That was really my plan for this entire weekend. I climbed into my pajamas, pulled out the sofa chair bed, piled upon it all the pillows from my bed, and plopped down mere moments after coming home from work, planning to stay here until Monday morning.
I am sure I could be more exhausted, probably so much more so I could not even imagine the comparison. But I have never been as fatigued as I am now, overwhelming fatigue clawing at me, making every movement hard. Despite this, however, I have not been able to get much sleep.
The lower dose of the dysautonomia medicine does mean that I am not throwing up all the time, but I am still constantly nauseous. It is never ending, a constant companion. But lest I have a moment's reprieve, the new medication to even out my blood sugar is making other parts of my digestive system very, very unhappy. Again, I am supposed to give it a few weeks so as to try and get used to the medication; however, doing so truly is miserable.
Working is also so very difficult, but I am getting much, much better at hiding how I am feeling. I do tend to spend more time with my door shut, but I am also trying to focus on very, very small things, breaking down each task into small bits that I can accomplish. Today, I was concentrating so hard on something that when my boss walked into my office, I literally screamed because she startled me so. While that was not the best, at least I have been working through my list each and every day and this is the first Friday in four that I have not been off ill.
Yesterday, probably because I had already been filleted, I started crying over this war I was having with my boss over lunch. Lunch is another boundary I need to set with her. Only setting boundaries is exhausting and I fail at it miserably and I am too weak to really keep this up.
Really, it is all meals. But she will announce she wants me to go eat lunch with her off-site, with my personal laptop, so that we can get some work done away from the office. I agree. She says she will be there by noon. She gets there around 2:00. She promises she will just do one thing before we can go. Then we walk out the door between 4:00 and 5:00, if I am lucky. By that time, I am hungry, exhausted, and struggling with my temper. And then I often do not get home until 8:00 or 9:00.
So, I emailed her in the morning to double-check we were on for lunch. At 11:00, I gave her an update on my morning and mentioned lunch again. At noon, I emailed again and told her that I would need to eat by 1:00. That got her attention, but only for her to tell me to snack until she arrived. We went round and round with her telling me what I should be snacking on and what I should be eating and all sorts of things that exhaust me just thinking about them while I kept trying to stick to my 1:00 deadline. So, by 12:45, I was in tears at my desk, wishing for all the world that Christ would come back that very moment and I could just fall at His feet.
Both of the women I work with came into my office for something during that time and it was all I could do not to snap at them. Each time, I apologized for my terse words and stopped what I was doing to help them. At 1:00, my boss called to tell me she would meet me at the restaurant she had chosen and what I should order for her. She didn't arrive until 2:00.
I didn't even want to eat, but I did. In the restaurant, I sat there thinking about the battle I had had with her and how I could have possibly avoided it. I mean, why can I not just say, "That won't work for me." when she tells me how I can just snack until she's ready for lunch? How did it come to the point where she tells me what to wear, what to eat, what to write, what to say, who to talk with, who to avoid, where to shop, what to buy, what pets to have, when to go to church, when to help people, when to refuse to help...the list is endless...how?
A young woman who worked in our department last year, slowly broke down, left the job, and tried to kill herself. Everyone knows what my boss does, how she is, and no one does anything. We do not have a human resources department or manager or director. The CEO is aware of the situation, but has chosen to do nothing. So, until someone pointed out to me last spring how much I let her treat me as she does, I did not believe there was anything I could do but quit. But I also believe God gave me this job. Even if I could miraculously pay a mortgage without a job, how can I quit something He has provided to me?
Hence, the arduous setting of boundaries.
The child in me, though, keeps telling God that if setting boundaries is what He would have me to do, could I not be doing so whilst feeling better? I am fighting battles with my health and fighting battles with my boss and failing right and left at any and all attempts to be social and to be a part of a family and to be a part of a church body. Seriously, I really and truly am looking for that cave!
But a good thing happened today.
Pastor F made one of his wonderful videos on my beloved Book of Concord, mentioned the booklet I wrote to help others discover the joy that is the Book of Concord, and posted a link on his YouTube site. Several other pastors then posted the video. I called the man who created the website for the booklet to let him know that it would probably be getting hits now, and he told me there were already ones from German, Australia, Kenya, and Sweden before today--over 400 in total! At the time of the call, today the site had over 100 visits just this day. I had a few friend requests on Facebook (I am still very conflicted about being on there) and I had several people email me to ask how they could get a copy of the booklet (one person asked via my "wall").
I cannot begin to put into words how that made me feel. I care not that I created the booklet; truly the worth of it is from Pastor M's good words about this amazing resource. But seemingly nearly all the Lutherans I have met do not know the joy that is the Book of Concord. Even pastors who love it and teach it from the pulpit and in their homes do not think to give their children copies of it to study and mark up and make their own. I am such a messed up woman with a Protestant heart and mind despite all her attempts to shed and eschew that doctrine and yet the confessions have blessed me so very mightily. Think...just think for a moment...how God could use them in the lives of those who actually are real Lutherans!
I was so darned giddy at the thought of more people discovering the joy that is the Book of Concord, that I rashly messaged a man who had friended me. When he did, I couldn't figure out why, but I feel pressured to accept anyone who asks because I know how much it has bothered me that some of the few I dared asked have never responded. Then, when I looked at the newsletter I received in the mail today, I saw he is a teacher at the parish school. So, I offered my services if he ever wanted someone to come read to his students or teach a mini-lesson on found poetry. I immediately regretted sending it. But he ended up pinging me on Facebook's chat.
[Lest you wonder, I stink at chatting with strangers.]
The whole chat thing did not go all that well because I kept getting confused and I think I was confusing him. So, he suggested we meet for coffee. I laughed since I hate coffee and countered with Panera. So, despite doing just about everything wrong in the electronic exchange, tomorrow, I get to talk literacy instruction with a teacher! After a week in which I spent two entire days printing, cutting, stuffing, and stamping things, I actually get to use my brain!
Now, I really, really want to just sleep away the weekend. And, thanks to my primary doctor who so well understands me, I have the means to do so despite the pain I have and the nausea and the stomach cramps and all the other ills brought on by the medications I am taking. However, I shall hold off sleeping round the clock until tomorrow evening that I might go and talk literacy.
If only I could do so through an intermediary that I might not screw up the whole social interaction part. SIGH.
I plan on bringing my laptop to show some of the resources I have and a few examples of favorite readalouds. I also plan on rehearsing how to be normal. Laugh if you will, but I asked Brother Goose if he would call and just chat with me, give me some practice. He's supposed to do so tomorrow morning. Perfect timing!
I guess I cannot wear my lounge pants and sweatshirt jacket?
Yesterday afternoon, we had a baby shower at work. While being social there, I sat with two other pregnant women, each radiant in her joy of new life. All I could think was how ungrateful I am for the life I have been given.
A few days ago, I had asked someone about works, because she is an ex-Protestant and oft writes things so very clearly for me. She had not much time, but offered the following to me:
"Works" terminology is just different, or from a different perspective for a Lutheran. We see things, hear things through a different filter as Lutherans. The book of James is received in a totally different manner for a Lutheran. All of scripture really. Rather than looking at works/scripture as a prescription or instruction book for getting to Heaven we understand "works" as fruit.
Now, "fruit" is a loaded word for me right now, the most ubiquitous word in my life, I think. However, it was not that word that caused me to start weeping when I read this. I already know Lutherans have different terminology; they use the same words as Protestants, but the meanings are often very, very, very different. If nothing else, consider salvation. The question, "When were you saved?" is a very, very, very different question to a Protestant than to a Lutheran. And I am not surprised at all James is received differently for parts of it have been crushing me of late. But I wept because I all I keep thinking is that I have been begging for someone to teach me that Lutheran perspective.
To be honest, I believe if I were a child asking for such, I would have it in spades. If nothing else, I could go to catechesis classes and ask questions to my hearts desire. Many of the class descriptions I have found online at different parishes include having to write papers on topics! Oh, how I wish I were a child once more!
I tried ask-the-pastor, and the pastor did not really want to answer questions. I tried asking the new parish pastor, but he does not have time. Asking during bible study or bible class does not really work either for both have agendas outside delving into the Book of Concord and parsing decades of Protestant teaching. I have tried emailing, but I often get answers based on assumptions that I understand those Lutheran terms...and thus I feel the dunce, am left confused, and basically just wasted the time of the person who so generously tried to answer the question for me. I tried teaching myself, but I just go round and round in circles with questions to my own questions. I have learned much from Walther and Forde and Krauth and Kleinig, but mostly what I have learned is how much I have learned wrongly and how much I still cannot see clearly and how very, very much I do not know.
Pastor F coined a funny term in one of his videos: gLAWspel. Only...it is not so funny. Sometimes I wonder if any pastor I know truly understands how twisted a Gospel is taught in the Protestant church. Not in malice. Not at all. In misunderstanding that can only be borne of the devil's relentless drive to obscure the things of God with the things of man.
I want that Lutheran filter mentioned so badly it hurts. I am desperate for it because I know that shedding the works righteousness and the condemnation of a failing at faith is my one and only hope for healing and for freedom and for peace. I would gladly, gladly, accept nausea and weakness and pain and cognitive dysfunction and fainting and all of that increased ten-fold if only I could have the instruction I need to set in place that Lutheran filter.
I love the Living Word. I do. How I feel about it now is so much greater than before I discovered the joy that is the Book of Concord it really is akin to the difference between hate and love. How I revered it, how I cherished it was but a pale reflection of what I understand and feel now. I know its power. I know it is the source of all Truth.
In Pastor F's John 8 sermon that I have listened to at least four dozen times now, at one point he is talking for Jesus, saying, "My Truth will set you free. My Words will make you know the Truth." [I think I have that right.] Each and every blooming time I listen to that part of the sermon, my heart leaps. Lord, will your Word really make me know the Truth? I think that is the very notion that keeps me shoving the Living Word and Lutheran Doctrine into my head as much as humanly possible, praying the Psalter morning, noon, and night. Why I am so very greedy about hearing the Gospel, wanting the Living Word to be spoken to me, read to me, sung over me.
But I have learned you can be too greedy about wanting it taught to you, at least such is the case if you are an adult.
My old pastor used to point out this verse that says we need pastors to instruct us. We cannot instruct ourselves. I have lost the verse, just like I lost the Jesus is our yes and amen verse until it was pointed it out to me again (2 Corinthians 1:20), but I do not need a bible verse to tell me such a thing. I know it. Therefore, the following verse, a promise really, is one to which I am actually trying to cling.
"For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
~Jeremiah 29:11-13
In my head, I think, but this cannot be for me because I am not searching with all my heart. In fact, my broken heart has caused me to stop searching in the one place I should not abandon. But I am hoping that is a LAW thought: that the reason I have not found what I long to find is because I am not trying hard enough. Would not the God who created my rather weak and weary heart, a heart that truly longs for a cave since being me is not all that good of a thing where others are concerned, also know that I am searching, that I am seeking with all the heart I have? Is He listening? Will I ever find Him as He truly is, not as man has made Him to be?
"For I know
the plans
that I have
for you,"
declares the LORD,
"plans
for welfare
and not
for calamity
to give
you
a future and a hope.
Then you
will call upon
Me
and come
and pray
to Me,
and
I
will listen
to you.
You will seek Me
and find Me
when you search
for Me
with all your heart.
Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!
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