The Chattering

It has always amazed me after every blog post, the outpouring of phone calls, emails, messages, notes and just plain love.  Some folks, like me, are very private and don't respond online.  Others, respond openly and beautifully.

Sometimes, when I put up a 'painful' post - a post that is not about overcoming, a post that portrays the pain one feels at times - I doubt myself and consider taking it down like fifteen times throughout the night.  I almost did this last one.

Then, we got a couple of phone calls this morning.

Cancer isn't the only suffering going on in the world.  I don't have to watch my baby have thirty seizures in one day and look at painful choices to remedy it.  I don't have to sit in a prison cell and grieve myself and my family over wrongs I did to society.  I don't have to wonder about my husband's fidelity.  I don't have to put on a prosthetic leg and arm when I go out, like so many of our returning soldiers do.  I don't have searing pain where my children are concerned - they have problems like everyone - but I'm not having to post bail for them or visit them in rehab.

There's a lot of pain in the world, a lot of suffering, and what I have come to conclude about it all is that Christians don't do pain and suffering very well.

Over three decades ago I was introduced to two books that changed my world view.  One was John Bunyun's "Pilgrim's Progress".  The other was "Hind's Feet in High Places".  Both books take a fledgling soul and start them on a journey.

In my early twenties, I started to look at my life in that manner - I am on a journey.  I am walking a path that sometimes is broad and green and warm and pleasant, and sometimes I am on a path that is fraught with peril and storms and lightening flashes all around, and I have no protection from it.

It changed my whole view on life.

In John Bunyun's book, there were off-streets along the way, and the journey was mostly alone except for times of trouble when there were those leading you into harm's way, and those leading you out.

In Hind's Feet, the journey was to the top of a tall mountain and the life lessons, heart lessons, soul lessons learned along the way.

Both of those books so hugely important to Christians for decades and decades, reflect pain and suffering.

That tells me one thing - the idea that you shouldn't deal with pain and suffering is relatively new on the Christian scene.

Maybe a couple of decades of living with the gospel of "Positive Thinking" impacted us more than we like to admit.  Maybe a couple of decades of sinking into the "Prosperity Gospel" has painted our wagons a different color - I don't know.  

Maybe the Power of Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel ideas were a backlash against generations of Christians being a little too snug and content in their misery.  Again, I don't know.

All I know, is that Christians say the damnedest things.

Especially when you hurt deep inside.

Things like "just don't think about it".  Or, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle". And some of the best "well at least it wasn't as bad as you thought"...... huh?  How bad does bad have to go to get a sympathetic ear at times?

Anytime the words "malignant neoplasm" are clumped together in a phone call from my doctor or on "My Chart" web page, my insides shrink a little and tears come to my eyes.  Words put into phrases like "observation for suspected malignant neoplasm"  hits hard in the mid-section of your body.

As I process all of those words, I need some time.  I need a sympathetic hug.  I need a sympathetic ear.

I don't need preaching.  I don't need to hear what God taught you thirty years ago and you have nothing to compare to suffering since then and cannot relate.  I don't need to hear comparisons - like well "at least you aren't losing your leg".  Or, "at least you are still alive".  That might help later, but when you've been body slammed in the depths of the valley, comparisons don't help.

I don't need to hear what you want it to be.  Like, if a doctor gives you points A, B and C - and if "A" is the worst case scenario and "C" the best case scenario, don't just talk to me about "C".  My brain doesn't work that way.  I have to logically think through the worst case scenario, the best case scenario, and where I might land, and then my brain has to decide what is the best way to proceed from there.

Sometimes, there are few if any positives.

Sometimes you have to wade through a lot of negatives and weigh out which one is best.  After you process that, then God can start to open the door for blessing - or positives - but when seeking out answers being constantly reminded to "look at the positive" doesn't do anything.

If Madame Curry had only looked at the positives, we wouldn't have the discovery that radiation was bad, but also good and could be used to kill cancer cells. If Selman Waksman didn't discover that a nasty fungus could produce a powerful antibiotic, most of our ancestors that fought in WWII would not have produced us.  Who knew nasty molds make brilliant antibiotics?  So, yeah, we all know that we have to look at the nasty stuff and eventually it can be turned into good, but you do have to look at the nasty stuff.  You do.

It's not about the glass being half empty.  I am amazed how much Christians say they hate modern day psychology, but quote it nonetheless.

I'm guessing it's because they watch Dr. Phil a lot more than they listen to or read their Bibles.

And maybe this is what this all boils down to:  if we knew our Bibles, we would know what to do in the face of pain and suffering.

Jeremiah cried out to God when thrown into a muddy pit for his prophecies.  Just a hint - if you don't diss Jeremiah for crying out, don't diss the people under the umbrella of suffering now.

David covered himself in ashes and fasted and wept and prayed to God when he knew that his new baby was going to die.  Jesus went off to pray in a lonely place.  And duly note please, that he sweat drops of blood and wept when praying in the face of suffering.

Why does the Bible note that God catches each one of our tears?  That's one of the most tender, touching things to my soul and I visualize that when I allow myself the grieving.

And if the notes and emails and phone calls are any indication, I'm not the only one feeling very alone in the midst of Christians telling me how to handle it all.

***

I think I should have done what I originally intended to do after the long day of CT scan, waiting, drinking water, waiting, drinking more water, and wait some more.

I intended to fast and pray and not "connect" until my soul was in a better place.  I intended to grieve whatever it would be, alone with God and process it until I could talk about it.

Good intentions pave the road to Hell my mother always said.  (that's not in the Bible in case you wonder)

I fell asleep after we got home that night, then Scott woke me up around 9:00 and said "everyone wants to know what the results were - you need to type something."

That, my friends, just made me mad.

First of all, no one would even know that I had results yet.  Secondly, it was late at night - at least for me - really?  I have to let them know now, really?  I know better than to type when I'm mad.

I was already pissy because I just didn't like the results.  I knew I needed time to process it all.

Or let me say this another way - I knew I needed time to collect my thoughts before I could handle all of the lame "Christianese" thrown my way.

Sorry.  But I was told this week that I needed to be more honest here, so honest it is.

I say this knowing that the wrong people will get the wrong messages here.  A lot of people have been so kind, so caring, so supportive throughout all of this.  And I know a lot of people just don't know what to say, and this will probably reinforce that thinking, making them never say anything again.

I'm not talking to you.

For those of you that have been so kind, stop reading here.  The rest, let me skool you.

And I 'skool' you for one reason only - I'm not the only one hurting.  The others just don't blog about it.

When anyone is suffering there are all different levels, all different processes, all different types.  My simple advice is this:  Do NOT respond until you know what level, know the type and know where the person is at in the process of suffering.

You find that out by asking two questions:  "How are you doing with this?"  And then you ask "What do you need?"

Really.  It's that easy.

Those two questions clue you into exactly what your response should be.  Sometimes my responses to the first question have been "I can't quit crying".  Or, "I'm numb".  Or, "I'm over the initial shock, I'm processing".

And then, what do I need?  I need a hug.  And please know, I'm not a hugger, but that has been my most surprising response at times.  I need you to hand me kleenex while I sit here and cry.  I need you to just sit and grieve it with me.  I need you to remind me that I can be strong in this weakness.  I need you to remind me to keep in the fight.  I need you to remind me that God is close.  I need you to massage my hurt soul and spirit and help it stay on the journey.

My most recent response surprised even me - I need you to listen to me rant for thirty-five minutes so I can get this anger out and move on.  I don't believe in ranting, but boy can I do it well. I know it's the fastest way for my personality type to process - get the ugly out then I can look at the facts.

I have not been angry this whole entire side road journey of cancer-land.  Not because I am so immune to it, but I think it's because I have had to deal with hideous things before, I know the grieving process, I learned how to do suffering a little already, and I learned a long time ago it doesn't help to get so angry that you cannot proceed.

But when my daughter called and asked me that afternoon if I had any results yet, I said "No, and I'm just so pissed about it all".

And I was surprised - where did that come from?

My journey the last six months has been all about accepting my limitations, and I haven't been very happy about being *limited*.

And you can't talk about it.  Because it makes one sound damned ungrateful if one says "I'm alive, but I'm pissed I can't work in the garden".  Or, "I'm alive, but I can't eat carbs and not get sick, and I have a limited diet that I'm not ok with yet".  Or, "I'm alive, but I am constantly aware that I cannot lift anything or do work for more than an hour or get stung or cut myself, because if I do my lymph-gland-lacking-body goes all crazy and my left side swells up".

And the most difficult, "I'm alive, but I don't know when my brain will come back so I can sit in a group and talk and think with you all".

So when I finally said out-loud, "yeah, it's pissing me off", I should not have been surprised, but I was.

(oh yes.  Mommy has a potty-mouth when she's dealing with anger....)

***

So, all that brings us to the results of the CT scan.

I didn't want it to work out this way, but because Scott insisted on going with me Monday, we had to get home early because he had to go to work the next day.  I knew why he wanted to go, but I wanted the day to look differently.

A while ago I had set up two days with my daughter Kristi to care for Baby Bird - that Monday and Tuesday.  I had hoped to squeeze in a little Millie-Bean time on her birthday as well.  I was so pleased to be able to feel well enough to spend the time with her, and also viewed it as a way that I could possibly help maybe 'payback' Kristi and her husband a little for all the open hospitality they had given us over the last almost two years while I was in Columbus getting treatments.

The CT scan scheduling kind of messed up those two days for a lot of people.

While we were waiting that afternoon for the callback from my doctor, we ate out, shopped with utmost lackluster, and then stopped in at Kristi's.

No phone call.  We left there intending to stop in and see the birthday girl on the way home and I kind of thought I would not be getting a phone call that day after all.

While celebrating and playing a little, my phone rang.

I walked into a bedroom, closed the door and chatted a little with Dr. Mrozik.  The door burst open and two girls trying to find their best doll-playing-partner barged in and as Heidi gathered them up, ushering them back out she looked at me and made the thumbs-up or thumbs-down gesture, wanting to know which way the call was going.

I turned my thumb sideways.  It wasn't the good news I was hoping for, but it wasn't the bad news of going back into chemo.  Yet.

Dr. M said it's not a fracture.  That's what I think my logical brain was wanting her to say.

It's not inflammation as it is not in the soft tissue.

It's not arthritis, which was my last hope.

It's too small to biopsy right now.  She said her concern of course was that it was a malignant neoplasm which kind of makes my blood run a little cold every time I hear those words.  Especially, when she is looking at the rib bone at the sternum.  The scar area is where most cancers of this type recur the most.  And judging by the way she examines that area, I'm guessing she has seen that happen more than once.

I know all the medical come-backs - I know she has to be extra safe.  I know she has to be extra concerned.  But the bottom line is that there is a bump inside my bone that she has to be "extra-safe" about.

I go back in three months for another scan.

***

Sometimes, doctors make verbal slip-ups and don't really realize what they just told you.  Two come to mind when dealing with this - one was my radiologist oncologist asking me why I was balking so much at doing radiation.  I told her that I knew radiation comes back around and bites you in the ass in twenty years.

She told me, "let's not worry so much about the twenty years, and just get you to four years".

Ok.

The other comment was from my oncologist when we were worried after the first bone scan about another spot and she told me she didn't like her patients to have bone scans closer together than five months.

Now we are going every three months.

***

While I am raging and ranting, I keep coming back to one of my favorite soap boxes:  the north american church has dropped the ball on so many things.

I'm sorry - I know a lot of you are pastors, teachers, believers and I mean you no disrespect.  But I can't help but feel like with all of the work being poured into the church, we are missing some things.

I believe that if the North Amercian church was doing it's job properly, biblically, we would be leading the world in the field of psychology.  Why we have walked away with the idea that our psyche or soul or spirit - call it what you want - are all disconnected I don't know.  Just reading a few Psalms tells you differently.

Instead of telling believers that God gave you a Sabbath rest and you are to do nothing, worry about nothing, just rest your body, soul and mind, they have to go to a psychologist that tells them their minds, bodies and souls need a *rest*.  A psychologist tells people to "rest" once a week.  They are teaching what the church should be teaching.

The same goes for meditation.  Just bringing up the word in some church circles causes a sharp intake of breath and fear grips some faces.

I don't get it - the word meditate shows up in the Bible at least more than a few times.

Are we so afraid of "middle eastern thinking" that we immediately throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater?  Or in this case, the soul out with the mind?

I've been searching for God while in the midst of all my recent angst.  I've walked the journey long enough with God to learn that you don't walk away from Him of all things when you grieve.  Or when you get angry.  Or when you are weary.

You walk to Him, with Him.  You talk it out, angst it out.  It's like a thunder storm that clears and calms the air and makes it sweet to breathe again.

Well meaning people have told me that you are not supposed to question God.  Really?  Because I think I read about Abraham doing something crazy like asking God again and again if he would just please reconsider Sodom and Gomorrah.

So as I was asking God for wisdom to know which way to go a couple of months ago, asking Him for help, for guidance, for light on this journey, I searched in my car for a CD I had misplaced.  One of many things that I have *misplaced* the past several months.  Instead of the CD, I found one with a hand written title called "Sounds of the Eternal".

I put it in.  I listened a bit.  It was scripture reading, some meditations, and then a simple song would go on and on and again on and on.

I kind of liked it, but popped it out.  You can only listen to one-liner songs for so long.

The next trip, I popped it in again.

I listened to the whole thing.  I now have five simple songs memorized that come back to me often.

It occurred to me suddenly on one long trip, that this was what I had been looking for literally for years and years - a Biblical meditation CD.

You just don't find many of those things.  Because maybe, just maybe it's a psychologist just messing with your mind.  Or maybe it is just too closely tied to 'middle east thinking' and we certainly want to steer clear of that heresy with our basic, more holy western thinking that comes from the Greek.  Because we want to think like Greeks instead of Hebrews for heaven's sake.   (that was sarcasm in case you missed it)

We have tried to be so aware, so alert of Satan *sneaking* in somewhere, that we cannot see the help that God put right into our hands and souls when we need the help the most while suffering.

That simple help of turning to Him.  One of the songs says "I will show you hidden things, hidden things you have not known".

It sings that like maybe 83 times.  But it's now embedded in my mind and it comes as words from God time and time again.

Another song says "Let me hear, let me hear what You will speak, when I turn to You in my heart."  I wake up with those words going over and over in my mind, and I pray them.

A few weeks ago on tv, I was flipping through the channels as tv bores me greatly, and landed on an interview with a famous meditationist.  (that's my own word, and I cannot remember the guys name, sorry.)

But he was by no means a Christian.  Because in America you cannot "transcend" and sit in church pews.

But I leaned in with fascination as I listened to what he said.  He talked about being in his twenties, sitting at a cafe talking to a friend, and he became aware that there was a chatter running through his mind all of the time.  Always.  Never ending.

He looked into it.  He found that everyone has this chatter constantly in their brains, and that few, very few know how to quiet it or even know how to recognize it and name it for what it is:  chatter.

Continuing the idea, he said the chatter is the culmination of all that we have heard people around us say in our lives.  Our parents, our siblings, our friends, our co-workers - it all goes into an eternal place in our minds and keeps winding and rewinding and filtering every life experience.

I leaned in further.  I have spent some time disdainfully watching "reality" shows.  I hate them but am so fascinated by the human experience.  Almost always, you get to see the "real" person within any person.  And when they are privately interviewed, it seems that they are giving you their inner-chatter - they are telling you what they think about any given situation and it is always colored by their personhood.

For instance, my mother's favorite phrase was "you should be ashamed of yourself".  And I was for a while, then I rebelled against that for a while longer.  When I started adolescence, my older brother who I thought could not hate me anymore than he already did, started a full on attack each night at the dinner table "you eat like a pig".  "You sound like a pig".  It usually ended with me not finishing a meal for a long time.  And oddly, my parents saw it as me over-reacting, adding insult to the injury.

That rolls through my mind every time I sit down to a dinner table.

I'm sure my kids have things running through their minds that I wrongly set on them in words.

So when meditation guy starts talking about everyone having "the chatter" and where it comes from, I'm already on third base waiting to run home with this idea.

He said oddly enough, our inner-chatter comes a lot of times from what and how we have judged others.  If two girlfriends have talked about another friend wearing something inappropriate, that becomes inner-chatter and the more we judge, the worse the inner-chatter becomes because we are even further closing ourselves in by what we have put forth as 'self-truths' in our gossip.

And we gossip more, to cover up the inner-chatter, but just end up making more inner-chatter.

Which is interesting, because isn't that kind of what Jesus said?

But the most interesting thing he said is that we have to learn how to step back in our minds and observe the chatter, because the chatter isn't *us*.

He said that is why you need to meditate.  To relieve the mind of everything it is thinking, to empty it of all the chatter.

And if we do meditation God's way, it's even better I guess is all I can add to that.

***

So while I am on the "dealing with anger" part of my journey, I am thinking, thinking, praying and meditating.

I am noticing my inner-chatter a lot.  I am standing apart from it in my mind and realizing that it's not me - I am becoming stronger than all the voices that have forever filled my life with words that were not ever from God.

The one song on that CD that has awakened me the past week is "Awake! Awake! Put on your strength, Awake, awake, put on your strength".

I didn't look it up for the longest time, but when I did, I was blown away.

It's Isaiah 52

Awake, awake,
    put on your strength, O Zion**;
put on your beautiful garments,
    O Jerusalem, the holy city;
for there shall no more come into you
    the uncircumcised and the unclean.
2 Shake yourself from the dust and arise;
    be seated, O Jerusalem;
loose the bonds from your neck,
    O captive daughter of Zion.


Heck, I thought the phrase after "put on your strength" was going to be something about being prepared for battle.  And no.  It says "put on your beautiful garments".  If I would have looked it up and suspected that God was talking to me, I might have noticed the "for there shall no more come into you the uncircumcised and the unclean".

You can read that however you want, but to me, there is nothing more 'unclean' than the cleansing chemo.

I absolutely do not remember how that CD got into my car.  I don't know who gave it to us.  (If you did, please let me know and I will bless you with the telling of what it has done for me in the deep valleys.)

At first, I thought it was a friend of mine who sings - some of the inflections of the words in the song were similar to her east-coast-mennonite pronunciations.  She said it wasn't her.  I was bitterly disappointed.

But the songs and the Scripture fills my mind as I meditate.  After - after, I clear out the chatter.  The chatter of my false thinking.  The chatter of the judgments.  The chatter of the antagonists.  The chatter that just needs to be stilled.  And then God can speak.

And He does.



**We are all familiar with the Biblical word “Zion” (in Hebrew “Tzion”). When we delve further into the original Hebrew we are able see something about this word that just can’t be understood in translation. Did you know that the word “Zion” (Tzion) comes from the verb “leTzaen” which means “to mark something” or “to emphasize something”? Zion, therefore, describes God’s tremendous emphasis, concentration and impact upon any given place within creation.There are thousands of examples like this one that will make your study of the Bible even more meaningful!

Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg from eTeacherBiblical