Confusion...

I am so lost right now.  Each day I seem to be I am finding the challenge of understanding.  I am lost in the confusion of what my faith has been, and what it will become.  Yet, I am not sure at all what my faith will become. 

Rules... and more rules.  That is how my faith has made sense to me.  I was to listen and obey my elders.  I was to trust that each action was the path that God had placed before me.  And I was never to question God.  God could destroy me if He wanted, and a lack of obedience was an opening for God to destroy me.  

When I was younger I never questioned each action that was given to me.  Each role that I needed to take on.  I welcomed the choices that I found placed in front of me.  Even when those choices created a great level of fear in me for night after night.  I knew I was chosen and that God had played a great role in my being chosen... so I submitted without question.  I didn't understand the role I was chosen for, and yet I willingly learned how to accomplish that role.  I am still trying to understand the emotions that the were created within each act of sacrifice.  

I was brought to the role of his second.  I always knew that he had a first.  The first was his wife.  And she would always hold a place in his heart.  She was the one chosen and the whole world was witness to the day they became one.  I was given that chance to become one, in the dark of night.  After listening to him come home, hearing each step as he navigated the stairs.  And yet, it wasn't me that he was seeking first.  It was her.  He found his way to the room between their room and the one I was asleep in.  The bathroom, a refuge for all at one point or another.  The sounds from the bathroom startled me.  And then he was banging and yelling.  His first had made the choice.  She locked him out of the room that they belonged in together.  And in that simple action, she chose me to become his second on that night.  

In the darkness of our joining... I can remember just a few details.  The smell was overwhelming.  It was a smell that it would take me years to be able to connect to what it was.  It was a smell of alcohol... that and the smell of pee.  Basically at this point I understand that it was the smell of a bar bathroom.  And the smell is something I avoid.  Yet, the smell gave way to touch.  Hands with rough fingers were moving me around like a rag doll.  And then all I can remember is feeling like I was choking in the dark.  Yet, his hands were not on my neck.  How could I feel like I was struggling for each breathe?  And what was it that cemented our relationship?  

What I am left with in many ways is some snapshots that I know traverse time in my life.  And with those snapshots... I hear different things.  Quiet, a baby crying, his panting breathe...  All along with this feeling of drowning.  And yet, at some point in this time line of our relationship...  I was awoken because I was soaking wet.  And there he was... helping me out of the wet clothes...  

Yet, another time...  I woke up sticky.  But I knew whatever it was that I was submitting to was helping.  I found the strength to keep breathing.  And somehow I knew that God would help me sleep.  And sleep became something that only happened,  when I could place a bible under my pillow.  Yet, it was years after that my inability to sleep became an issue.  

I don't recall the exact date that this all started.  I often wish I could have remembered the date that I was chosen.  I remember other important days, but that one is still just a memory without an exact time.  And I often wonder if remembering more would help to prove to others that it was real.  That my mind didn't create these memories, emotions, and feelings...  Even years later when his first informed me that I had created the conditions to be chosen as his second... and that I had enjoyed it.  And that thought in enjoying it and his first being so happy about it...  has made me wonder.  Yet, I also wonder why his first walked away from him.

Even all these years later...  I don't know what I was enjoying.  How anyone could know I enjoyed it.  But I also don't know how to find a path from repentance and penance to this love that is talked about around me.  How can I understand?  What is next?  This is the perfect storm of confusion that I am trying to understand right now...  Where does my relationship with him come into the world of the relationship I have with my faith?

Sometimes it is the simple things...

I have been dealing with a lot lately.  And one of those things, as always, is pain.  Yet the pain I have faced is not back pain.  Pain can come thru many places we tend not to think about.  And often some of these places are clouded with silence.  We are taught not to speak about the place.  Yet the place is vital to our living, and in most people provides a function that we just take for granted.  And in many ways I have taken this function for granted.

Despite having faced major back surgery... it was not something that I thought about as special.  And at that point I felt like I couldn't be more than a few feet from a bathroom.  And trips out were planned on routes with the closest bathrooms by mileage.  And I adjusted, but I still took for granted that everything worked.  I was alive... I was walking... and okay I had to race to the bathroom from time to time... Okay a lot!!!  And yet, each day I just never thought about it.  

I struggled with times when I didn't make it.  And yet, it was nothing because I could walk.  And then one day things changed.  I just wished that day for hours...  I would keep on my schedule and take huge chunks of time in my bathroom.  Each time I would pray for the expected outcome.  Yet when one night 19 hours later... doubled over in pain.. I was praying, just praying to God that He would let me pee.  It was even to the point that I honestly did not care if I wet myself.  I just wanted the pain to go away.  And as the end of a prayer... I finally could in the shower of hot water.  Water so hot it felt like it could have burned me, but it was enough to finally let my body pee.

At that point I was put on a path with one choice of medication... and yet it did help.  Sadly while it made it possible to pee a few times each day, it was creating a new and different level of pain.  Each day would be this struggle... hours upon hours would pass with more pain and no relief.  And yet I would finally reach a point where I would have to the bathroom, and it would feel like it would never stop...  yet once it did the pain just would increase.

Now this lasted as months ticked away... and yet, today I went to a new type of doctor and a gift was given to me.  Honestly while I was surprised how a cath, which is no longer than a pencil could be the solution that has changed my day.  First time, was at the doctor office while she taught me how to do the process myself.  I honestly felt like I was getting a taste of heaven.  Something that had become painful... all of a sudden had a sense of ease.  Months of pain, just turned into a blessing of relief.  Something so simple, that everyone just thinks is normal, and I am now so thankful that despite the path I have been on... I just might have it be something simple.

It makes me so thankful that something so simple, is also changing my ability to see things in the world.  The vibrant colors of leaves.  The cold rain on my face.  And to begin to understand that the simple things are sometimes the most important thing to see.