Fear can take over my life rather quickly. And this past week it has. You see, I met with my pastor and we talked. Now to most people that would be a good thing. To me it is a double edged sword. One that I needed, but was not ready to face. Hence the fear.
You see, I understand love when it comes to me loving others. But to hear the words God loves, well that is enough to send me packing and looking for where I can run away to. I can handle love, when I am helping others. I can handle love when I am on my knees. Hell, I can even handle love when my own life is in danger. But in all of these cases I am loving someone else.
I loved my mother, but struggle to even understand why at the very end of her life she told me that she loved me. I can remember the fear that I had for so much of my life trying to make up for a mistake that I am not sure even now how I could fix. How do you fix the fact that your own mother regretted that you were born? I did my best to be the perfect daughter for her. And yet I always lived in fear that what I did was never going to be enough. I couldn't maintain a household the way she wanted. I couldn't clean or do any of my jobs to the level that she desired. I never could be smart enough or have good enough grades. And at one point I can remember that she had me tested in school to join a fast track. So, I took the test to quantify my intelligence. As my luck would have it when the results came back I had scored one point below the score required to move into the gifted classes. Yet, the score showed that I was extremely intelligent. Here I had tested at the level of a genius, and yet was stupid and a failure all because of one point. Down the road I would take the test again in high school, but I never heard what those results were. I just was not what my mother had wanted.
In school, I struggled through. I only was able to maintain a B average. And at times I was taking classes below my own level. Math was like a foreign language to me. And while I could trudge through it, I never found it to be easy. I dabbled in languages trying Spanish, French, German, and even Latin. And in English, I avoided a great deal of the books that we were required to read. And yet I was always reading. But then who really wanted to read Lord of the Flies? My brain could absorb random facts, but even in History and Science the simple memorizing of facts left me feeling pulled under. The funny was that in 10th grade biology I did a report on mitochondrial DNA, which my own teacher said did not exist. And reading Shakespeare was easier than understanding Moby Dick. All this time in my life... I feared that I wasn't doing enough. I couldn't keep my room perfect. I couldn't be first at all that I did. And I barely had any friends. And the friends I had were just the kind that a mother wouldn't want. They introduced me to smoking, and some eventually to drinking. I feared getting caught, but the calm that smoking gave me was worth the fear.
I moved on with my fears in life to add not having picked the correct major in college... not having good enough grades... not working enough hours to help support my family... The list that I feel is branded into my very skin grew longer and longer. Each day adding more and more failures, which in our world were sins. And the daily repentance that I needed to do before God became a weight that I still feel is dragging me under.
Yet, within all of those fears... one fear existed that dwarfed the rest. The fear of secrets being revealed. You see, we didn't talk about things unless they were being used to help someone else. So, when my mother learned what had happened to me as a child... we could talk about it, if we were going to press charges to help my aunt and cousins out. The minute that I said no... we never spoke of that past again. Though we often spoke of my burden to save my cousins from their own choices as they grew up. I was required to reach out and help them... to save them. And that added to another of my failures.
But the fear of the darkness escaping and secrets being known... that is enough to still want to send me packing and find a place on this earth where I can hide even from God. Yet, God never leaves us or forsakes us. So, where can I hide? And where was He in all that darkness? I wish I had answers for those questions... but I don't right now. What I do know is that in talking to my pastor the darkness escapes. With that the emotions come... and the fear inside of me grows. Those nights when I prayed to God to disappear and still was found on the bed are shared with this human being. And I am breaking the biggest rule in our family... Nothing is spoken of outside of the family. But then nothing is spoken of within the family. These have been moments of darkness that I have been carrying by myself for years. I learned how to package them neatly in nice little boxes with all the feelings and memories... and built inside of me a vault to hold all of these boxes.
In these past few years... those boxes have been shaken up inside the vault. And the darkness began to find a way to reveal itself. My desire for death became visible. And the panic that I live with began to show itself even in church. And in my fear of death, I began to talk. And that would be why I met with my pastor this past week. And while I could tell you all the details which would take a whole additional post... I will leave you with this. He and I talked until we reached a point where He said that God always provides a way to escape the action. And that has brought me a new level of fear. If I could have escaped, what did I do wrong that I didn't. What moment did I miss that would have allowed me to escape the darkness? This has been added to my already ongoing conversation inside of me of what did I do to deserve the punishment that I was given. And when the two conversations are going full force... I find that fear is my constant companion. It is not something that I want. And maybe in the near future I will be able to let fear leave my side. But for right now... fear is on the double edged sword that I face in talking to my pastor. The good of talking is that for a short period of time my mind is quiet... but the bad is fear.
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