Sadness

I’ve been sad for so long now. I wear a smile and disguise my voice like I’m a cartoon character sent to spread joy into the world. I pass out prayer candles and inside I feel like a fraud as I repeat the same stories. I tell others about the miracles I witnessed in an ICU room and man who escaped death by the power of prayer. I’ve even allowed myself to get puffed up with pride as if I was the one who was responsible for these powerful prayers.

I remember when we returned from the hospital back into our home and the support staff wasn’t around and there were no more nurses, doctors, therapists or other patients to brag about God’s miracles to when the miracles seemed to slow. Or maybe it was just the solitude that kicked in and made me take an honest look around at my life at the sobering reality that it was a trainwreck. I wrote scriptures on sticky notes all over the house to keep us all optimistic; or so I explained it that way to myself. Then I bought every book I get hold of about miracles and prayer and I read them front to back implementing each ritual as if somehow the right visualization or perfect word sequence would somehow click into place perfectly and unlock the spell that had placed us in the predicament we were in.

When I finally fell exhausted and defeated, I sat on the couch one night in my own thoughts and tears as a Title popped up on my screen sent as a gift from my daughter’s church where she volunteered. The title read, “To Live is Christ. To Die is Gain.” The morbid words sounded like music to my ears as I whispered the text out loud to myself. That’s how I felt – like dying. I thought about such an experience could at last take me out of my suffering, my struggle and to a place of peace and rest for my soul.

When I watched the 12-part Bible study something broke open with me. I understood for the first time the phrase I’d heard, “The Power of the Gospel.” And for a moment, I was utterly and completely set free. In that moment God spoke to the deepest depths of my soul an earth shattering conviction that had power over me; the spirit of pride. And I was shown that pride in this sense isn’t at all like I’d once thought it was to be defined. Pride wasn’t about boasting in your skills or your material possessions or even your looks or accomplishments. Pride was a desire to control what only God can control; the path, protection and provisions of one’s life. I saw it in the way I’d mothered my children; working non-stop to keep them safe from harm as a “Helicopter Mom” that worried always and said “no” often to all the joys they wanted to partake in. I saw myself on the family trip to the Bahamas we’d taken a year before, pacing and panting over every move they made. I worried they’d get bitten by a shark and nearly ruined their snorkelling experience. I worried they’d get kidnapped and therefore wouldn’t let them go ride water slides without me hovering along behind them. I wouldn’t hardly let them ride bikes because I was too terrified they might get struck by a car.

When my husband served me divorce papers on the third anniversary of his tragic brain injury, he took my son with him and I worried I’d die of a heart attack without the ability to tuck him in each night and track his phone 24/7 to keep him on a curfew and safe from doing the wrong things with the wrong people.

Fast forward nearly 7 years later I have found myself in the same cycle, doing the same things but only with new characters along for the ride. With new layers of pain, betrayal and abandonment tied to new layers of trauma and disappointments I have blamed myself every step of the way. And I’ve had a lot of help in doing so.

My mother blames me for marrying a bad guy. My “bad guy” blames me for leaving my son, (the son he viscously took from me in proceedings of bullying and threats through a court system. My son blames me for giving him bad genes, marrying the wrong guy and selfishly leaving him behind. My daughter blames me for being sad. I have blamed myself for all of the above and even a book I wrote back in 2015.

It was a fiction novel about a woman who lost her husband and wrote a book about her life. Then the book was made to film, she plotted her own suicide and considered the production her last mission completed inside of a world that had nothing left for her to hold and then to her surprise, she fell in love with the actor who played the role of her husband from the film, was left after love’s sting and then led to a place through a game of clues that landed her on the top of a staircase in an old abandoned mansion where the guy was there awaiting to surprise her with a newly written chapter to her sad and depressing life. It was the typical tragedy to pain that led to purpose with a plot twist spark of love and a mystery that ended with a happily ever after.

I never believed in fiction and fantasy fables like this and quite honestly I hated movie scripts because they had led me to such heartbreak and disappointment as a child. Believing in a God that answered prayers, a handsome prince that rescues a slave girl from the basement where she’d been prisoned by her wicked stepsisters and believing in a world where daddy’s don’t leave and mothers don’t lie had led me to my first taste of death at age 17 when I tried to take my own life in suicide. The fall from grace for me was a fall from believing that anything could ever be better. The world was broken, cruel, manipulative and mean. I wanted out. I thought if God was real he needed to see that he’d made a grave mistake in sending me to this planet.

In 2022, six years after the tragic night that turned my world upside down and 3 years after I’d been left in divorce, I first remembered the book of Skyla that I’d written and intended to one day publish as a creative writing piece. It was long buried from the rubble in a home remodeling project I’d contracted years before and I found it odd that the memory of the book would hit me with such meaning after so much time had passed without a single thought of it all. But in the midst of remembering a new hope was born and a fear greater than anything I’d ever before faced all in the same package.

I realized that some of the events from the fiction novel looked very similar to my real life. And in realizing this strange phenomenon I lost my grip on reality in a single day. I wondered if the book was a prophecy over my life i’d somehow downloaded in some sort of psychic other-wordly spark of creativity. I wondered if my imagination had tapped into something of divine wisdom. Or, if the book represented something dark; a desire inside of me to see such a tragic story play out and if so; could I have somehow been responsible for what happened to the father of my children?

I had a great life. Why would I write such a strange plot? And why was I so drawn to the character of a movie to make him the lead role in the visions I had in my head about this book back then?

Over the last 4 years I’ve prayed more prayers to Heaven then I could ever attempt to quantify. I’ve suffered deep anguish, pain so intense I’ve trembled like a child in convulsions, I’ve had nightmares, unceasing thoughts of suicide and I’ve pushed away everyone I love in terror of what I was becomming.

TBC……