The Amplifier...

Monday evening, as I was writing on my blog, a headache started.  Tuesday morning, I awoke with it still.  As I did on Monday, following the nightmare of my last migraine, I spent the day in darkness and silence, resting and trying very hard to relax.  I burned a candle, listened to soft music, stretched, read the Psalter, tried to empty my mind of all thought ... you get the picture.  Evening rolled around and I still had the headache.

Frustrated, I called my new friend Sandra to see how her day had gone.  While I vented about not being able to relax my headache away, I honestly did not call her intending to talk about me.  I wanted something outside of myself.  I was right about needing the outside but just not which outside.

To me, Sandra is this perfect person, even though she would be the first to shout about her flaws.  She is perfect because she has such good ideas and is always ... soothing.  There is no judgment in her, no censorship, where it comes to interacting with me.  She is the best of neighbor, the best of mercy, the best of being a child of Christ ... not doing faith, but being forgiven, washed clean, though a sinner still.  On occasion Sandra has told me that it is good for her to be what she is for me, since that is not always her par for the course.  For me, it is hard to believe.  Mostly, I feel as if all I ever do is receive from her, that I never care for her in return.

In any case, I am not sure how, but I started telling her about my father, about what is happening to him and some of what I feel.  Since I am greatly conflicted, and even I can see that the battles I am facing color everything else in my life even though I do now wish it to be so, the conversation was more circular than linear.  There was no real conclusion, no ending, save for her "plan": not worry about what I think or feel, about trying to visit or get to his funeral when the time comes.  Now, normally, such plan would seem so impossible and almost trite.  But we had talked about how my sister was traveling to see my father tomorrow.  Sandra pointed out that I did not need to worry or think or try to plan until after she saw him, until after she could talk with me about how he is in her eyes.  It was a great plan.  Sandra's plans always are.

While we were talking, my headache ceased.
I hate that.

I hate that my body has become an amplifier of all my thoughts and feelings with a physicality that ranges from annoying to debilitating.  Most of the time--as with Monday--I did not even know that I wanted or needed to talk about my father. I did not connect my headache in any way to my emotions or worries, even though I know that stress--both good and bad--is the primary trigger of my migraines.  I did not make the connection even though I know that whatever is going on in my head is oft splayed across my face as if I were a teenager once more, hormones raging and wreaking havoc across my face.  Only, when I was a teenager, I did not have problems with moderate or severe acne.  Sure, I had blemishes, but never the parade of them that can march across my face when I am bothered.  It matters not that I even know I am bothered.  I look in the mirror and can see that something is obviously going on inside my head, inside my heart. It drives me crazy.

For a long while, I have lost the ability to hide my emotions, to temper them.  I might be slightly upset inside and yet tears will fall down my face.  The things a person normally keeps to herself are no longer under my control.  In the past, I have written about how Multiple Sclerosis destroys your emotional filter.  Couple that with the anxiety that dysautonomia causes, anxiety that can completely take over my body, and I am oft merely a passenger in my own skin.

I hate being the amplifier.  I really hate it.  Perhaps if society were different, perhaps if tears and fears were more socially acceptable, I might not.  But they are not.  Tear and fear and frustration.  Oh, the frustration!

The deficits I experience, the deficits and the dysfunction frustrate me.  The frustration is the worst because I know what is happening and am helpless to stop it.  So, my frustration magnifies far more disproportionately than anything else.

Then there is this growing problem when I try to communicate something and I find that I cannot.  I cannot speak the words.  Sometimes all I can do is gesture or repeat one or two words that make little sense to the person with whom I am trying to communicate.  When that happens, not only am I frustrated, but I also struggle to stifle my fear.  Oh, how am I mess then.  And every facet of that mess is played out in my body.

Shakes.
Tears.
Tied tongue.
Wild gestures.
Dizziness.
Weakness.

All of that is bad enough.  But to have such bad acne and to have headaches because my body knows something my conscious mind does not is simply horrid.

Monday night, I was so blessed by Sandra's gift of mercy: her listening to me even as she was struggling with illness herself.  I was blessed by peace and I was blessed by a cessation of pain.  Such is the work of my Good Shepherd.

Today, I was thinking about how amazed I still am that my headache was about my father, though I knew it not.  I was thinking about being an amplifier and hating that.  Yes, there was much self recrimination and discouragement amongst those thoughts.  And there were tears.  As has been the case of late, being in that state, I was driven to do something, to have something positive.  So, I hung the curtain I had made from a scrape piece of hemmed curtain fabric for the window of the basement door. I bathed Amos. I caught up on the dishes.  I did my overdue laundry. I accomplished things.  Al the while, though, I kept thinking about my metaphor.

An amplifier does not accomplish anything. I mean, without input, it merely sits there.  It is not creative.  In a way, could you not say that the Christian life is a life of amplification, as well as a life of reception?

By this I mean, I do no good works.  The Holy Spirit works through me to serve others.  In a civil sense, I, Myrtle, can do things that are helpful and good for others, but I am not doing good works in and of myself, my strength, my reason, because I am a sinner and the old Adam in my stands against our triune God.  So, the work of God is amplified in my life, in my voice or my hands or my finances.

So, too, is forgiveness amplified.  I do not forgive others.  God's forgiveness flows through me and is spread out to others in my life.  To the old Adam, forgiveness is utterly foreign and totally useless for the self.

Chief amongst the work of God amplified in my life has to be caring for others, considering their needs, tending to them without profit or glory.  Turning away from self is antithetical to the old Adam.  Antithetical and an anathema. 

If I think about being an amplifier for the power and work of God, then that favorite of favorite bits of mine in the Christian Book of Concord makes perfect sense:  In order to retain the Gospel among people, He openly sets the confession of saints against the kingdom of the devil and, in our weakness, declares His power. ~BOC, AP, V (III), 69

It is His creative work being amplified through us to His creation. It is His forgiveness.  It is His love.  It is His mercy.  It is His compassion.  Being an amplifier, then, is not always a bad thing.



Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!