Coping

I'm angry.  I've been fighting it for weeks but the ugly, seeing-red, energy-draining emotion keeps beating me down.  Right now it's winning.  It won't be this way forever, but right now, I'm face down on the mat with the ref calling the count.  We're almost to ten.  Will I get up?

GET UP!  Someone, something shouts.  A voice that lives so deep inside I have to be incredibly quiet to hear it.  GET UP!  It shouts again to fight through the noise and win through the fight.  GET UP!  It calls my name, knows my number, tells me to just move, to will myself to keep going.

Get up, I respond, inside my head.  I will keep moving.  I will keep going.  I will beat this thing.

What the hell is happening? you may ask.  I can't talk about it.  It's so crazy that you probably wouldn't believe me anyway.  There are accusations.  There is injustice.  There is most definitely misunderstanding and undeserved judgment.  We're not talking about everyday bullshit.  We're talking about insanity. 

"The Lord is my Defender," another voice says.  This voice lives inside my head.

Yes, yes, I know the Truth: I know that it is useless, absolutely USELESS to waste energy on this fight.  When I try to defend myself, I will always lose.  Not because I'm not right.  Not because I don't make valid points.  But because I steal from myself through an effort that should not be mine to begin with. 

"It is mine to avenge (sayeth the Lord); I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them."  (Deuteronomy 32:35, italics and parentheticals mine)

Even as I read this I soften.  I don't want "their foot to slip" or "their doom" to rush upon them.  That would make me sad, honestly.  These people who have made my life a living hell over the last three weeks - well...they're just people.  Just like me.  They have as little as I have and need as much as I do.  I don't want disaster or doom for them.  I just want them to leave me alone.

I keep reading.

"They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support." (Psalm 18:18)

One commentator expands on this verse with this:
They prevented me - They anticipated me, or went before me. The idea here is that his enemies came before him, or intercepted his way. They were in his path, ready to destroy him. In the day of my calamity - In the day to which I now look back as the time of my special trial. But the Lord was my stay - My support, or prop. That is, the Lord upheld me, and kept me from falling.
 
I can relate to this.  I need someone to prop me up.  Everytime I think I've worked through the events of the past few weeks something new gets thrown at me and threatens to topple me over.  I am not strong enough.  I can not do this on my own.
 
"They prevented me, anticipated me, ... intercepted (my) way ...."  A new way to look at this, perhaps.  Perhaps there is a "way", something God might have for my family in this, some purpose that I'm too angry to see or acknowledge.  Perhaps the enemy knew that and wanted to cut if off before we reached our destination.  Before, even, we began the process of moving toward it.
 
I think I find comfort in that.  Hard to tell, though.  I'm still angry.  Angry at a God that lets bad things happen so that his children can learn lessons.  There.  I said it.  What kind of a god does that?
 
I've been here before.  It is the age-old question of suffering.  I know that I will have no other answer than acceptance, faith, belief.  Belief in a goodness I do not always feel.  I will believe because I know better.  There are too many good things, too many good gifts to ignore the Truth: God is good.