I'm DEFINITELY a REALLY BAD SINNER who STRUGGLES WITH BITTERNESS

 

               Chapter 2

               So… back to my story and sorting where it may fit into God’s grander story… so… there’s some tragedy in here I have to address.

               When I was six my dad took his own life.

               (Well no one was there so there is a possibility that the bullet ricocheted off a tree, I’d rather believe that, but the evidence points to otherwise in some ways.)

               Now, this is a very psychologically damaging thing to a child, and to a family. 

               I think… suicide is a very dark place to go.

               And, it’s a cyclical demon at that, it tends to run in a family, when one goes others follow.  It’s very depressing to think about.

               So if I confess, I’ve had my own bouts of suicidal thoughts, and my mom and brother have as well.  It’s a curse on the family. Someone you love does something like that and leaves your life in shambles, and the rest of their lives they’re always wondering what in the world happened and how would life have turned out differently if only.

               If only my dad had lived!

               I would have an entirely different story!

               So different I’m sure I don’t even know what it would have been!  Losing my dad has led my life in certain directions of compassion for the broken hearted that maybe I wouldn’t have felt as much without my own heartbreak. And, in the midst of that, I did have a unique opportunity to see God as my Heavenly Father provide for our family’s needs. So… God can redeem any tragedy in life, He’s an expert at it, there’s always hope.

               I do wonder though… I’m single and never been in real relationship, if I’d seen marriage would I have allowed room for it more in my own life?  Would I live in Clemmons still or be in Colorado still?  Would I have gone overseas to do missions instead of going to the Dale House Project?  Would I have gone to UNC?  Would I have gone to grad school?  Would I have four kids?  I don’t know, I do think things would have been different for sure. Every choice we make in life has consequences, and when my dad’s life ended, there’s a responsibility that fell on Seth and I.  One I’m sure he didn’t realize.

               If the tragedy of my dad’s suicide was not enough, we can look at what’s happened to my mom.  The side effect of the doctors taking out all her ovaries left her with this problem called lymphedema.  It’s sort of known a little bit now, but it’s still not really something many have heard of or understand.  I’ll try to explain…

               So, it’s a breakdown of the lymphatic system.  Your body has all these lymph vessels like blood vessels but with lymph fluid not blood… and they’re really tiny… and when the fluid doesn’t circulate through the lymph nodes properly things can get ugly.    

               My mom has it in her legs.  It started mostly in her right leg, that started swelling and swelling and swelling ever since I can remember, and now it’s in both her legs and her lower body, and she’s homebound.  She is a unique case, though.  She had lymphedema for years before she’d even heard of the word lymphedema, and when she first read a brochure about it and it said she was supposed to avoid extreme temperatures and such, well, she wasn’t happy that a well meaning but ignorant doctor had prescribed her a hot tub she’d faithfully gotten in every night for over a year thinking she was doing a good thing for her legs.  So that certainly helped exacerbate the problem. 

               My mom’s case is kind of a fluke.  There is hope for it, there’s a massage therapy that more and more physical therapists are learning, Manual Lymph Drainage… it’s just really expensive and for a long time insurance didn’t pay for it.  And my mom’s case is so severe she needs like a lot of this therapy done to see results, but it’s expensive and insurance won’t pay, and it would take up most of her time and life if insurance did pay so she wouldn’t be able to have all her businesses probably so… my mom’s situation is just, well, we can say, unique. 

               And, well, she’s my mom and I love her and want to serve her and honor her, so obviously I want to take care of her. 

               Okay, I haven’t always felt that way.  And ideally, I could pay a few other people really really well to take care of her. I wouldn’t mind taking care of her some, and I really do only take care of her some now… but I wish I could even just afford to give her workers a raise or something even if I still took care of her on weekends or something.

               Okay… there was a really dark time in my life when I didn’t feel that way.  At least not inwardly.  I felt more obliged to take care of her than willingly wanted to take care of her.  Really, this came to a head in 2005, when I’d ended my year at the Dale House Project and really wanted to stay in CO a few more years as a ski bum.  Sounded like a fun plan to me!  Why rush to get a professional job or whatever, enjoy your youth right?  I was single… and I loved CO, and I love skiing and I even love snowboarding I’m just better at skiing still… but I loved CO for probably a hundred reasons and didn’t really want to leave.

               But, my brother who was in the army had just left for Iraq. 

               And my mom would be all alone.

               And if I worked at a ski resort, I’d have to work all holidays.  Who wants to leave their parents alone on Christmas? And I mean, I do want to be with my mom on Christmas… in another world she’d not have lymphedema and be able to fly and visit me in CO and even ski with me… but that’s a whole other world and possibility not this reality.

               So I moved back home, and I was okay at first…

               But not really. 

               Really, deep down, I was bitter.  And resentful. And bitter. 

               Did I say I was bitter? 

               I couldn’t blame my mom, so was I bitter towards God I guess?  Maybe it was deep bitterness in my soul. I wonder if my bitterness is what let the devil in my life in such a flamboyant way… hadn’t thought about that much but it’s a connection that may be there… not sure I’m ready to get into that confession yet, but it’ll come out eventually.

               I don’t know, maybe this is a bit of self-revelation as I write and reflect… I’ve been wondering what open door I had to let demons into my life and this may have been it this whole time.  Bitterness. 

               Which actually makes sense, because the times in my life I’ve been victorious and joyful and experienced deliverance I have not been bitter, and the times I’ve been in bondage I’ve wrestled with bitterness. This is new to me.

               Now... these demons I’ve wrestled with… that I think a lot of people wrestle with… they have a name, incubus, or spirit husband. So… you can look up what those are, and know that the past 15 years I’ve wrestled with them and tried to figure out, are they real, are they just psychosis, are they both, and how can a Christian have such evilness near them… but the rampant bitterness in my heart kindof makes sense.  There may have been some idolatry as well, but how could I not have made connection with demons and bitterness before? 

               Anyhow… moving back home at Christmas should have been a pleasant thing, but actually it was bitter, fearful, stressful, even suicidal at moments, and insanity with the demons. It was just bad.  Really really bad.

               You’d think I’d be able to get over it though, eventually, to settle in… when I moved back home I was determined to move back to RDU where all my friends from college were.  I never intended to stay in Clemmons. I don’t know why I had such a distaste for the suburbs except for that I did for some reason think there’s something wrong with them for a time, maybe it was college when that came out, maybe embarrassment that the only thing Clemmons was in the Guiness book of world records was was having the most gas stations per square mile radius in U.S. Well… I didn’t like living in Clemmons.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s just as I was growing up I never imagined myself in Clemmons.  I don’t know that I imagined myself anywhere but maybe overseas like in China or something doing missions… (don’t tell the CCP they’ll blacklist me…) but certainly never thought would be home, and certainly never imagined taking care of mom and living at home, and even having to pay rent to take care of my mom…

               And can I just say something else, job hunting… sucks.

               I hate it.  Which is a little ironic, my favorite job was helping teenagers job hunt for a year, but doing it for myself, it’s just not fun. 

               It’s hard to find a job.  You need a network to do it. 

               With all I know now, if I could have done things differently, I would have gotten my insurance license back then and built business for myself… and be in better position now… and not worried about grad school where they brainwash you into leftist thinking… You don’t realize you’re being brainwashed at all… and I hate to knock my liberal friends, but I’m glad I’ve realized that deep down I’m actually a conservative. 

               Not a republican, but a conservative.  There’s a difference.

               Anyhow… my heart was rotten when I moved back home.  And I knew it enough to know if I talked about it I would just always complain to friends and drive them away… it didn’t occur to me to confess it as a sin and have friends pray for me to not have a bitter heart, I was just embarrassed so I hid it. I knew I shouldn’t be bitter, I knew in my mind that I had so much to be grateful for, intellectually, I just, what I knew in my head wasn’t translating down into my heart.  So I was kindof miserable. 

               And lonely. 

               And plagued by demons.

               And taking care of mom. 

               And… God did provide jobs for me, first through Megan at Starbucks, if she hadn’t been network I’m not sure what would have happened.  Then I learned there’s a group home here in Winston-Salem and thought it’d be like the Dale House Project all over again. 

               It was not. 

               God provided a new job again through a network, through a friend who left her position at a non-profit to go into a position actually using her degree… and initially I was really grateful and happy!  But over time, with the bitterness in my heart growing, I even grew to resent that role.  Bitterness is really a thief of life!  If you notice in yourself, get it out quickly!  Sheesh how much of my life could have had more joy and peace and contentment and gratitude and grace and purpose if I hadn’t been bitter?  Why am I such a fool?  Terrible sin bitterness.  Guard against it at all costs, it’s a tool of the devil to just steal kill and destroy. I guess I was too blinded by my sin and self-righteous to see how ugly it was.  Sort of.  Or I didn’t want to see how ugly it was becoming.  But I did… I just kept trying to ignore the weed hoping it’d just disappear and all the while it was developing roots and growing deeper and deeper.

               You know what revealed how ugly my bitterness was to me?  I mean, I did know it was so bad that I kept it private… which is also bad things in the darkness grow too, that’s why you confess your sin and bring it to the light so the light can kill it. 

               But… it was how I felt toward my friend Alexandra. 

               Alexandra’s been a friend since high school, I didn’t know her well in middle school but in high school well, we became friends in the youth group, and I’m not exactly sure how but we even co-led a discipleship group together, with Laura.  Laura’s my friend who got me the job at Work Family, the non-profit I was at. Anyhow… we went to different colleges, but we visited Samford together with my Bible Fellowship teachers Jon and VJ Corts and Caitlin and Amber, and what’s funny is Caitlin and Amber and I all ended up going to UNC Chapel Hill together, but Alexandra decided to go to Samford. But there was a hot minute I thought I might go to Samford. And there may have been a night I stole Alexandra’s Bible and wrote notes in it that she should room with me at Samford and told her it was a sign from God or something… that’s a little hazy. For whatever reason, I ended up at Chapel Hill, although that was kindof a mess, even though I think I would have been a mess anywhere for a while… at least at Chapel Hill I had some friends who didn’t let me go off the deep end into a party scene… but yeah… Alexandra actually even visited me one weekend our freshman year! 

               Out of college, we both went to serve in a different ministry.  I went to go to the Dale House Project, and she did Mission Year in Chicago.  For both of us that year was very formative. We both moved back to NC after that year, and she lived in Charlotte and was trying to become a math teacher, and I was at home in Clemmons just struggling… and then God called her back to Winston-Salem, to serve at Calvary, the church we’d grown up at here in Winston-Salem.

               I guess, I didn’t understand her wanting to live here. She was joyful to be here! She had a mission here… (literally the initiative she led at Calvary was called Mission Year at one time…) but she chose to be here.

               I did not chose to be here.

               I was not willfully in Clemmons with my mom, or Winston-Salem, or even at Calvary necessarily. 

               So with Alexandra, even though I love her, I found myself in a weird place internally towards her… I was bitter about my own life, and then I was envious of hers. Her joy, her everything, she actually got to use her gifts and such. Me… I just was miserable. With bitterness and envy. 

               I can’t imagine what kind of friend I was to anyone at that point.

               Well, only my best friend Megan knew how bad I really was. She heard it, even if I didn’t confess my sin to her, she sensed it in me. 

               It was particularly bad and obvious to her when I came across as envious of her when she was at a treatment center getting help for her eating disorder. Who gets jealous of someone at a recovery center for eating disorders?  How bad is it, how rotten my own heart was, that I was wishing to be anywhere but here, even at Mercy Ministries? 

               I don’t know what I said in a phone conversation with her that gave it away, but she knew.  I guess, that’s the thing about a best friend, they kindof know things like that about you whether you realize it about yourself or not. The good thing is, even though I was not talking about my bitterness but trying to conceal it and miserable and resentful of everyone around me who seemed happy, she didn’t just kick me to the curb. She’s still my friend. She’s married now so her husband is actually her best friend now, but back in the day, when we both lived in Clemmons, and I was going through a dark season, she was still my friend.