An Experiement of Grace: Confessions of a Woman in Waiting

My family and I recently laughed at how the synapses in my brain are so weirdly configured. Manifestation: I characteristically over-react to miniscule things and under-react to mighty ones.

Proof Set #1) A- Family fails to call me to dinner. I waltz downstairs to the horror of them seated and enjoying their meal without me: “Of course they would exclude me. They don’t like me, after all. I am unloved, unwanted, undesirable.” Ego wounded, I seek refuge at the gym, and nurse the grief of being unwanted for hours later… B- I am 12, and reading in the passenger seat of our Aerostar as we drive over the Potomac. On the bridge I am temporarily jolted when Mamma rear-ends an elderly woman. Over ambulance sirens, which arrive to quickly transport the old lady to the ER, I give testimony to the events to Daddy on the phone: “Mamma just bumped into the car in front of us. Mamma is overreacting, and everyone’s making a big deal about it.” Our van is towed, the front third caved into itself. My parents spend thousands of dollars not on cosmetics, but to make the thing drivable again.

Proof Set #2) A- Small challenges (at least that’s how the majority of the populace quantifies them, so to the majority I defer), like how to execute a day’s To Do List, paralyze me. Frequently. (Full confession: it’s often a paralysis which might easily germinate into a panic attack.) B- Big challenges (again, so called by most human beings, I adopt the label), on the other hand, like caring for 26 orphaned kids after a natural disaster in a third world country, propel and motivate me.

My family’s laughter exposed that I am a disproportionate over-and-under-reactor. It’s like my brain in its developmental stages missed the memo that “hard” means Hard and “small” means Brush-it-Off, No Big Deal. Reacting “normally” to small things, to big things, to easy, and to hard things, is ab-normal for me.

So last week happens, the aftermath of 1.2 million displaced persons (LINK) outrunning a maniacal and bloodthirsty foe, landing upon the pieces of earth whereon I was to spend this next year living and laboring and loving. The past two years of my life have been invested into preparations to Go but my departure date passed I am here, not there, and my reaction has been--- ??

I am slowly realizing that I have, characteristically, under-reacted to my present set of circumstances. The proof is that I see myself walking back into old dead-end patterns of living. Driving in circles through ruts of criticism and ingratitude, flinging mud from these worn tires onto the people I most love. Running away from intimacy to my fortress of Isolation, the safest place wherein I can feed my own selfishness. (And on the topic of food, Yes, that specter from my past also haunts dangerous (http://www.somethingborrowedandshared.blogspot.com/2010/08/open-door.html), with a magnetism that stimulates my amnesia to resist resistance.) I see myself aggrandizing small things, floundering on where my value lies, questioning if God really loves me, and considering if trusting Him is really rational.

I am realizing that now having no plan but to wait and pray is a very hard plan to successfully execute. I am realizing that it’s hard to be 30 and back living in my parent’s home, indefinitely. That it’s hard to have no defined work, and no income, and no car, and no end in sight. That it’s hard to live within a loosely defined community when the one I left and the one I anticipated were proximate, immediate, and intimate. I am realizing that it’s hard.

Why admit I’m struggling? Why pull off the veil of my under-and-over-reactions? Hopefully, it’s not to elicit your pity (although I wouldn’t put it past me). The reason I write is because I believe there’s a more redemptive utility for my personal failures and irrational reactions.

I know that many friends are praying for me. Thank you. Let my confessions remind you that I need it!

From my thoughtful cousin, Erin Ducan: “I love this quote from Oswald Chambers and hope it encourages you: "When God puts the dark of "nothing" into our experience, it is the most positive something He can give us. If you do anything now it is sure to be wrong, you have to remain in the centre of nothing, and say 'thank you' for nothing. It is a very great lesson, which few of us learn, that when God gives us nothing it is because we are inside Him, and by determining to do something we put ourselves outside Him." - from Not Knowing Wither. OC is discussing darkness that comes after God gives us a vision of His purpose!”

In this Nothing, what could God possibly be doing? I'm considering this an Experiment of Grace...