The Manx Den

Maybe you read my last blog post? It’s full of memories and emotions about my dad and how troubled I was in the past about my diabetes. It’s still not – something I’m ok with, or even proud of, as my control over my blood sugar isn’t all that great.

I did get some time to chat with hubby this past evening though. He knows I’ve been under stress lately and having troubles with sleeping, and when I finally fell to sleep in the afternoon, he went down in to town to buy us some dinner. He knows by now just what sorts of things are the signs of my mind becoming overrun with worries, and he always lets me know, though it can take us a day or two to recognize the problem and nip it in the bud.

I think I wrote so much about diabetes because I’m facing an appointment with my endocrinologist for the first time in six months, and I’ve been really preoccupied with my visit to my family in the US – for the first time in four years.

Back last summer I actually called my grandmother to thank her for helping us financially with monetary gifts through me and my hubby’s first few years as a married couple. They have come at points where we have severely needed aid, or when some article about the house was needed. (For example, after my amputation, her contribution helped us get a dish washer.) She had sent me a package of papers, newspaper clippings about stuff she read in the news about Denmark, and of course a letter to clarify her desires – she had an aged drawing made by some unidentified artist, xeroxed many times over which she wanted redrawn and enlarged.

The image was of a 1960′s style line drawing of a wizard of Oz-esque fairy princess, encased in the generalized outline of a tooth and holding a magic wand. Across the princesses’ waist was a large sash, bearing the words ‘tooth fairy princess’. Just imagine the good witch of the north out of the famous technicolored 1940′s movie, surrounded by the words ‘She shares because she cares’. The little poster is one she taped onto the wall beside the bathroom sink when my sister and I lived with my grandparents for a year, and I think she’s a little enamored of her dentist because she wanted me to draw him standing next to the tooth fairy.

The picture still makes me shudder, but my dad’s mom is full of love in her funny little way, and she sent us money when I finally called her to explain that my scanner was broken, and I needed it to do the job she wanted me to do. So, that being the month of May and close to my birthday in just, she sent much more than was necessary for just a scanner.

Yes, writing about her just now makes me think of her, and so I called her just now and spoke around fourty minutes.

Part of the stress that has been haunting me this week has been my Grandmother, and feeling like I owed her a visit for sending me money – and so I just *had* to talk to her and explain why I was not coming up north during my trip in February to visit my father and stepmother. She understood all the emotional reasons and wished me the best trip possible. She actually thought the entire visit had been cancled, because she had heard nothing from my sister, mother or father.

I asked her to pray that I have peace of mind and contentment until then, and she agreed, even though she is not yet a full-blossomed Christian. We spoke a lot about ‘controlling’ and pushing away the bad memories of childhood, and I spoke about how Jesus has shown me the loving presence of himself working through people in my life to protect and be with me, even in the most difficult and traumatic moments.

This was difficult for her to hear, but she agreed with what she heard, and spoke in part about what things were like for her, and about events that occured then – and continually about putting in the closet of her subconscious these things.

Now personally I know this does not work, for traumas, strong emotional shocks, and mental anguish does not go away when compartmentalized, for they are rents and tears in the soul and heart, and they must be healed gently and gradually by love and the perspective of God being there, even when he cannot be seen or felt, or even touched.

For example, one of my early memories is of a heavy fight between my parents in the middle of the night, and the shouts, cries and yells echoing down the hall and preventing my sister and I from sleeping. I was around 5 or 6, and my sister was three, and both of us were in great tears and wailing our lungs out. I got up from bed and turned on the hallway light, and pounded upon the door of their bedroom to try and distract and stop their fight, but the door was locked, and I stood crying in the hall as I heard these pained and awful sounds through the door.

Ad this has always brought incredible tears to my eyes, as when you experience such a thing as a child, you cannot deal with them.

But as I lay in bed and sobbing over them, I remembered the cry of that memory. ‘God, where were you when this was happening? Why didn’t you stop it’?

An answer to that question is not forthcoming in this entry to that question, but for me the answer came at last – God’s presence was there in my sister, wailing forth every emotion and fright and anguish as I was feeling. The love and understanding of the living Jesus was there – not as a dead and buried man who cannot think, feel or reach in to touch lives 2000 years after he philosophized and imitated prophets, but as a person and ultimately, eternally more. A man who experienced the greviances of human life, even with the knowledge of God and having created life, and being able to see into people’s hearts.

What is the significance of his presence, unseen and unbidden, as my infant sister? Every wail was that of a little child, and knowing, sharing, understanding even if my sister did not, how painful, terrible, and miserable that moment was; held the unconditional love and closeness of a living, breathing, feeling, unconditionally loving and forgiving God, and sharing the moment with the same pain if not more.

‘God, where are you?’

Every moment, there together with you.

-Jeanette / Illys