What grief is this...

A hand towel slipped off a hook in the bathroom and fell to the floor.  The unexpected movement startled Amos and terrified him.  He jerked away from the towel, slamming his body into the antique tub, then raced out of the bathroom. I found him shaking a shaking mound beneath the bed coverings.  I wept.  I wept the same way I do each time I bath him, for his scars are easily seen then.

I weep for the puppy he was.  I weep for the effect the pit bull has had upon him.  I weep for his life marked more by fear than anything else.  Am I also weeping for myself?

In order to vote today, I had to drive past the corner.  I avoid it at all costs.  I have learned that the goal in  recovering ... or at least managing PTSD is to be able to remember what happened without reliving it.  I am not there yet.  Not by a mile.  I am, however, more in control of my fear than Amos.  And the terror of that day has not colored every aspect of my life, as it has Amos.  Yet the trauma of the things of my childhood that replayed in my life as an adult do.  We are a pair, Amos and I.

Sometimes I wonder if my Good Shepherd gave me this puppy because I cannot weep for myself, for what was lost then.  I am certainly grieving, though, what has been lost now.  Damn dysautonomia.

The thing about fear is that what we fear can be over chronologically but its presence can remain as if it is still happening.  That which I had to fear is over for me.  Understanding the fear I feel is based on something that is no longer happening, on people no longer able to hurt me, is a difficult battle.  Safety is one of the most foreign concepts in the world to me.  In the world of Madeleine L'Engle, I am waiting to grasp, to live in the Kairos of my life.  That is possible for me. Despite what I oft think and feel, it is possible.  It is possible because it has been possible for others.  And it is possible because with Christ all things are possible. To be honest, though, I wonder if the decline in my mind and body might not make that possibility come to fruition until I find my rest in glory.

Amos is a creature of our Creator.  Thus, I believe it is possible that he, too, one day will find healing.  But I also know that despite being love and encouraged and having shed so much of my startle responses so as to not trigger his, he is no better.  He is, in many ways, worse.

I weep for him.
Perhaps I am weeping for us both.
Yet I rest in the knowledge that God knows and care for us both ... whether we feel it or not.

Feel free to remind me of that last point.  I often forget.


Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.