I will warn you in advance – this may be a long, rambling post. I have been through a very rough patch over the last 6 months and I’ve kept a lot of it bottled up inside. Partly because I don’t want to complain, partly because of pride, and partly because I don’t understand why some of this stuff happened. I know that’s kind of dumb – I’ve kept a lot of people out of my life – people who would have been able to help, people who would have been able to pray, etc. Anyway…
August 28th Dave turned 29 and we decided to have a party at our place. Dave and I are not big drinkers. We have the odd drink when we’re out for dinner or whatever. Anyway – I decided to get stuff to make him his favorite (ceasars) and some blue raspberry thing for me. The problem is that I don’t really know how to mix drinks and discovered this when I went through 26 shots of vodka in only 7 drinks. By the time someone noticed how strong I was making mine, I was well on my way to drunk. Very drunk. Which is both funny and embarassing in retrospect. This was my first time getting drunk since I was 19 (8 years for those who want to count lol). Anyway – I posted on facebook about it.
A few days later, I received a call from one of the ministries I am involved in at church. You see, I’ve posted about drinking to much in the past. I worked in an office at the time with no bathroom so these were not alcohol related comments. Just drinking in general (water, pop, etc). But I could understand that it looked bad and I understood that they had to be careful. I briefly shared my side of the story and agreed to take 2 months off and attend a personal ministry session to clear things up. At that point I was still okay.
Then, 2 weeks later I received a call from the prayer chain ministry. She had been informed that I had a “lifestyle” issue and so she removed me from the prayer chain. I think this is were the anger started. Despite the fact that I had explained that it wasn’t what they had thought, it felt like they were passing judgement without any consideration. And this wasn’t a public ministry. It was a confidential prayer chain that barely anyone knew I was part of. It felt like I was being told that my prayers were no longer good enough. I know Dave was pretty upset to but mostly because he say how much it was hurting me.
The following week I was in church during praise and worship and I was angry. I was praying and asking God why and He gave me a picture of someone in my life who has been hurt by the church. I haven’t been sympathetic or understanding to this person at all. God just said “Now you’ll understand” and I got it. I was glad to have a reason, excited to learn from this and see where God would move and determined not to let this situation get between me and God or me and my church.
Apparently it’s not that easy. I think my pride got in the way more then anything. The more I tried to be okay, the more I hurt. And before long that hurt became anger – anger at the people involved, anger at myself for not dealing better, anger at the church and finally anger at God. The problem with anger is that it takes over everything.
My life is quite different now then it was before this started. The more angry I got, the more alone I felt. Ironically, I never used to drink but I’ve been drunk more in the last 4 months then ever in my life before this. I know how sad that is, trust me. That’s the least of my problems. My relationship with my husband and children is suffering greatly – partly because of the stupid stuff I’ve done recently and partly because of the depression I am dealing with. Dave has been much better at dealing – and making sure we still go to church almost every week even though I often fight him on it. Sitting through praise and worship is hard. In addition to all this – I left my job a few months ago and being the one who was paying most of the bills, our finances have been a struggle while I look for a new job. And I brought someone back into our lives that God has told me a year ago that I needed to let go of and as a result I hurt my husband in a huge way. I don’t know why he puts up with me. I haven’t been able to be as involved in my children’s lives as I was/want to be and I know they notice. I have to intentionally try not to shut them out but at the same time not put my burdens on them and it’s a really really thin line that I’m not sure I’m doing a very good job of not crossing. I guess in the end, I let me anger turn that “lifestyle issues” statement into a prophetic statement because now I most definitely do have issues.
I guess mainly I feel abandoned – by my church and by God. I know that’s not the case – I know He’s there waiting for me to come back. And yet I feel blocked. In the past, when things get hard, I listen to praise and worship or read a good book and it brings me back to Him. Now praise and worship just makes me angry. I feel broken. And I don’t know how to fix it.
I know things are changing slowly. The last few weeks in church the praise and worship hasn’t made me angry – just sad. I think I’ve reached that place where I want to get back to Him, where I want to heal. The part where I should be going to Sozo and asking for prayer – but my mind still fights that. The church is the only place where I can find healing – and yet it’s the church that hurt me and that makes it so hard to want to go there. But I know I need to.
