Death…
Wow, its been a really long time since I wrote… I thought about writing in my paper journal tonight, but I thought that it’d be nice to update my blog instead.
Basically the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of revelations, although I still haven’t really sorted them all out. I’m reading a book right now called “When Life is Changed Forever by the Death of Someone Near”, and in there the author talks about how we can change our minds based on logic in a split-second, but it sometimes takes a while for our emotions to catch up, and I think that’s where I am. He talks about how you can get spooked by a tree rustling in the middle of the night, and although you can logically know that its OK, it can still take time to calm down. I can really relate…
When my family came to visit over Christmas, I was able to have some really great talks with my mom and with Joe about my seemingly recently-surfaced issues of being over-controlling, easily angered, unable to forgive, etc, etc. I had been trying to kind of push my way through all of them with brute force rather than searching for the cause, and when I took the time to get some feedback and really examine my emotions, it hurt as though I had ran into a brick wall.
When I asked my mom what my personality was like when I was little, she said that I was very organized, very considerate and sensitive, and generally happy-go-lucky. She said that I followed instruction and was very respectful to authority, although I was also pretty shy. I asked what my negative traits were, and she said that all that she could think of was that I was a perfectionist and sometimes hard on myself, but I was still kind to others and very patient.
Once she said all of that, I started thinking, “OK, so why don’t I act that way anymore?” I had kind of explained away my recent issues by saying that its “just the way I am”, but the truth is that I wasn’t that way before, so that excuse wasn’t very valid. I’ve noticed that in recent years, I’ve become very critical of other people, even if I never vocalize it, and I easily become frustrated and feel like my patience is very low, with the exception of dealing with my kids, because for some reason I generally have a lot of patience with them and don’t lose my cool.
So I asked when she saw a change in me, and she said that she noticed that after Nick was killed, I started fighting with my dad and having more problems with fear. Later that night I asked Joe what he thought, and he said that he had seen the same thing happen when Nick died and that after we lost our baby that he noticed that I became even more fearful and that he had heard me make comments that made him uncomfortable about my trust for God and the afterlife.
All of the sudden I started bawling as I realized that when Nick died and when we lost our baby, I lost some of my faith in God. I was/am so pissed off that Nick died a horrible death with no justice that I subconsciously decided that God wasn’t doing things the way that I wanted and so I needed to take over. My feelings only got stronger after the baby died, and I know that 9/11 didn’t help much either. I became fearful in situations that never bothered me, and as I sat there in bed crying and talking to Joe, I had a flood of memories from before Nick’s death, when I wasn’t fearful at all, and contrasting thoughts of after Nick and the baby died and how I was freaked out and uncontrollably upset from the same thing. The first thing that came to mind was with driving because I remember riding in Joe’s car before we were dating and he almost hit the car in front of us. At the time, I wasn’t worried about my life or my safety, even though I had been in a terrible accident less than a year earlier. Instead I thought “Who cares? Its not my car.” I can’t even IMAGINE thinking that now. In recent years, no matter who is driving, even my dad, I put my foot on the dash, grab the handle, totally freak out and fear that I’m going to die. This all happened after I (obviously wrongly) decided that I couldn’t trust God anymore to take care of me.
Before Nick died, I hadn’t experienced death that seemed unfair. Sure, I had seen older relatives die, but that’s expected, and I wasn’t really close to any of them. I had very mistakingly decided that I was “blessed” by God (which I am, but I thought of it in a genie-in-a-bottle way) and therefore He would protect me and those around me from the sting of early death. The fact is that God never promised me that, and just a quick glance at the Bible shows dozens of stories that contradict my thoughts, yet somehow I really thought that I was immune to that kind of pain. I felt let down by God, but I was so in denial that I hadn’t even realized it….
Anyways, so now I’m working through all of these new feelings and trying to learn to trust God in a way that is more accurate to the nature of God. The things that I expected from God and the thoughts that led me to feel betrayed were not true of God’s nature in the first place, so I need to relearn about Him and love Him for who He truly is, not for the god (little “g”) that I had made in my head that was more of a god of my own design.
I know that He is guiding me through all of this and I feel like such an idiot for thinking that everything was hunky-dory in my life when I had this huge elephant of an issue that I was completely ignoring. I’ve thought that my quiet times and life were going great and that my short fuse and fear were just something random that came from growing older, and now I see that I was totally in the wrong and that I need a serious attitude adjustment…