The Crisis – Day 1

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Several months back, I experienced a cloud of despair. It was short lived, but during that week I documented what I was feeling. I share now, as one chronicle in the complex life of a Christ-following Christian. The following was my Day 1.

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Today, I don’t feel like a good person – a good friend, daughter, mom or wife.  I don’t feel like a good church member or a good example to other women.  

I lay in the tub last night, just as I do many other ordinary nights.  It wasn’t relaxing though, because I felt a crisis within.  All at once, the weightiness of feeling washed over me.  It was feeling out of sorts and off kilter.  It was a strange feeling, not normal, not ordinary.  In that moment, I didn’t know my purpose, my next move, what I was looking forward to tomorrow or next week or this year.  

What’s my next step?  Why do I feel so agitated, ill, apathetic?  Lord, why do I feel this way?  Is this a mid-life thing?  Are my hormones out of control and causing this momentary psychosis?  Are the chemicals in my brain causing misfires – Lord, what is wrong with me?  Will I feel this way tomorrow?  Is this fleeting or is this deeper?

I got out of the bath and put on my t-shirt and shorts, slathered my moisturizer across my face and brushed my teeth.  

That sense of unsettledness was still palpable when I plugged in my phone on the bedside table and lay down for the night.  There was no huge looming crisis, no immediate drama that was quite pervasive enough to cause what I was feeling.  And yet it was there.  Sure, there was the usual background noise in my mind – family dynamics, work discontent, church and faith responsibilities – but nothing seemed heavy enough to cause this looming oppressiveness that I was feeling.  So, why was it there?

I was bombarded with all the calls I haven’t made recently…that should have been made.  The faces of people I should be reaching out to, or at the least praying for…that I haven’t prayed for.  The lack of consistency in reading my bible was there.  So was the lack of motivation to do all of the above.  Not only the “not doing,” but the lack of desire “to do.” And then, there was the annoyance about what other people around me weren’t doing.  

The waves were crashing over me, unsteadying my footing.  And I felt like stopping.  Stopping relationships that were distant and outside of my immediate family; stopping church for a minute, quitting work at my current employer.  Stopping hosting the women’s bible study in my home. Stopping reaching out, or more accurately stopping the guilt of not doing so.

I couldn’t do any of that. But in the moment, the feeling was driving me…

Everything felt too much.  Too much.  And I didn’t feel enough.  And I didn’t want to be! I didn’t want to feel deeply for others.  I didn’t want to feel the weight of other people’s relationship with God or my responsibility to tell them about him.  I didn’t want to open myself up.  It was too much and required too much.  

Dare I even write these words now? How dare I say that?! As a daughter of the King of all Kings – to admit that I didn’t want to care about the spiritual lives of the people around me?! A child of the Most High God, a woman who knows the truth – who in her soul knows Jesus, the creator, the savior – saying it’s too much to be bothered by?

And yesterday, when this all culminated while I lay there in my gradually cooling bath water, I didn’t even have tears.  Not really – instead, just angst.  

It had been a mostly unrushed, not out of the ordinary Lord’s day.  It started with my son, Tye and I hitting the Starbucks drive through for a breakfast treat and a sweet coffee.  It continued at church as light talk with church goers and friends, and then worship songs sung.  Sitting next to my husband under preaching was next and then returning home for leftovers for lunch and Bo working on his shop and me meddling around the house and doing laundry. Then, my sister coming over for a short visit in the afternoon, me feeding the dogs and eating popcorn and enjoying a 7-Up and then getting ready for bed to start another week.  Normal.

So, what was happening?  What was the root?

No health issues, a beautiful marriage, all three children thriving, amazing home, steady income, church family, and above all of my blessings – a daughter of God.  

I have absolutely zero reason to be so selfish, bothered and coming unglued.  Actually, all I was seeing in myself, I often see in others around me and think, “get your act together, Woman! Look at how the Lord has blessed you!”  

All at once, I was the picture of someone coming apart due to their sin of pride, selfishness or apathy.  Whatever it was, it hit me like a freight train and I felt foreign to myself and unhinged.

In the wake of all, today I still haven’t shaken the disconnect and feeling of ick.  I don’t want to talk to anyone about it or therapy it out.  I want to jump out of my skin, run, hide or maybe just lay down and sleep until it passes.  

My focus earlier this week had been on Psalm 78.  The Israelites discussed in its text – those people God led by-the-hand out of slavery from Egypt – can be so frustrating.  Those are the people that he rained down literal food from the sky onto the ground where they were camping after their escape.  He also sent flocks of birds onto their camps for meat, when they had no city yet to dwell in, no work to earn a wage from and no homes yet with foundations.  Even still, in that season, they grumbled, they complained, they worshipped other things, rather than him.

“He remembered that they were but flesh.” 

God didn’t forget they were just human flesh-and-blood, flawed, sinful.  The psalm has reminded me this week, even before this break-down, that I am just as wretched as they are.  I turn away from him just as often.  I can be just as flakey, inconsiderate, and clueless.  My humanity is still worn as a cloak around my soul, even though I am his.  Even though he has saved me and is saving me from judgment and for eternity with him, still the frailty of my humanity can overwhelm at times.  Still my sin can overcome me.  He remembers and reminds me that I am still flesh and I must continually, perpetually, until my last breath, keep going back to Him for repentance and restoration!

We are all broken, flesh, sinful humans.

My Father knew before last night that I would find myself in this place.  Is that why this psalm has been so pressing on my heart for literal days now?! It has both convicted and comforted me in equal ways.

For now as I wait, I don’t need a solution.  I know the solution.  All I can do with all of this, is hold it until it goes away.  Because it will go.  

Seasons always change. This mini season of the soul will change.

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Sister, brother, friend, please remember that every flesh-and-blood Christian has moments just like this one. No matter how many years we walk with our Savior, sometimes we have these hit by a freight train moments that knock us down, leaving us with the wind knocked out of our lungs for a bit. The tendency is first shame.

How could I fall down this way? After all the years of church and growing and walking with him? How now?

In the process of being sanctified (growing in holiness – looking more and more like an image bearer of Jesus on earth), to keep us from being puffed up, conceited with our own strengths or maybe just to remind us of who we are apart from God, we will have dips and valley free-falls.

If you are there, you are not alone. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. The gift is when you belong to the King of Kings, you won’t stay there! Sometimes prayer and reading the Bible won’t magically and immediately pull you out of the funk. Sometimes the cloud of darkness will hover for a bit. But keep pressing in, keep asking him for help. He will!

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For a proof of this, please read I Kings 18 through chapter 19. A prophet named Elijah who experienced great victories in God’s strength found himself in a free-fall valley where he wanted to give up and die. The sweet kindness of God through an angel in chapter 19 speaks to how God sometimes tells his children to “get up and eat” and then allows us to just lay down and rest. No condemnation – instead, fatherly love to an emotionally, physically, and spiritually spent child. His story will bless and encourage you!

My next chronicled days of processing through the despair will follow.