Presence, Absence and Distance

There’s a saying these days, “Fake it til you make it.”

I don’t like that statement; and furthermore, I don’t agree with it.

Just what is one faking? And, more importantly, “What will it mean to ‘make it?'”

I got into bed around midnight, and then, I lay there looking at my phone.

I rejoiced with those who rejoiced at the birth of another child and grandchild, while my hopes of seeing my own grown children/grandchildren any time soon ebb further and further from the shores of my reality…

I was happy to know that a friend was safe from wildfires, at least for the moment.

I was glad to see that one of my sons fixed an equipment problem. And I saw a typical outdoors image-post from my other son.

As I scrolled through my various forms of social media–Facebook, Instagram and “Next Door” app, I’m not sure what I was searching for…

I checked my email and signed a caricature contract that had come in, and noticed the new agent had pre-paid me for the job on Saturday which is highly unusual. I took a look at some of the specific people on social media I periodically browse, and one person in particular that I was connected to many moons ago aroused a sense of anger and disgust as I observed their current expressions.

I was exhausted, and my body aching in different ways…my mind spinning with all kinds of thoughts and weights. Eventually I suppose I fell asleep, and I awoke somewhere around 3 a.m. But not before I continued to see images of different friends doing different things trail through my mind’s eye–from social media–as I struggled to enter rest.

Again, I lay there thinking. Thinking to myself how distant I felt from so much, and how it felt as though the presence of hope and joy had seemed to suddenly vanish.

I thought about a post I made earlier in the day. I thought about one phrase I expressed and I tormented myself that I should have said something differently, so as not to be a hypocrite.

I began to think that I needed to do something.

When one who professes to trust God and to seek Him regardless of how difficult things feel finds themselves feeling emotionally and otherwise stranded far from the shores of what would seem to be the experience of God’s presence, surely they should do something to fan the flames of hope and of joy.

But instead, I lay there paralyzed with my mind wandering throughout so many questions, fears and troubled thoughts.

I should put on the Book of Psalms to listen to, I thought to myself, in the darkness.

But I didn’t.

In my mind’s eye I had already decided that this would not replicate other times where I felt God’s presence.

Instead, I just kept thinking about various absences and distances…

Indeed, bits and pieces of scriptures entered my mind in various ways. And eventually, I became focused upon the thought of a meaningful-to-me line in Psalm 23:

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

I lay there thinking about that. And thinking about all kinds of spiritual enemies of all sorts that seemed to be pressing in on me.

Exhausted and emotionally and spiritually paralyzed, I became aware that I was physically hungry, and, I was itching still from the poison ivy, and, that various muscles and bones/joints felt unpleasant.

I glanced over and looked at my cat asleep, seeing his form under moonlight through the window, I suppose…

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

Oh so many “enemies” surrounding me, I thought to myself.

I also thought of other lines from Psalms, including, “I would have despaired had I not believed I would see the goodness of God in the land of the living.” That verse is one that has sustained me a number of times between 2019 and today.

Where am I? Am I in the land of the living? Or, am I still on some journey there?

I feel distant from the shores…and I wonder, “Why do I feel this way right now?”

I should do something.

I should get up and run a hot bath, and I should go get the baked treat my neighbor left me earlier today, and I should sit in the hot bath in the dark to alleve (at least to some degree) some of the physical and emotional feelings and thoughts, and hope that the excursion helps me eventually get some good sleep before I have to navigate a Friday and the next days of stressful things.

But first, I needed to photograph my cat in the darkness…just sleeping.

I felt it was important that I not turn on any lights in the bathroom or downstairs–just too much blaring glare would surely hurt my eyes. I ran the hot bath in the dark, making my way down the stairs to the frig and pulling out the plastic container, and feeling for a fork in my utensil drawer.

I snapped a few photos, wondering if I might capture my experience.

I was going to write…I knew that one thing.

Sometimes writing and expressing, for me, is as essential to feeling grounded and human as is eating, sleeping and breathing.

It seemed that the table God was spreading before me in the “presence of such enemies” in my mind and my circumstances was simply a hot bath, and nibbling on some food that tasted good, but honestly didn’t hold my interest for very long…

After about five minutes I made it to my computer and upon grabbing the mouse, the intense light of the screen hurt my eyes for a good few minutes…

It is now almost 4:30 am, and I hear my rooster crowing. I’m still exhausted, and will probably go sit in the now-warm water five more minutes and maybe nibble some more food. And then, I will go back to bed and put on the Psalms at the beginning, and try to fall asleep.

I’ll probably be up around 10 am and will run another hot bath and start my coffee. I already filled it last night, so I just need to push a button.

How long the current issues of presence, absence and distance are to be my portion, I do not know.

Nor do I know why, nor how, nor what to do, that I am not already continuing to do, in order to “make it” (in every way).

But I do know one thing: I will never fake it.

From the celebratory to the despairing, from the explanatory to the imprecatory, the Book of Psalms is anything but fake.

“One never meets just Cancer, or War, or Unhappiness (or Happiness).
One only meets each hour or moment that comes.
All manner of ups and downs. Many bad spots in our best times, many good ones in our worst.
One never gets the total impact of what we call ‘the thing itself’. But we call it wrongly.
The thing itself is simply all these ups and downs: the rest is a name or an idea.”

― C. S. Lewis