Hide and Seek

Do you remember playing hide and seek when you were little? Scrambling to find the best spot to cram your little body into, trying to be the first to discover the best hiding place ever, and waiting in excited silence while you were sought? I remember feeling like being found was the worst fate that could befall me.....as if my friend or sister who, moments before, had been my most trusted confidant in the world, had suddenly become scary and dangerous. They mustn't find me! I remember a contradictory fear, too, as I would hide for increasingly long periods of time. Had I found such a good spot that they couldn't find me? Had they gone on with the game without me? Was I, in fact, the only one still playing, while the others had moved on to another pursuit? The fear of not being found was greater, at times, than the fear of being found.....the fear of being forgotten stronger than the fear of losing.....the fear of being left behind more powerful than the desire to win the game. The fear would often drive me out of my hiding place, drive me out into the light, muscles cramped and heart racing, as I looked around the yard for the others. I needed to know: had I been forgotten about, or had I succeeded in concealing myself from everyone?

Today, I'm hiding again. The one who seeks me is a little harder to explain.....I'm hiding from the world and from myself at the same time. When the phone rings I jump, knowing that someone is trying to find me. Someone is looking for me, but I don't answer. Hiding is more important. Hiding is better for me now, as it will let me avoid everything else. Hiding has brought me to a place of fear and dread, and by continuing to hide I can avoid it all...though my logical mind knows the dread will only get worse. I ignore my logical mind. Hiding has become the most important thing for me today. I peek out the blinds at the world outside. I reluctantly check email. I constantly fear that someone will discover that I am, in fact, hiding, and that I'll have to talk. I'll have to tell them why and how and what's going on. I'll have to uncover myself and be vulnerable again. I have to keep hiding here in my house, hiding in my bed, hiding in isolation. Only here am I safe. But what if they stop looking? What if they give up? What if so much time passes and so many calls go unanswered that they get bored with the pursuit and figure I don't want to be found.....? What if they become content to leave me here in my self-made isolation? What if I am forgotten? I've heard them talk about others who hide....others who run. "She has to want to help herself. If she doesn't try, there's only so much we can do." I have a choice to make. Which is worse - being found and having to unveil myself, or forcing myself into prolonged solitude? Which is really worse? Somewhere in my mind I know people will keep looking for me - they'll keep calling, keep inviting me out, keep asking me to talk - but I'm torn. I want them to leave me alone. I want them to let me be, and to let me keep hiding. This works for me. At the same time, though, I want so badly to be found. I want to be uncovered and rescued from this darkness and this fear. I don't want to be sick and I don't want to be weak. I don't want to be overtaken and I don't want to fall victim to this anymore.....but the moment of my being discovered is so scary. It's scary to be vulnerable. It's scary to come out of hiding.

Changing My Mind

I'm supposed to write a devotional for my church today on angels and demons.....kinda strange, I know, but our sermon this Sunday is going to be on whether angels and demons are real and what role they play in our lives. I'm pretty interested to see how my pastor answers it in a sermon. As for my devo I'm supposed to do, it's kinda hard because I believe pretty strongly in spiritual warfare and the fact that the battle we fight is not one of flesh and blood....but it's a pretty intense topic and I don't want to scare people. I think it's interesting, though, to group angels and demons together, since they're obviously so different but both so obviously spiritual and other-worldly. I think it's good for me, too, because I've thought so much about the negative aspect of the spiritual realm with the struggles I've dealt with lately that I think I've neglected thinking about the power of the Holy Spirit. I think our culture likes to think of one and not the other - that either we have the goth people who believe in dark angels/demons and stuff like that, or we have the touchy-feely "Touched By An Angel" folks who think angels walk around with radiant halos. (I loved that show, don't get me wrong.) We don't usualy think about the fact that both exist and both impact our lives.... It's weird. I don't know about angels and how they play in our lives, and I feel like I know more about how demons mess with me than those who are on God's team. Does that make any sense to you? I don't get how as a follower of Christ I can know more about the ways the enemy plays with me than I do about how the Spirit enpowers me. That's sad, and I never thought about it before. You know how you can become so bogged down in a problem that you can't see anything else? Nina and I talked about this some the other day - how sometimes when you're dealing with something you need to radically change your perspective and focus on something completely different in order to see how to get out of it and how to finally let the chains fall. Kinda like with those brain teasers and puzzles you'd play with when you're little. I'd work on those forever and get so frustrated and become convinced that there was no way to do it, get up and go to the bathroom, and come back and fix it in no time. I just had to stop thinking about it. I wonder if being sick this week has been kinda like a trip to the bathroom in the middle of a brain teaser for me. Being sick plus going out of town last weekend has kept my mind on completely different things than what I had been thinking of, and I have to say I like the way things have been going. I could say that it's because I haven't been going anywhere in awhile or because I haven't had things like work to deal with or whatever, but I haven't had a panic attack all week.....and because my schedule has been so off with sleeping all day and being up all night and all, I haven't even been taking my medicines like I'm supposed to..... This has all just hit me. Strange. I think I'm onto something here. My pastor told me that maybe to pull myself out of this self-conscious depression I should do something for other people and Becca and I talked about how certain things might not be painful if we didn't think they were supposed to be and Nina and I talked about handing things over to God and being real instead of being happy plastic people dwelling on ourselves.... I feel like I've gotten some sort of weird clarity here. I need to stop focusing more on the power of God instead of my own weaknesses.....more on the strength I have in the Holy Spirit than on the constant attack of Satan.....more on what it means to live in the light than on how it feels to be drowned in the darkness.....more on the rope that can puul me up out of the mire than on the coldness and isolation of the pit. Whoa. I had no idea where I was going with this blog, and I feel like God showed me something huge. I'd glad it's captured in words so I can't lose it. Though I still don't know what I'm going to write in my 400-word devotional. And yet the power is so strong....I'm feeling dizzy and kind of overwhelmed by what I've realized just now.....it's so simple but it took me so long to get it.