Monday 17 August 2009

Looking into the mirror and seeing the scary.

It is what you can only describe adequately as a "dreich" day. To non-Scots, that's damp, grey and wet in a semi-Calvinist sort of way. The sort of day when the prospect of another session with the therapist fills me with dread. It hurts, I don't want to go, I want it to stop and get better. And yet I also need to go. I know I am learning to name and acknowledge some of my deepest fears and unexpressed desires aloud at last. And that is liberating. But it leaves me feeling raw and pained. My chest tightens even as I type. The thought that struck me after noting last week that I lived in a state of "constant conflict" and asked the question: which set of feeling are real? (Answer: Both.) was that I am getting to some of what I think of as the "unhallowable" parts of who I am. My theology tells me this isn't true and that God's love redeems us all totally. But it also tells me that the unassumed is the unredeemed. But actually within myself and with reference to myself, I don't really believe that the wholeness of my human nature can be loved, assumed and redeemed. I hope it will, I pray it will and I want what I profess to be true. But I don't really believe that is or can be the case. But as we go through the process I can only trust that things will change and grow in a better direction. Still, you do laugh in the turmoil. To Friday observation that I have problems with sex and money issues, I could only think: "I'm a middle aged Scottish male, what the heck would you expect?" Then "Fabulous, I'm turning into Woody Allen"!

5 comments:

  1. I don't really believe that the wholeness of my human nature can be loved, assumed and redeemed.

    So what's so wrong with you that God can't manage this? You any idea what God has to put up with in the rest of us?
    xx

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  2. "You any idea what God has to put up with in the rest of us?"

    Yep, I've heard confessions at Walsingham:-)!

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  3. OK, Kenny, came to believe and still do at at deeply sub-conscious level. But am working on it.

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  4. It can be a long process, but we get there!

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