Quick, slow, slow

If the title of this post sounds like a dance, well... yes, in a way, it is like a dance.

"My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires." (James 1:19-20, NIV)

 

I also thought about titling this post "The incredible shrinking cat" as a nod to a movie that I saw on TV when I was a kid: The Incredible Shrinking Woman. In that movie, from what I can remember (with Wikipedia refreshing my memory), Lily Tomlin mysteriously begins to shrink. Her story makes national headlines as the world scrambles to discover the reason why she is shrinking. People give her really weird solutions to her problem: Oh, you started shrinking after you tested various household products such as hairspray? Well, then you should stop using various household products such as hairspray... and so should the rest of the world, lest we suffer the same fate! Cheesy-dramatic orchestra playing!

Anytime anyone has a problem, people can offer solutions that are ignorant, insensitive, or just plain dumb.

Right now, my cat Macho (as you can see in this photo that I've shared) weighs about 9 pounds. At last year's vet visit, he weighed 10 pounds, so he's been losing weight. The vet has been performing tests to find out why. (So far, the vet has confirmed that Macho has a Vitamin B-12 deficiency, in addition to some sort of GI disease, and possibly some type of lymphoma, but more tests will be performed in the near future to confirm that last part.)

He kinda used to have the opposite weight problem: He used to be a little glutton. About a decade ago when I took him to his annual vet visit, the technician took one look at him and was like, "Oh, looks like we need to go get a tubby chart." She provided literature that educated me on the myriad of health problems that an overweight cat can develop. Then they put Macho on a diet to help him drop the weight. However, after being on the diet for a few weeks, instead of losing weight, he gained half a pound. Great. The veterinary staff was puzzled and deflated.

I, on the other hand, knew exactly why he was chunking up. At the time, I was living with my birth parents. While I was at work during the day, my birth mother would give in to my cats' begging whines and feed them. I told the vet that I knew exactly what I needed to do to help him lose weight: I needed to move out of my parents' house. So I did, and I began to micromanage Macho's food intake. Eventually, he went from approximately 16 pounds to 15, 14, and 12 pounds.

But now that he's a mere 9 pounds, there's definitely cause for concern. I have noticed that his appetite began to decrease earlier this year, which isn't like my Macho. I figured maybe I was micromanaging his food a little bit too much, and I've been enjoying being able to carry him with only one arm. But when I took him for his annual checkup, the vet performed some tests which revealed that other stuff is probably going on underneath the surface. (Macho won't tell me about all his symptoms directly. I mean, he is quite the macho-man cat.)

But I think Macho is a good example of a creature whose issues can't be explained away in a simple textbook lesson. Not everyone's life conveniently follows all the textbook examples.

I've known for years that Macho is a cat after my own heart. His personality and temperament are very similar to mine. He is introverted, moody, skittishly afraid of the outside world, easily entertained, content with whatever food you put in front of him, deeply clingy, and loyal to a fault. And, apparently, he requires further probing to accurately analyze and diagnose the source of his issues.

Because my issues aren't easily solved like textbook examples, either.

"Be angry, and do not sin. Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still. Selah." (Psalm 4:4)

"He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city." (Proverbs 16:32)

With all due respect, I am learning that for me personally, while "freedom ministry" has been helpful to a degree, it has also been useless to a degree. While psychotherapy was helpful to a degree, some of my therapist's advice was full of crap to a degree. While analyzing and fixing me has been enormously helpful to a degree, it has also felt tremendously damaging to a degree.

On the other hand, every time God slices a specimen of my soul and looks at it under a microscope, He always sees everything, and He always tells me exactly what I need to know to be OK and to keep going... even if He doesn't answer right away, even if He's silent, and even if He changes the subject and starts talking about something else when I'm aching to know the answers to my current agonies.

For example, years ago, I visited a theophostic counselor (if you've never been to one, I would NOT recommend it) who said that we can all turn to other things to numb the pain -- such as TV, movies, or sleep -- to take our mind off the things that are causing depression. Any good counselor (theophostic or not) would tell you that you need to face your problems head-on. Deal with that anger right away before you end up stuffing it or unhealthily expressing it. Stop coping and start healing. Don't medicate your pain; take it to Jesus.

Um, I try, honest. But all that doesn't always work for me.

For instance, no matter what I try, no matter who I try to hang out with -- most of the time -- I STILL end up being lonely on the weekends, and I still feel rejected and very angry because of it, and my brain still boils it around in my head in a scary way. Over time, it has gotten gradually better. I don't give myself sinus headaches from all the crying anymore. I'm not suicidal anymore. I'm not officially clinically depressed anymore. But -- most of the time -- weekends still aren't fun for me. Do I really need to wrestle with the pain AGAIN, weekend after weekend, 52 times in one year, rinse and repeat, with very little relief?

God recently gave me a very practical answer: "Don't beat a dead horse." OK, then. If the horse is dead, I'd like to cook it and serve myself up a banquet.

If people don't want to give me the deep relational connections that I crave, especially on the weekends, no problem. You can call it "medicating" or "coping" if you like. I don't care how unspiritual I look to you. If escaping from life for a couple of hours by watching a movie by myself is going to help me enjoy my otherwise gut-wrenching lonely weekend, then that's what I'm gonna do. And I daresay I have my Father's blessing to do it.

"The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it." (Proverbs 10:22)

But when I'm not enjoying life, regardless of what day of the week it is, I have been dealing with and working through quite a bit of angry emotions that flare up and boil around in my head. I daydream and fantasize about having all kinds of terrible conversations with people who I've been trying to forgive. (Yes, forgiveness is a choice, but after you make that choice, you still need help following through with it. Hello, common sense.) I imagine myself doing all kinds of violent, angry things that I could truly get arrested for doing. It shocks me, and it really does scare me, and when I talk to God about it, He reminds me that I'm not actually doing the things in my head, and I'm still learning self-control. This is God's mercy, and it is one way that He comforts me. And gradually, the violent, angry thoughts fizzle out and float away. And I think I grow up a tiny bit.

As a very mild example, I've imagined myself yelling at my boss and really letting him have it -- not in a buddy-like zinging way but in an emasculating almost-abusive way. The thought itself will shock me, and then I'll remind myself that I can't talk to him that way in his house/at my job. My thought will stay in my head, my mouth will stay shut, I will keep my job, and God and I will get closer together because He helped me analyze my soul in a way that I can understand, in a way that helps me.

Yes, the Bible says to forsake anger (Psalm 37). But it also says to be slow to anger. Anger is going to come, but I don't helplessly have to let it take over and carjack me on some high-speed chase across town. I can sneak up behind it and catch it in a jar like some crazy poisonous insect and let it just sit there until it uses all the air inside its jar and finally suffocates. Then I can pin it with the other suffocated trophies in God's giant science project.

For me, one of the biggest discoveries that God has shown me -- one of the biggest puzzle pieces that helps make this whole thing make sense -- is that I have a psalmist temperament, and I've been learning how to control it.

Hmm. A psalmist? Psalmists are harmless, aren't they?

"Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies." (Psalm 139:21-22)

"O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, happy the one who repays you as you have served us! Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!" (Psalm 137:8-9)

"For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to the grave. I am counted with those who go down to the pit; I am like a man who has no strength, adrift among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You remember no more, and who are cut off from Your hand." (Psalm 88:3-5)

"Attend to me, and hear me; I am restless in my complaint, and moan noisily..." (Psalm 55:2)

Dang, we psalmists can be pretty messed up. But I suppose if we weren't, how would we be able to dig deeply enough to write all this stuff? That is what I am learning.

So, quick to hear... slow to speak... slow to wrath. Quick, slow, slow. Quick, slow, slow. What do I say? Where do I go? Quick, slow, slow. Quick, slow, slow. Is it safe yet? Should I say no? Quick, slow, slow. Quick, slow, slow. Can I scream now? Watch me; here goes!

OK, so in this post I mainly ended up talking about the "anger" part (as opposed to the "hear" part and the "speak" part), but I still think it's sort of like a dance.

It's holding on for dear life to your Dance Partner, because you're utterly dependent on Him to lead.

The other day when I drove Macho home from a vet visit, he and I both had a rather traumatic experience. I dropped him off before work in the morning, and then I picked him up during rush-hour traffic. Macho's vet is in another part of town, so we already had quite a drive awaiting us. So, there we were stuck in almost bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic, and Macho was stuck in his carrier, and he needed to poop. Both of us were helpless to stop it. There wasn't enough room in his carrier for him to stretch out the way he normally does in his litterbox, so he ended up pooping directly onto his tail. Then he tried to cover it up the way his instincts know how to do, which of course didn't work this time because he had a towel instead of litter, and he ended up getting bits of poop all over his carrier. I wept. You probably would, too, if you were stuck in a poop-infested car in the middle of rush-hour traffic. But my heart also broke for my cat, because it was certainly NOT my desire that he soil himself and be massively uncomfortable on the drive home. I kept telling him, "It's OK. I'll clean it."

I got a huge whiff of God's heart for me during that massively uncomfortable drive home.

A few days before that, my emotions had flared up to the point of almost spiraling me down into another depression pit. Thankfully, the depression didn't stick. But while I was working through it, I remember going through my day and cringing on the inside, achingly crying out to God in a giant, massively uncomfortable silent whine. I heard God crying and telling me to not break His heart. I didn't really understand why until I saw and smelled my cat poop on himself in a place that nobody else saw but us, in a way that nobody else could fix but him and me, in a manner that wasn't anybody's fault per se. I guess you could say that I needed to poop emotionally, I couldn't help it, and I didn't fully understand how desperately God wanted to just wave a magic wand and instantly make all the imperfect things perfect, all the uncomfortable things comfortable, all the terrible things unterrible. We both just needed to let it run its course, and I ended up learning how deeply compassionate He is, how incredibly close He wants to be, and how permanently loving He will always be.

I don't think I would ever be able to learn that in a textbook.