a snit. I've been told by one of my best friends, "When you are in one of your moods, interacting with you is like asking to have a scab picked at repeatedly...so we just leave you alone till it's over." Good plan! The good news is although my bad moods are intense, they are not long lasting.

10 My sight has failed me because of trouble; * LORD, I have called upon you daily; I have stretched out my hands to you.

11 Do you work wonders for the dead? * will those who have died stand up and give you thanks?

12 Will your loving-kindness be declared in the grave? * your faithfulness in the land of destruction?

13 Will your wonders be known in the dark? * or your righteousness in the country where all is forgotten?

Wow, I get some powerful imagery here. How many times do we fuss or fret that what we do doesn't matter? That no one will notice? Or that in the darkness of our own pain that we ourselves forget the good we are capable of doing?

14 But as for me, O LORD, I cry to you for help; * in the morning my prayer comes before you.

15 LORD, why have you rejected me? * why have you hidden your face from me?

There's no doubt; when we feel separate from "God's herd" it feels like He's the one who bailed on us. The standard line we hear, of course is that "we have abandoned God; not the other way around." I'm not sure that's totally accurate. It's a little simplistic and self-flagellating to just lie on the floor and wail it is all my fault.

Maybe it's a little bit more like a Venn diagram:
(Click on it to expand it)...

The "rub" in all this might be an issue with moving the circles closer together. The important point to ponder is this...the ability exists for either of us to move closer to each other. Maybe when I am the one doing the moving, it is "me practicing the disciplines of my faith." When God is the one doing the moving, it's "grace." But it is important to remember that if God is moving towards me, moving backwards of my own accord is not a great idea!


16 Ever since my youth, I have been wretched and at the point of death; * I have borne your terrors with a troubled mind.

Oh, yeah. I used to think about stuff like this when I was "too young to be thinking about things like this." My grandparents used to call me out on it. They'd say, "You're just a little kid, you should not be all worried about this stuff. Where do you come up with this stuff? Sometimes I think space aliens came in the middle of the night and infected your brain with something that makes you think of stuff no one thinks about."

17 Your blazing anger has swept over me; * your terrors have destroyed me;

18 They surround me all day long like a flood; * they encompass me on every side.

19 My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me, * and darkness is my only companion.

That's the other thing when we feel acute pain. We are inconsolable. Our friends try to cheer us up, it doesn't work, they get sort of temporarily fed up with us. We are fed up with them b/c "cheering up" is a distraction and we really don't WANT to be distracted from our pain. We want to break through it. We innately sense that being distracted from it prevents progress. Yet we don't want to have pain be "painful" either; it's a hell of a catch-22.

******

Ok, back to my real world for a moment. What I am discovering is that in middle age, and only if you are bold enough, you can uncover healing in the middle of pain. It's like unroofing a blister and letting the fluid drain from it, or lancing a pus-pocket. In the beginning, it might be all you feel is the lack of the pressure of the fluid or pus, but in time you can feel the healing energy of the exercise. I have found that one of the disciplines of my faith that seems to help me in this regard is taking chunks of the Bible apart and "re-formatting it" to make more sense on a personal level. I may not still quite know what to do with what I uncover, but I can at least see a bigger picture and a grander scheme to it all!