Life is hard.
While filled with abounding joys that I believe God wills for us, I imagine most people still wake up with various worries and go to sleep carrying various burdens.
This morning as I center myself in my morning routine of reading, contemplation, prayer and music, I am thinking once again about ideas of fear, dread and safety.
Many people in this world daily battle these things in the literal sense, while others battle the same things in more metaphorical or existential type ways.
I imagine many people face unseen battles that are a combination of both the literal and the metaphorical sense of fear, dread and safety.
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Recently I remembered back to a time during college where I wanted to take a two-month missions trip to Mexico through Inter-varsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Delaware.
While I was of age and around 21 at the time, this Christian organization preferred that the parents of students involved in this program would have the blessing of their parents.
I imagine some students came from homes where their parents were not particularly religious nor practicing Christians, so this could be potentially problematic to give blessing.
For me, it was particularly problematic, as my mother was so severely mentally ill.
As an only child, born to her at 39 years old and my father being 49, coupled with her own increasing fear and paranoia over so many simple things in life, I grew up extremely over-sheltered and over-protected.
I can recall in the time period between about 3-years-old to seven-or-eight-years-old my mother only allowing a wading pool to be filled with one inch of water. I can recall begging to get more water from the hose and her refusals.
She said that “people can drown in just a tablespoon of water.”1
I have pictures confirming my memories of this!
As my friends progressed on to have two-foot deep kiddie pools, I can remember sneaking in them when away from her sight (I recall being allowed to wear my bathing suit but being instructed to sit outside the pool and watch…something along those lines…perhaps eventually being allowed to be in the pool but not put my head under water….), and my friends showing me how to hold my breath and go underwater.
I can remember secretly practicing these tricks in our bathtub! With my father’s cautious approval, ha!
As I developed there was something in me that would increasingly not submit to her over-control of me and my personhood.
As an adult, one person I counseled with believed that had I fully submitted to her, in this unusual and bizarre situation, I probably would have had many more issues in life than in fact, I did. That my growing resistance to her unhealthy control and mental illness was what formed me into a relatively healthy and strong adult.
That’s a lot to think about.
And though I did learn to swim underwater in grade school from one side of a 6-ft pool to the other, and eventually we got one of those pools, too, to this day I really cannot swim but for a short underwater excursion, the doggy paddle or the back float.
While some people have insisted that I could yet learn to do the “breath stroke” and swim a distance, I know my limits and panic with water getting into my nose any time I’ve ever attempted, and at this point in my life it is not an important goal.
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So I recall during college a discussion with the leader of Inter-Varsity, who was well-aware of my mother’s mental problems. He wanted to have a meeting with me and my mother to assuage her fears, but was prepared to give me the blessing, as an adult, to take the trip, regardless of the outcome of that meeting.
In my mind’s eye I can vaguely remember sitting in some room of that campus ministry house with him and my mother… I don’t know if it could have been a porch area but I see daylight coming through a window in the room somewhat…
I recall him patiently answering a number of my mother’s questions and toward the end of the conversation he addressed ideas of danger in life (if I was meant to die, that it could be an auto accident in Delaware rather than a plane going down in Mexico…while I’m not in theological agreement these days about specific destiny, I do believe that there is some interplay between God’s oversight and the natural world and human choices…) and somehow persuaded her that the safest place for me to be is in the center of God’s will.
I can almost recall the very brief and puzzled look of contemplation on my mother’s face and she agreed to let me go.
I find it interesting that all these years later I am contemplating ideas of fear, dread and safety of all sorts and thinking about this.
Of course the bigger question is, how do we know when we are in the center of God’s will?
“What does this even mean?”…as they say…
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“Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
he’s the one who will keep you on track.” (Proverbs 3:5-6, The Message)
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“I’ve been carrying you on my back
from the day you were born,
And I’ll keep on carrying you when you’re old.
I’ll be there, bearing you when you’re old and gray.
I’ve done it and will keep on doing it,
carrying you on my back, saving you.” (Isaiah 46:4, The Message)
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1 About five or so years ago, I contacted the mental hospital my mother was admitted to in 1946 to obtain her medical records, out of curiosity. Since she named me sole heir to all her property, both “tangible and intangible,” I was surprised that after submitting a few documents, I was sent her medical records. I was equally surprised they still existed, and in such detail. She had been admitted to what is now known as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, after an incident during her college years when she was sending (then expensive $5 telegrams to Walter Winchell…whom I read was a tabloid publicator in those days along the lines of conspiracy tabloids). I read that she was given shock treatments (at that time, only new and “experimental” without realizing the long-term damage) and “hydro-therapy” treatments. I saw pictures online about patients being submerged in ice cold water in rooms containing many free-standing bathtubs, to calm them down. They were restrained and sheets surrounding them, with only their heads visible while in the bathtub. While my mother’s story is indeed sad and there are many unknowns, the fact remains that it is complicated and that in addition to being over-protective, she could be quite mean and vindictive. I choose to speak out about the impact of early childhood trauma, which so many experience in such varied ways.
For anyone interested, this video is quite fascinating and there is plenty more to be found on YouTube surrounding this facility.
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