Here we go again, with another update on my life before I get into the meat of my blog.
The update is: since January, when I completely fucking lost my mind, I've been playing with my medications to try and find the right balance. We thought just popping me onto Wellbutrin in the winter, then back off again in the summer would be fine, but as soon as I went off of it, I started getting manic - not happy fun manic, but angry manic, because why should I have anything good in my life? That was mostly a joke.
Anyway, I was super high anxiety, angry at myself and others, and getting these super weird suicidal urges. I have literally never had that before. I've been what I would call suicidal before, but it came from an empty place and wasn't like this. Plus, I figure if I was actually going to do it, there'd be drama. I'd put on opera and light candles and shit. I mean, you don't know for sure, but what I'm saying is, these were not like that, and were super weird. It wasn't like I was dwelling, or had a plan, it was a sudden, very strong urge to whack my head as hard as I could against any hard, smooth thing that I happened to see. Sinks, granite counter-tops, stone railings, etc. WEIRD. Also: CLEARLY A PROBLEM
So I went back to the doctor and she put me back on Wellbutrin and also on a mood stabilizer and now:
I am feeling better than I have in years. I haven't felt this good since I first went on Lamotrigine. I guess I know that my illness is degenerative, which is terrifying, but I had been on the same dose of the same medication for 6 years, and I figured I would be ok if I just kept it up forever. Not so.
I am sleeping normally and have no particular desire to drink/fuck everything, so I'm pretty sure I'm not manic. That's the most frustrating thing about this whole business.
It's hard to appreciate my own happiness because it's always suspicious. The manic phases I do have are usually either mild or angry or both, so I have trouble determining whether I'm happy or manic, especially when it lasts this long. Also, I'm so accustomed to being depressed that I assume that happiness like this is fleeting, so I'm always poised, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It can't last forever, so rather than enjoy it, I spend the whole time watching anxiously for the end I know is coming. UUUUUUGGGGHHH. Stop. I'm working on it.
Anyway, I think this is a real thing and that I have my meds figured out and also that I'm going to write a book (though that's what I said the last time my meds made me feel good for more than a day).
Speaking of, I've been having real difficulty moving past my bitterness toward the WELS, because moving past bitterness is not a thing we do in my family, and I don't really know how. I'm trying, but it's hard and I don't know how. Also, when I left rather publicly, I got a lot of private messages from women who were fed up with a lot of the same things I was fed up with, and since then, I feel like every time we get together, it gets brought up again. I don't' think I'm always the one bringing it up. This tells me that these women feel like their voices aren't' being heard, and I want to give them a platform to do that.
So I decided to conduct a bunch of interviews and put them together into a book. I'm going to start with the women who reached out to me, but I also want to get some women who are happy with the WELS, both in the interest of journalistic integrity and in the interest of trying to find some peace withing myself. I want their voices to be heard too. This isn't supposed to be a tearing-down project, just a telling project. I'll probably also get some interviews with pastors in there when I run up against theological questions. I'm excited, and I hope it goes somewhere.
It's something like something I've always wanted to do - compile a bunch of interviews into a big journalistic work. I never thought it'd be this, but there you go. We'll see how it pans out.
On to the main point I wanted to cover, which I don't really have much to say on, but which has been bothering me lately.
Part of the reason I left the WELS is because of their refusal to discuss matters of Christian living, being so terrified that we might misinterpret and believe that our righteous works are what get us into heaven. The problem with this, for me, is that it started to come up short. Yes, I know that I am saved by grace - now what? Please tell me now what!? It seems like it should be so simple, but I don't know that it is! We are told that being a Christian should change you - but into what? Furthermore, it's something I don't see - in the world or in myself. I've been doing a lot of thinking about what it is that God wants of me. Going through my old blog posts, I'm deeply embarrassed by some of the things I've put out there, but then I think, "That was 2 years ago - I'm at a different place in my faith journey now!" Which is true. But I have been on this journey for a while. What does God want? Is it even possible? What kind of Christian am I? Do I believe in God at all?
I guess my struggle is: What about those times when my faith is weak? Can obedience make up for it? Can you worship a God you only 40% believe in? (I mean, of course, that the acts are not done for other people's benefit, but to make up for a personal feeling of inward doubt - making sure, perhaps, that if he is up there you're not falling too short, or maybe hoping that the doing will help with the feeling, a desperate attempt to cling to something you feel like you're losing) Or vice-versa: What if you're not up to it, in the works department? There are things you should be doing, and your faith is strong, but your flesh and will are weak? The example set by Christ is too high a bar, but the example is there every day nonetheless.
Husband and I are doing a read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year thing before bed (almost) every night. Now that we go to different churches, it's nice to have some element of our faith lives be together. The structure of these things is such that you have an OT reading, a NT reading, and a bit from either Psalms or Proverbs every night. For a while there, the story of Abraham overlapped with the Sermon on the Mount. Everyone remembers the Sermon on the Mount for the Beatitudes, but tends to forget that the rest of it is in the "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" vein. Abraham (who was kind of a dick) was asked to sacrifice his son, but stopped at the last minute, having proved himself and passed the test.
My question has always been: was it a test of faith, or a test of obedience? On their way to the site, Abraham's son asks him where the sacrificial animal is, and Abraham says, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering." He also tells his servants that they will both be back. Is this him showing faith that these things will actually happen, or is he just lying to get his son to come with him? Also, he's kind of an asshole - does he get to just keep being an asshole as long as he follows God's commands? Does he believe that he is going to kill his son, or does he trust that God has a plan? Of course, Hebrews states that they could both be true - he believed that God could raise the dead, and he trusted in his promise to make his descendants into a great nation, so there was no conflict.
Perhaps this is how it should always be, that there is no conflict. But I wasn't raised with a very good idea of the balance of these things, or with any discussion of how my faith was supposed to look in my life, really, so I'm trying to figure it all out now, on my own, and it's all very big and confusing.
My friend Nathan tells me that St. Peter was the one who fell through the water, the one who denied Christ 3 times, the one to whom Jesus said, "Get behind me, Satan!" But he was also the writer of several books of the Bible and the first pope. Nathan tells me that St. Peter isn't the only fuck up that Jesus ever loved.
My favorite book is Jany Eyre, because it's the story of how an angry, rebellious, abused, not-very-religious little girl grows into a powerful Christian woman. It's about standing firm on your foundation and holding to your morals, even when it seems impossible. It's about Jane struggling with the conflicting interests of her faith and her independence, her spirituality and her individuality, and coming, at the end, to realize that there is no conflict. There is balance, and there is peace.
I see myself so much in her, in the way that she interacts with the world, but I'm not as strong as she is. In the end, my driving force isn't my faith or my individuality or love or anything. It's survival, and when that switch gets flipped, the rest goes out the window.
I guess that's really the struggle. A few months ago, an intersection of losing our food stamps and not being able to adjust our bills fast enough left us for a month or two where we couldn't afford to buy food - I mean, we ate a lot of pasta and beans. We had some food. It flipped that switch and I was back in survival mode bam! like I haven't been in years. And I realized that it hadn't gone away. All the progress I thought I'd made was just window dressing, that I just hadn't felt this threatened in a long time, and when I did, it all came back up again. I didn't act on most of it. But to realize it was all still in there scared me.
So then I wonder - when do I turn into this person? When do I get to be the person I'm supposed to be? In books, you go through a journey of discovery and at the end, you are somebody. That's not how life works. You never are anybody for very long. That's ok. That's real. And I can't expect change overnight. It takes work, which I can't really even do when I'm not healthy (see the whole first half of this post, ugh), and it's a life-long thing.
I'm a fuck up. That's ok. We're all fuck ups. That's the fallen world we live in. But St. Peter isn't the only fuck up that Jesus ever loved.
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