Black Friday

November 23, 2012

“Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,
   for we have endured no end of contempt.”

Psalm 123: 3

“The temper of mind is tremendous in its effects, it is the enemy that penetrates right into the soul and distracts the mind from God. There are certain tempers of mind in which we never dare indulge; if we do, we find they have distracted us from faith in God, and until we get back to the quiet mood before God, our faith in Him is nil and our confidence in the flesh and in human ingenuity is the thing that rules.”

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

I have been a most apathetic creature these last few days, struggling with what I dare not choose to face, but having to go at it alone. And this has not been good for my heart – as the “tempers of my mind” have absolutely ruined the only hope and confidence I had going into these days.

Life has been heavy for me lately, and all I have wanted to do was to laugh and to smile. But laughter and smiles have been the farthest thing for me. I have been living inside this world where every moment feels like the edge of impending doom, or incredible breakthrough, and remaining aware through these times of my spirit within me has been difficult.

I have been let down so many times in life – by myself and by others, and by circumstance in general – and so while I try to remain hopeful that some incredible breakthrough is just on the other side of the cliff, I can’t help but find myself wound up in fear and regret and the trappings of my own mind in thinking that I am foolish for holding out hope – hope that tomorrow my heart will be light, that I will laugh again and smile, that I will find joy in the things that now bring me sorrow.

I try to justify these moods I enter into by telling myself that life is not easy. I try to look around at others and see pain, real pain, and tell myself how selfish I am for thinking that what I am experiencing is pain. And then I try to help others, to love others, to bring them to a better place… and then find one question at the end of this day: Who is there for me?

There is a definite difference between the physical and the spiritual realm of life. As some dear brothers have pointed out to me lately, it is foolish to accept that evil does not exist in the world, that there are not evil things unseen moving through the hearts and minds of men. So, if there are evil spirits moving around us, enticing us to stray from what we know is true and what we want to do, then how logical is it that there must also be Good moving through the spiritual realm? And if there is Good in the spiritual realm, then I should have hope at the end of the day that God is looking out for me, as He promised, and that regardless of what happens in the course of the day, what moods I move through, He is all I need.

But I don’t live in a twelfth-century European monastery. I live in twenty-first century America. There is little stillness here. And what stillness there is becomes uncomfortable and unsettling.  

I have to get back to the “quiet mood before God,” somehow. Somehow I must find my way back. Because in lonely times like these, where “confidence and flesh and human ingenuity” are the last things I want, they seem to be the easiest to find.

I am not a fan of the “Holiday Season.” Call me Scrooge. I’ve been called worse. For me, it is a time of mourning, and I have never known why. Maybe it was too many breakups in this time? Maybe seasonal affectiveness disorder really get to me through the late fall and early winter? Maybe something happened to me before I kept track of memories and stored them where they were easily accessible?

Whatever it is, I fear I am now moving into a season of joy for others, at a time when I am not my best. And I just want to enjoy this time. I want to laugh and smile and enjoy the company of friends and family. But there is something within me that is troubled. As I watch the masses on TV throng into the retail stores for Black Friday, and I watch the Publix commercials glamorizing the breadth of extended families, as commercials for diamonds and necklaces and bracelets, cars and computers and video games bombard each moment of the television show I watch only to try to laugh, I wonder – is life supposed to be this serious?

Should I find some way to let go of this notion that I am called to bigger things than giving into the reality of commercials? Should I relax in what used to make me uncomfortable about this season – the fact that there really is no rhyme or reason for why we act the way we do for the next four weeks? I’m not anti-commercialization. I know someone has to buy the something or else someone else will lose their job and that will in some way affect me when I go to the grocery store. But sometimes I just wish that I could be that someone standing in line for hours to buy something I can’t afford for someone who doesn’t want it.

Something has happened to me in my life, which has called me to seek “the quiet mood before God” more than the next i-whatever. And there’s a heaviness to this. Because sometimes I want to just sit around and play on my i-whatever and not think about who and what God is calling me to be.

I wrote previously of all that I have lost this year, and all that I am losing. And a part of me really wants to question Mr. Chambers and ask him why I should not have at least a little confidence in the flesh and human ingenuity. At least there’s laughter there… even on Black Friday…