Nauseous and quivery and weak...

Yesterday, I did something that was very frightening to me.  In so doing, the full body tremors started.  I have not a smidgeon of courage.

Thankfully, the tremors did not last long.  But, at times, I look as if I have N stage Parkinson's.  I know it is a combination of how my brain is reacting to the stress of the extreme level of anxiety that I have ... so easily now ... due to the wretched existence that is dysautonomia.  However, that does not help me bear such times any better.

It seems to me that I split into a few people in those times.  There is the Myrtle who is anxious and afraid.  There is the Myrtle who is terrified at how out of control her body is.  There is the Myrtle who is actually fascinated by how is body is being affected.  And there is the Myrtle who is ashamed of her weakness.

Last week, when I was being instructed by my pastor, the questions that I was asking were fearful to me, and the tremors started.  Oh, how I wish they didn't.

It would be easier if I had Parkinson's.  I mean, I do not want yet another chronic, incurable disease.  However, others would understand something like Parkinson's.  No one really understands dysautonomia.  Well, Celia, being a nurse and having seen some folk like me, has inklings.  And she is so utterly gracious for me to send her my I'm-feeling-wretched-and/or-terrified-about-what-is-happennig-to-my-mind-and-body texts, even responding in the wee hours of the morning if she is up feeding her new baby.  But, even so, I feel so alone.

And I really, really, really hate the tremors.

Today, all day, I have been feeling as if I am a guitar string that has been plucked.  Inside.  Not the tremors.  Just nauseous and quivery and weak.  But quivery and weak deep inside.

A while ago, Marie passed on her father's sermon from last week about sin.  Well, about Genesis.  And sin.  And our foe.  I found his voice as a writer rather fascinating, for he speaks with casual style that is very disarming.  Now, that might sound strange, but there is this simplicity in diction and syntax, along with a wonderful cadence, that cuts straight to the heart of what he is trying to communicate.  Since becoming a Lutheran, folk have said that hearing a sermon is always better than reading one, but even the way the words were arranged on the page made for effective communication.  Yet, in her father's sermon, even via electronic mail, I was blessed with hearing the Word of God and having the Holy Spirit work His truth in me.

Anyway, two points have stayed with me:

• When you look at the fall, when you look at how sin entered the world, it was from a lack of faith in the Word of God.  That's what satan does, twists what we know to be true by sowing seeds of doubt and distracting us with the fallacy of human reasoning ... Did God really say that you would die if you ate from the tree?  What does His word really mean?  How should it be interpreted to fit you here, now, in this time?  Cunning all aimed at destroying faith in God's Word.  It's not so much about the fruit as the lack of faith.  I have never really thought about sin and the fall that way.
• What was the very, very, very first result of sin?  It was not the pain and broken relationships and toilsome labor and thorn and thistles and even death that comes from sin.  It was that Adam and Eve noticed they were naked.  Pastor Holowach talks about how there is probably little else that would make you feel more humiliated or disturbed (distraught would be the word I would use) than being naked in public. At work. At a football game. At church. There is no place that would be a good thing. And the feelings that arise from being naked in public are really what we ought to feel when we recognize our sin before God: "Sin leaves you naked, vulnerable, and ashamed before God.  It leaves you exposed and humiliated in His Holy presence."     

The sermon was fascinating to me.  Of course, Pastor Holowach didn't leave his congregation with nakedness.  He talked about how God approached His children, had them acknowledge their sin, and then provided them the comfort of clothing.  He provided the immediate comfort of being covered and the promise of the enteral comfort that we would have in being clothed with Christ.

I suppose that has remained with me because I really do savor the song Welcome to Our World, especially the verse:

So wrap our injured flesh around You
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect Son of God
Perfect Son of God

Welcome to our world

I savored the sermon Marie shared because the focus of sin during Lent has, before this year, been rather soul-crushing for me.  The delivery of Lenten messages that is.  Here is a message of sin that begins and ends with faith, begins and ends with Christ, begins and ends with God forgiving and restoring.

Why remember that on the same day I am remember how nauseous and quivery and weak I am in my body?  I am the same in my mind.  And in my faith.

My next catechesis lesson is March 31st.  I hunger for the Lord's Supper.  In truth, I long for the protection I believe it to be.  But I also know that to wait is—while not perfect for me—good for me. I came across something last night that ... evidenced ... just how long I have been asking to be instructed, to be taught rather than just told something ... or have someone try to "fix" what is broken in me, focusing on the physical or psychological and skipping right past the care of the soul.  I was distressed looking at what I found, but I was also comforted, reflecting on how much I have learned in just two catechesis lessons.

Yes, I gulped down the Christian Book of Concord from the first moment I was gifted a copy.  Yes, I spent over three decades in church prior to that time.  Yes, I read the Bible every day, memorizing much as every good evangelical girl is supposed to do.  But the utter dearth of true doctrine in the mainline evangelical churches I had attended is sobering and soul-crushing in and of itself.  And the dissonance between both my experiences and the false teaching I absorbed so fully all those years and what I read in the BOC has been tearing me apart inside.

My soul has been nauseous and quivery and weak.  That is worse ... much worse ... than all my bodily and mental distress combined.

Yes, I forgot the Zofran all day.
I just took some now.
And next I shall dose myself with psalms.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!