8/13/07
the morning may have been my favorite kind, mild and damp and gray, but it didn't matter because everything hurt. getting out of bed felt like trying to resurrect a corpse. i'm not yet 23, and i move with the litheness and grace of a mummy.
the moment i dropped caleb off at chs, i was back in the egg and driving away. no mood to talk, no state to linger. i know what is polite and even decent, but pain makes me selfish and the selfish me is neither polite nor decent. have fun at saranac, kids. i hope God touches your life, etc etc, but i'm going back to my coffin to petrify for another five hundred years.
and that's what i did. heard the alarm, but i smothered it and stayed in bed until i couldn't even pretend to be tired anymore. until i had no other excuse. it was 1:58 pm. the sun was shining. insects were humming. i had missed church completely.
be grateful, hissed a voice as i robotically sat up. you have use of your limbs. remember those kids at capernaum? you can still talk and think and read and walk and you're upset about this? this tiny thing?
but the rest of me weighed a million pounds and i couldn't move my face or turn my head without splitting skin like the cracks in the desert floor. my stomach rumbled but i didn't feel up to the task of opening my mouth wide enough to eat.
so that was going to be my day, the day when i had the house to myself. i was going to spend it moping and crying out incoherent prayers and trying not to see any mirrors. i don't know how people do it. how can anybody pray and read the Bible and praise God when she's really wanting to scream or crawl back into bed and never ever come out again? how can anybody think about someone other than herself when every creaking movement is a reminder of the culmination of the physical, emotional, and spiritual frustration and self-pity of twenty-two years, eleven months, three hundred and sixty one days? im-po-ssi-ble.
while i was busy feeling sorry for myself, monica called to see if i wanted to hang out. honestly, i didn't. i wanted to lie on the couch and concentrate on not thinking. but she came over with a pizza and two snapple and a couple of chick flicks and i didn't have the energy to refuse. and then rebekah came too.
pizza isn't that hard to eat because you don't have to open your mouth that wide.
"the holiday" was pretty wonderful.
"because i said so" was pretty terrible.
and there was mo, and there was rebes, and they could remind me that it really isn't that bad, and i'm only alone if i choose to be.
so.
i'm feeling a lot better now, and sort of ashamed of myself.
You know i tried, i did try, at least a little, to take today like a grown-up and like someone You could be proud of. You know that i started to pray at least five or six times, even if i did not manage to keep it up. but You also knew that i couldn't do it on my own so You intruded on my privacy and i'm glad You did.
You got me through today. and i believe that You're going to get me through tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until the day comes when i finally give up doubting that You are willing, and able, to give me some real kind of relief from all this. not just the skin problems, but the cynicism, and the self-pity, and the unbelief.
God, i'm sorry for being a baby. i'm sorry for not trusting You.
and You know that i'm probably going to forget this lesson soon. maybe tomorrow. and You're going to teach it to me again. because You know how i am, and you've already proven that you are more than willing. and more than able.
so, thanks.