The devils that plague me...

Sister Monica Joan: Forgive me, Lord, and protect us all from these devils that plague me.

Sister Julienne: There are no devils here. Your mind gets tired, Sister. That is all. And when it does we will protect you. We will be with you and make sure that when you forget we remember.

~Call the Midwife, Series 2, Episode 7

I understand Sister Monica Joan's prayer.  I long for Sister Julienne to be real.  To be here.  Or I there.

A few weeks ago, I stopped to get gas with someone in my car.  I hopped out and opened my tank.  My passenger shouted at me, and so I stuck my head back into the car.  She offered me her charge card, knowing of my financial situation.  Surprised and thankful, I swiped her card and proceeded to fill my  tank.  

About a week or so later, I was checking my credit card bill and saw a charge for gas.  Surely I did not get two tanks in a week??  Not with how little I drive.  At first, I wondered if my card had somehow been compromised, but the gas was the only charge on there since I had last logged onto my account.  After checking with my passenger, I learned that her card had no charge.  So, the truth was that in between hopping out of the car and answering my passenger's call out I had swiped my card and forgotten that I had done so.  In my mind, trying to remember what happened, is only blankness.

More and more those moments are happening.  I find that I have done things without remembering or do not know where I am or when it is.  At such times, I am felled both by what I know and what I don't know.  Or rather that I know I do not know.

The thoughts that follow are my devils.  The thoughts that linger after things that bring shame are my devils.  The feelings that overwhelm me, paralyze me, are my devils.  The 1,001 anxieties that fill me are my devils.

I am starting to forget what a life without anxiety is like.  That bothers me.  And then the part of me asks if it should.  I wonder if, perhaps, I should stop.  Stop trying to hold onto anything.  Just stop.

In any case, a part of me does feel as if others should be protected from them, from me.  I understand Sister Monica Joan's prayer.  In a moment of confusion, she answered the call line and kept a woman in labor from making contact.  In a moment of clarity that followed—though she still could not remember who called—Sister Monica Joan realized how her moments of confusion, her devils, could hurt others.  

Her life was a burden she felt keenly and wished not that burden on others.

As much as I long to not be the only one facing the failings in my body and my mind, in my moments of clarity I would not wish this burden on anyone.  Anxiety alone is too much, too cruel.  Never mind the writhing and the swelling and the fainting and the Raynaud's and the low blood sugar and the low blood pressure and the tachycardia and the weakness and the fatigue and the blurred vision and the confusion and the aphasia and the cold spells and the memory loss and the fear and the shame ... all of that ... any of that.

I like watching Call the Midwife as much for the main storyline as for seeing how Sister Julienne, as head of Nonnatus House, cares for Sister Monica Joan.  These were real women.  This is a real story, no matter how much is softened by time and television.  I savor listening to the nuns sing the offices of prayer, even though I do not agree with Catholic doctrine.  The call for mercy is meet, right, and salutary.  Faith in our triune God to care for and protect them all, to provide for each day, no matter what devils may come, is meet, right, and salutary.

At one point in time, I was planning for a life on the mission field.  To be a missionary, to live a life by faith, was my heart's desire.  A civil war intervened.  A chance for graduate school.  Then a condition that would preclude me from ever serving on the mission field again.  Twists and turns leading to a life in my lounge chair.  I stare, from that chair, rather hungrily at women whose lives are pledged to God and to faith and to nothing else.  I envy being surrounded by prayer.  Even the times of the greater silence, the fellowship of it.  Of it all. 

Singing the offices by myself, both parts, is not the same as praying them with others.  For a wall-flower hermit, who is most assuredly an introvert, my deep and abiding longing to pray with others is rather inexplicable to my own mind. 

Often, when the pain in my innards is too great to do anything, to think anything, to be anything, I put on this playlist I created.  It has a mix of songs that have bits and pieces of words that I get, that I understand.  They are of a hope that makes sense to me, in a way.  Trying to explain is very difficult.  Some songs are about letting go.  One is about changing the voices in your head.  Some are about trials and travails, but many are about loving or caring for another, using words I could imagine Jesus saying ... to me.  None of them are about faith.  They are simply about life ... either trying or hoping or letting someone else try or hope for you.  Yet, to me, they are words that echo the promise of Isaiah 43:1-3:

But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel,
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are Mine!
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,
Nor will the flame burn you.
For I am the Lord your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Savior..."

Those are the Words I long to hear, to have spoken to me most, apart from John 1:1-5 and the Psalter.  So, I made them out of bits of songs that I can understand, that I can hear, without fear or thoughts of condemnation.

But ... sometimes ... I put "Evening and Morning: The Music of Lutheran Prayer" on repeat and let the voices of those who recorded the offices of prayer fill the bathroom or bedroom or kitchen ... wherever I am.  Over and over and over again.

I do not know the offices of prayer for the Catholic church.  I do not know what they were in the 50s.  But I wonder if the real life Sister Monica Joan savored the words of Psalm 141 sung in Evening Prayer:

Let my prayer rise before You as incense,

the lifting up of my hands 

as the evening sacrifice.

O Lord, I call to You;

Come to me quickly;

Hear my voice when I cry to You.

Let my prayer rise before You as incense

the lifting up of my hands 

as the evening sacrifice.

Set a watch before my mouth, O Lord,

and guard the door of my lips.

Let not my heart incline to any evil thing;

let me not be occupied in wickedness with evil doers.

But my eyse are turned to You, O God;

in You I take refuge.

Strip me not of my life.

Glory be to the Father 

and to the Son 

and to the Holy Spirit;

as it was in the beginning, 

is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Let my prayer rise before You as incense,

the lifting up of my hands 

as the evening sacrifice.

When the darkness seems too great for the Light, when I have no words, two tunes run through my head and to them I struggle to cling, even as I fear the devils within me will win the battle of the day.  One is that written above.  The other is the tune for the verba, for the Words of Institution:

Our Lord Jesus Christ,

on the night He was betrayed took bread.

And when He had given thanks,

He broke it and gave it to the disciples and said:

"Take eat.  This is My body, which is given for you.

This do in remembrance of Me."

In the same way also,

He took the cup after supper

And when He had given thanks,

He gave it to them saying:

"Drink of it, all of you;

this cup is the new testament in My blood,

which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.

This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.

I wonder, when all else is gone from my mind—if, as I suspect, my body outlasts my mind—if something of those two tunes, of those bits of God's Word, will remain.

I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!