What It's Really All About - Part 1

This morning I awoke feeling unsettled, my mind filled with images of being sexually abused. I asked God, what it was all about and burst into tears. Then came sobbing and pain in my heart and more and more and more crying.

Over the past few days I’ve felt something was off, felt the occasional twinge of pain in my heart; my behaviour has been a bit manic at times. I’m not easily depressed at least not anymore. I am, in fact, probably one of the happiest people on earth – I was born that way. That tendency to happiness has stood me in good stead particularly during the years when I lived in a cloud of depression – from the time when my parents were killed, when I was about four and one-half or five, until my mid-twenties when through much therapy and much prayer and steady outpourings of grace the lights were turned up and everything became brighter and sharper and clearer; though God had given me great interior illumination throughout my childhood, once healed, I felt as if I had never experienced real light before. The healing process continues and now depression is a rarity. Still, on occasion, something will poke me and I know, time for more healing.

When I began studying philosophy last autumn, my spiritual director told me to ask the questions to which I don’t already have answers. I find myself doing just that more and more. Certainly, I don’t know the answers to being and remaining open to marriage for years, perhaps even for the rest of my life. But it really doesn’t surprise me that exploring the question reveals tender places and unhealed wounds. In fact, if this is as important as I believe it to be, I expect writing about it to be a dredging process; if there were no impact on me, the question wouldn’t be worth asking. Still, I am not accustomed to waking to such thoughts. Neither am I accustomed to bursting into tears that continue and continue and continue.

In answer to my question this morning about the thoughts that filled my mind and the sobbing and tears, I found myself face to face with white hot terror and thinking, Nobody wants me! It’s an old fear that is particularly healed in the experiences of community, of the Body of Christ which saturate my life today. But not so many years ago, when I found an antique volume of Tennyson’s poems and joyfully told my Anglican rector about it, he told me to read Maud and then quoted, Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null...; I realized he was talking about me. This morning, memory of him quoting those words accompanied the white hot terror and I found myself feeling there would be no sustainer, nobody who wanted me and it was all my fault.

I wanted to delve into them, to analyze all the reasons men might see experience me as Maud. And I could have filled the rest of the morning distracting myself with them, picking them apart, laying them out neatly and trying to justify or resolve each one. Except the feelings and reasons don’t matter. The fact is that I am terrified that nobody wants me and it is my fault but, at the same time, I am called to be open to marriage and that is utterly ludicrous. Utterly impossible. I just don’t know how to do it.

Recently my rheumatologist prescribed injections of methotrexate to treat the autoimmune diseases with which I live. Arrangements were made for a nurse to teach me to inject myself. I was given a fake leg to practice and merrily filled the syringe and stabbed the unfeeling rubbery plastic several times injecting it with a good amount of saline solution. Then it was time for me to inject myself. Filling the syringe – no problem. Ditto swabbing and pinching the site. I plunged the needle towards my leg but suddenly stopped short just as it touched my skin. “I can’t,” I told the nurse. “I just don’t know how to choose to hurt myself.”

She said, “Look, I’ll hold your hand and we’ll do it together.” I watched her take hold of my hand and when I stopped short once again, she gently continued to push it forward until we had plunged the needle into my leg. Doctors and technicians stab me with great regularity and it always hurts but surprisingly, this injection didn’t, not even a little prick of pain.

As I recall learning to inject myself, as I consider the terror that no one will want me and it is all my fault, as I am tempted to delve into all the reasons why I don’t know how to be open to marriage, I realize once again, I don’t need to know how to do it. Belonging to God means there are infinitely strong, unimaginably gentle hands wrapped around mine; the experience of his arms holding me is present in my earliest memories. He will provide the way for me to be open despite all the tender places and wounds.

I am not writing a “how to” manual for myself or for anyone else. And ultimately, the real terror is not that nobody wants me but rather that I am not really open to marriage, not really open to the violence of divine love. And that is unacceptable because there is something I want so much more than marriage. I want to live Fiat! In reality not just in my words. There is a song I desperately want to sing. A song of mercy and love, a tiny echo of that greater Magnificat. He who is mighty continues to do great things and being open to marriage is all about being open to his gentle might.