January 11, 12, 2006

January 11

I've been going through a difficult time again. Yesterday, even though I got quite a few errands done and business taken care of, my mind kept going over and over the more distressing aspects of the last several years as though I were trying to solve a puzzle or loosen a hopeless tangle.

Although I now know and understand a lot of what went wrong and that it is over and can't be changed, sometimes my mind won't let it rest. While yesterday it felt like my emotions were in overdrive, today they feel blunted and numb. It is all still part of the gradual healing process and I have to be patient with myself even when that isn't my impulse. God is gently helping me over each of the hurdles I am facing each day, to the extent that I am hardly noticing them. But today I didn't try to do too much. My mind just needed rest. I am learning to sense God's presence whether I am emotionally raw or numb...or in that happier stable pattern that sometimes emerges in between.

Tomorrow I have someone coming by to give me an estimate for putting gutters on the roof at the corner where the wall leaked. Well...it's a start. But it is supposed to rain heavily again over this weekend.

January 12

Sharing my "personal testimony" concerning what happened to me immediately following B's suicide is a little risky because it doesn't fit neatly into everyone's theology. But then, God as I have experienced Him doesn't fit neatly into anything and I'm glad of that.

As I mentioned before, I was saved several times over as a child. Actually I'm quite certain I was saved the first time I sincerely asked Him into my heart, but it happened so many times that I can't remember which time came first. I had no concept of being saved "once for all"...of it being an irreversible covenant or contract that God had deliberately made irreversible on His end so that we could rest in the sure knowledge that nothing could ever separate us from His love. His Spirit within us is a deposit guaranteeing our eternal life...in fact it IS our life. But when we don't realize this we tend to ask the Lord for salvation over and over again whenever we have done something particularly sinful (somehow we imagine He'll overlook the little stuff because of what Jesus did but that He still has to draw a line somewhere) or even when we have just drifted away from a certain level of emotion toward God or had our attention and heart captivated by someone or something else for long enough that we have felt distanced from Him. The denomination that I grew up in definitely taught that salvation once owned cannot be lost, but for some reason the point never quite hit home to me until years later when B and I were both listening to the grace teachings of Bob George on the radio.

Sometimes when we've heard something expressed a certain way since before we can even remember, the familiar words can lose their meaning. Someone else can come along and express the same basic ideas in fresh terms and it all comes alive for us again. I believe this is why God likes to use so many different voices from so many very different personalities to tell His story.

If we do grasp that salvation is irreversible another difficulty arises when we are taught, or come up with the idea all on our own, that if we ever come to feel a certain way or get involved in a certain level of sin then it must be because our salvation wasn't valid in the first place. This can lead to a constant anxiety about whether or not we are really saved; whether or not we were sincere enough when we asked Him in; whether or not our faith was strong enough; whether or not we understood right or said the right words. We must have missed something because if we were really saved we couldn't possibly be in this mess!

But as much as our pride might not like it so, a saved person's flesh nature is still capable of anything. The flesh doesn't improve...it just is what it is. There is no good thing in it. The Spirit is our source of new life. This is why the Bible tells us that when we walk in the Spirit we won't be fulfilling the sin desires of the flesh. But just because we are not always walking in the Spirit doesn't mean the Spirit has left us. What "mode" to walk in is a choice that we make continually. We choose to walk in the Spirit in direct proportion to our realization of our new identity in Him and our understanding of and trust in His perfect love and relentless good will toward us. But no amount...NO amount of walking in the flesh can negate our salvation. Naturally it can cause us a real messy heap of other problems to deal with, but it can't take away our security in Christ or make God love us any less or change for one moment His unstoppable determination to ultimately use everything, up to and including our weaknesses and sins, to bring about our highest good.

After about ten years of marriage and a so-so walk together in the Christian faith B and I learned anew about God's grace from Bob George's radio ministry and from a very refreshing local pastor, a Jewish Christian named Jeff Title. These four or five years sandwiched between the stressful years when we learned to cope with and accept our son's autism and the unlivable later years when B's emotional illness escalated were, without doubt, the happiest of our marriage. We had, together, come to a new understanding of the relentless love of God and this created a wonderful bond between us.

Looking back now I see that our newfound understanding of this beautiful truth was perhaps more intellectual than spiritually internalized. Recall that I have told you that B and I were both extremely insecure, shy and introverted in our own ways. While the idea that God loved and accepted us unconditionally and irreversibly in Christ was at once captivating and liberating, somehow as life went on and we continued to "fail" in the ways that we related to the world, other people and each other we became discouraged and disillusioned. Although we accepted the way God loved us in theory, in practice we were still both very much living out the extremely negative self-images we'd acquired from our past hurts and failures, our unusual isolation and the rejections and opinions of the world at large. In our minds we understood how God loved us, but we failed to build up and base our own identities on the Rock of that love. When the rains came, and oh how the rains came, I see that instead of clinging to who we were in Jesus and trusting Him we both attempted, in our own various ways, to handle things, cope with things, fix things ourselves and keep things under our own desperate control.

If one has a history of trying and failing, it is easy enough to imagine that NOT trying, letting go, will bring about an even greater failure. It is like a drowning man in the sea. He knows perfectly well that he can't swim because he's never been able to swim in his life, but that doesn't stop him from trying. Finding himself suddenly in deep water, he thrashes around wildly instead of relaxing and letting the water hold him up. He may even foil a skilled swimmer's attempts to help him because he is too busy fighting the water to trust someone else to take over. When the deluge came and we found ourselves in very deep water, we flailed about madly and quickly began to sink. Then, instead of seeing our failure to save ourselves and our increasing pain as a warning signal to reach out and cling to God, we began to blame.

B's natural tendency was to blame himself and hate himself when things went wrong. I think that much of his obsessive worrying sprang from a deeply ingrained feeling that averting ever-lurking disaster was all his personal, exclusive responsibility; while at the same time he had absolutely no confidence whatsoever in his ability to avert anything. It was as though he believed himself to be his own life raft, knowing full well that this raft was full of holes. This, among other problems in his internal life, led to extreme self-hatred and eventually out-of-control terror and despair.

My own errant response to hurts and disappointment is what led to my bitterness. I blamed everyone and everything else for my pain...all the way up to and including God. When the bottom fell out of my relationship with B, I tried to fix things myself by attempting to become a completely different person. I suppose my instinctive but faulty reasoning told me that if nobody could love the person I really was I would simply force myself into an image they could love. I took this image directly, pre-packaged, from the world and the media. I felt that B wanted this image more than he loved me...so I knocked myself out to the point of exhaustion trying to attain that image, complete with the attitude I felt went along with it. However, as a forty-something woman with a large nose, big feet and a body that could never quite be convinced to bounce back from my previous overweight years...all of this led to great frustration, intense anger and a growing resentment and bitterness.

During that time I lost a great deal of weight, which to the outside observer looked like a healthy, positive thing that was making me happier. But on the inside my impetus and motivations were frustrated rage, intense pain, deep insecurity and a sense of utter betrayal. I understand now that I wanted and NEEDED to be loved and accepted unconditionally and I was both furious and emotionally devastated when all of my fondest illusions about being loved that way in a romantic, human relationship had been ripped away.

As I reaped the shallow rewards of looking better to B and to the world in general, I seethed inwardly and the set-aside, genuine me felt completely betrayed and unloved. But letting go of my "new image" would certainly, to my mind, only lead to feeling even more rejected and unloved, so I began to cling to it more and more obsessively and desperately. Even though it didn't bring me any real peace, it became my everything. Something ugly within me grew and became quite ruthless. During many weaker moments my control would slip and the genuine, needy me would give in and frantically soothe its pain with the deeply entrenched childhood habit of eating to feel better. At these times sheer terror would eventually set in that my image would be destroyed and before long I was slipping farther and farther into the frightening, tug-o-war life of a bulimic.

There was never any lack of communication in our marriage. B knew how I felt and tried to repair the damage He paid my new image a great deal of attention. He was sometimes rather confused when his compliments actually seemed to make me feel worse. I think that his lavish homage to an image that I had purchased at the unacceptable price of the real me further alienated the true self...that crying infant I'd stuffed below decks. B seemed to be saying, "I love this new you... I love you because..." when I needed to hear "I love you forever... I love you regardless... I just love YOU."

But of course he was then struggling with his own worsening problems with paranoia and anxiety and couldn't really seem to comprehend or identify with my pain. Whether he understood it or not, I too had left reality and entered into the realm of a sickness. My obsessive insecurity left me stranded in a no-man's-land where he couldn't reassure me anymore. If he ignored me...I resented it. If he praised me...I resented it. He never really did figure out exactly what it was I wanted and needed. I didn't really understand it myself. It couldn't be gotten from him any more than what he needed at the time could have been gotten from me.

And still we tried. We always tried. To the very end there were parts of each of us that felt deep compassion for the other and wanted only to help. I wanted to relieve his worries and fears and make him feel better just as much as he wanted to make me feel secure again. But our constant failure to fix or help each other only made us both feel more discouraged and angry at ourselves. Over time we began to pull apart and live more and more separate lives because our interactions were so painful. We both turned for comfort more and more to things that deepened the chasm between us.

In the last couple of years of his life, B had a series of breakdowns that revolved around his worries about certain work-related situations and health issues that he had blown completely out of proportion to the extent that it was obvious to everyone but himself that his thinking was paranoid. He had always, since childhood, been a worrier and a micromanager who tended to dream up worst case scenarios about everything and then stew over them. If my insecurity made it difficult for him to live peacefully with me...his constant debilitating worry and relentless negativity and anxiety made it increasingly difficult for me to live with him. Despite my worsening bulimia and my self-image issues I still tended to be someone who could put things on the back-burner and relax for a bit, enjoy a meal or a movie, have a good laugh. Not B. Everyone who knew him had to agree that the man didn't HAVE a back-burner. Lacking the ability to put his fears out of his mind for a time, the only times he could really relax and enjoy anything was when he had nothing at all to worry about...and that happy state became more and more rare as his mind began to create non-existent problems to fill in the gaps. It hurt him...he suffered a great deal. I cried with him many times because as much as he wanted relief he just couldn't stop the worrying and negative thinking and they led him to despair and eventually to suicidal thoughts.

Think of one of your own worst bouts with extreme worry and anxiety over some truly frightening problem. Now imagine that feeling continuing with little or no relief for days, weeks, months. It isn't any wonder that he eventually started to think in terms of escaping his own mind. At times we would have long discussions in which he would try to convince me that suicide could be a reasonable thing for someone to do if they were suffering enough. My answer was always that there had to be a cure, a better solution; that he should hang on and we should look until we found it. But he always forcefully resisted seeking any sort of help or seeing a doctor or therapist about his problems, mainly because his fears had him believing that he would then lose his job. This was always one of his deepest terrors even though his job was actually quite secure and his employers did everything they could to reassure him.

About a year before B's death he seemed to sink into another of his obsessive episodes. It went on for a few weeks and one day at work he dialed 911 and told them that he was suicidal. He was taken to the ER and this brought us into the realm where he was finally forced to seek treatment. Unfortunately, treatment consisted mostly of major drug therapy which did settle out the worst of his extreme agitation and rage behaviors, but wrung him out; stole all of his energy to the point where most of his time not working was spent in a listless stupor or sleeping. Then about the time this effect began to wear off he would feel almost normal for a week or two, creating a short period of false hope before the anxiety inevitably began to creep in again. Whenever the anxiety returned he had a very stubborn tendency to resist seeking any additional help saying that it didn't do any good anyway and that it was obvious no one could really help him. If I waited too long to get him back to the doctor his condition would escalate out of control and he would have frightening episodes of rage or horrible panic attacks that lasted for hours. But when I did somehow coerce him into going back to the doctor and the help obtained didn't last he would then often blame me, saying that I was just prolonging everything and making it all worse. I felt like I was between a rock and a hard place. Whatever I did it seemed to be wrong. I couldn't "get a fix" on him anymore. At times I tried to do what I could to repair what damage there was between us hoping that that would help, but one moment he would seem receptive and the next moment he would be pushing me away and saying that it wasn't about me...that our relationship was only a side issue and that he just "couldn't handle life". His thoughts, opinions and emotions changed so frequently that I never knew who I was dealing with or what the "real B" thought and felt...or if there even existed a "real B" anymore. He felt this confusion himself and his despair grew.
I could tell a million stories about B and I during this last year; of how many times I helped him and how many times I hurt him and made things worse because I couldn't cope with it all either. Our relationship had already had some serious problems. I was dealing with my own sickness, coping with my teen-age son's autism, and now I was helplessly watching my husband slowly lose his mind and there didn't seem to be any stopping it. I still don't know for sure what was wrong with him. He was officially diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder but he had also been diagnosed at one time as possibly Bi-Polar and when I had subsequently read a book about Bi-Polar Disorder he seemed to me, who knew him best, to closely fit the description of someone who had a less common type of Bi-Polar with what was described as "mixed episodes". I do believe that he had a brain chemical imbalance of some sort that got much worse as he got older, but my understanding is limited. I know that wrong attitudes and thinking certainly contributed to his worries and problems, but from what I saw there was also something very much beyond his control taking over and it was extremely frightening to both of us.

Sometimes my own responses were kind and loving and bordered on the heroic; at other times I was selfish, terrified and just wanted to run. While B was considering suicide to escape his reality, we each occasionally brought up divorce as a way to escape the stressful torture chamber our marriage had become. We had come that far. We seemed less and less able to help each other and more and more inclined to feel overwhelmed by and react negatively to each other's pain and to turn away and seek comfort elsewhere.

In those last few years I had isolated myself from most of my friends and family. I didn't want to reveal the strange caving-in of my world to people who seemed to be living normal lives, but I didn't have anything else to talk about with them either. Little anyone said or cared about seemed relevant to me or pertinent to my own waking nightmare. I grew less and less capable of relating to anyone normally. While part of me knew it was I who was withdrawing, another part of me resented the separation, the alienation. Sometimes a diseased part of me even begrudged them their normal, relatively stable lives. I didn't wish them any harm; it just hurt to hear about happiness. I wanted to run, to hide, to escape from what my life had become. I didn't think that anyone would truly understand those feelings, so I generally kept quiet and kept my distance.

If I had been a personality with a suicidal bent of my own, I may well have gone there myself during this period. I won't say that the thought never fleetingly occurred to me. If I hadn't had a helpless, innocent, autistic son to look after I might have simply walked away or disappeared...or tried to. I felt completely trapped in a hellish situation with no viable way out. I continued to ravage my body with starvation diets, bouts of bulimia and on isolated occasions I abused alcohol to escape the emotional pain and loss. A number of times when B and I fell into yet another heartbreaking, no-win argument of some sort I would "flip out" and begin hitting myself in the head and thighs, leaving my legs and hands bruised for days.
For his part, B never hurt our son, myself, or anyone else. Not once. Considering the intensity of the horrible emotions and confusion he was feeling, I recognize this as a tribute to his basic gentleness, his genuine love for us, and to the presence of God beneath his illness. A few times he approached me threateningly; threw, broke or overturned objects and made a horrible mess. He would then proceed to meticulously clean up and fix everything with obvious shame and regret as soon as he'd calmed down.
Many more things happened than I can include in any book. There are some aspects of the story that are either too painful and personal to write about or that are simply not mine alone to tell; but I think I have conveyed a general sense of where each of us lived when the curtain came down and the unthinkable happened.

During those last three years I had bottomed-out spiritually. The sources of my pain seemed relentless and I suppose my expectations of God were that He would take away these sources rather than seeing me through it all in His own way and time. Inasmuch as I isolated myself from almost everyone in my life, I eventually completely turned my back on God. Something inside of me had rather not believe in Him at all than believe that He couldn't or wouldn't stop the craziness and pain. I was never ready to completely rule out the existence of God, but I had, in effect, flung up my hands and admitted that I didn't understand Him anymore and wasn't at all sure He was even there. Or, when I did sense Him there, I guess I saw Him more as Someone who, if acknowledged, would simply want more from me than I had left to give. I was terrified that He would only rip away the coping mechanisms that seemed to be keeping me functioning, leaving me with no comfort at all. Where had my belief in grace gone? Why was I again thinking of God in those terms? I really don't know. With my family I avoided the entire subject as much as possible and with my friends who were not believers I openly labeled myself an agnostic. I'd shut Him out of my life, and for a long while anything to do with God or my previous faith seemed to me only nostalgically painful, vaguely threatening or downright annoying.

And then my husband committed suicide.