TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: SATURDAY
The throbbing pain in my hand woke me up before the sun. The nightmares left me with less sleep than usual.
The pain was from Friday morning's trip to an indoor playground with my two oldest kids. I came down a slide in my sock feet and slipped when my less than agile thirty-two year old body made the transition from sitting to running unsuccessfully. My feet went forward, my head went backward, my hand collided with asbestos tile and cracked at the wrist. Three x-rays later I left the clinic with "probable joint damage" of some kind, a "bone bruise", no breaks, a red face and an expensive brace - a brace I wore on my date Friday night but refused to wear to bed. I paid for that. Left to flop around untethered all night my wrist swelled and ached me into Saturday morning two weeks ago today.
Th nightmares require a little more explanation.
Where I left the story last I was sitting on the bookstore floor alone - for just a minute. Then I got up and walked one aisle over to peruse the Christianity and New Age books. I thumbed the Left Behind novels, counting thirty something of them I think. I passed the Wild at Hearts, the bibles and The Purpose Driven Life and it's journals and other spin offs. I turned the corner and plopped down on the floor in Religious Studies.
I picked up a book I'd never heard of and read one paragraph. One lengthy paragraph and a few footnotes.
"What's that?" Becky returned.
"Ah, it's about that freemason stuff I told you about remember? They supposedly changed Christianity or invented it and rule the world now and-"
"The Rothchilds, the Gettys, the Vatican and the Colonel before he went teats up," she interrupted me quoting Mike Myers - one of her many giftings.
"Yea, so I was just reading how the Colonel and the freemasons did that exactly - made the whole thing up. I wish they'd stop telling people our secret. The Colonel's gonna be pissed when people find out those eleven herbs and spices of his aid in the brainwashing process - And who's gonna buy my CDs once the secret's out?" I joked.
We walked out arm in arm, drove home, took some Tylenol, unwrapped my wrist and dreamt. I dreamt the same thing over and over again. A crowd of people and me in its middle. They're angry. They're arguing, sometimes yelling, profane, belittling, laughing at me. And the ruckus is about faith - my faith. They're tearing it apart, asking questions I can't answer. But I'm doing my best. I'm telling them everything I know but every answer is laughingly and easily batted down with some fact or airtight argument I'd never thought of before. I'm frustrated, doubting, depressed. In my dreams.
And I wake up that way too. Hand pulsing with pain. Head full of questions. The world suddenly darker than before.
I've been depressed before and this wasn't it. This wasn't near depressed. This was blue at worst - fatigued feeling - like playing spin the bottle in junior high and waking up the next day with Mono. You might be dying, you think at first, then you realize you're just really tired and weak and it'll pass soon.
I sludged up to my office and fiddled with the mouse, checking e-mail, Googling in lethargic search for more on the fanciful freemason conspiracy theory in that paragraph I'd read. But there was no sense of urgency - just poking around out of boredom for a few minutes. Glad to be awake - but just barely so.
After a couple hours of this poking around for minute, to my gut wrenching amazement, it seemed everything I'd preached, based every aspect of my life on, sold my house for, committed my days to, written and sung about and was willing to die for was a lie. It was obvious suddenly. How'd I been so stupid for so long. A lie. Christianity, it was becoming clear, was a fraud.
And then blue became a little blacker shortly after. Fatigue morphed into fear and this mental Mono felt more like cancer. And it ate at me all day as I debated and reasoned with myself, tugged at the knots of fact and fiction now binding up my tired mind. I was near hopeless at times, surrounded with questions I couldn't answer, trapped by lies that sprang from what I once believed to be truth. At other times I felt silly for even entertaining the idea that Christianity was a lie.
And these two sides warred inside me all afternoon and into the night two weeks ago today.
TO READ THE ENTIRE "TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY" SERIES FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW:
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: FRIDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: SATURDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: SUNDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: MONDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: TUESDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: WEDNESDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: WEDNESDAY Pt.2
The pain was from Friday morning's trip to an indoor playground with my two oldest kids. I came down a slide in my sock feet and slipped when my less than agile thirty-two year old body made the transition from sitting to running unsuccessfully. My feet went forward, my head went backward, my hand collided with asbestos tile and cracked at the wrist. Three x-rays later I left the clinic with "probable joint damage" of some kind, a "bone bruise", no breaks, a red face and an expensive brace - a brace I wore on my date Friday night but refused to wear to bed. I paid for that. Left to flop around untethered all night my wrist swelled and ached me into Saturday morning two weeks ago today.
Th nightmares require a little more explanation.
Where I left the story last I was sitting on the bookstore floor alone - for just a minute. Then I got up and walked one aisle over to peruse the Christianity and New Age books. I thumbed the Left Behind novels, counting thirty something of them I think. I passed the Wild at Hearts, the bibles and The Purpose Driven Life and it's journals and other spin offs. I turned the corner and plopped down on the floor in Religious Studies.
I picked up a book I'd never heard of and read one paragraph. One lengthy paragraph and a few footnotes.
"What's that?" Becky returned.
"Ah, it's about that freemason stuff I told you about remember? They supposedly changed Christianity or invented it and rule the world now and-"
"The Rothchilds, the Gettys, the Vatican and the Colonel before he went teats up," she interrupted me quoting Mike Myers - one of her many giftings.
"Yea, so I was just reading how the Colonel and the freemasons did that exactly - made the whole thing up. I wish they'd stop telling people our secret. The Colonel's gonna be pissed when people find out those eleven herbs and spices of his aid in the brainwashing process - And who's gonna buy my CDs once the secret's out?" I joked.
We walked out arm in arm, drove home, took some Tylenol, unwrapped my wrist and dreamt. I dreamt the same thing over and over again. A crowd of people and me in its middle. They're angry. They're arguing, sometimes yelling, profane, belittling, laughing at me. And the ruckus is about faith - my faith. They're tearing it apart, asking questions I can't answer. But I'm doing my best. I'm telling them everything I know but every answer is laughingly and easily batted down with some fact or airtight argument I'd never thought of before. I'm frustrated, doubting, depressed. In my dreams.
And I wake up that way too. Hand pulsing with pain. Head full of questions. The world suddenly darker than before.
I've been depressed before and this wasn't it. This wasn't near depressed. This was blue at worst - fatigued feeling - like playing spin the bottle in junior high and waking up the next day with Mono. You might be dying, you think at first, then you realize you're just really tired and weak and it'll pass soon.
I sludged up to my office and fiddled with the mouse, checking e-mail, Googling in lethargic search for more on the fanciful freemason conspiracy theory in that paragraph I'd read. But there was no sense of urgency - just poking around out of boredom for a few minutes. Glad to be awake - but just barely so.
After a couple hours of this poking around for minute, to my gut wrenching amazement, it seemed everything I'd preached, based every aspect of my life on, sold my house for, committed my days to, written and sung about and was willing to die for was a lie. It was obvious suddenly. How'd I been so stupid for so long. A lie. Christianity, it was becoming clear, was a fraud.
And then blue became a little blacker shortly after. Fatigue morphed into fear and this mental Mono felt more like cancer. And it ate at me all day as I debated and reasoned with myself, tugged at the knots of fact and fiction now binding up my tired mind. I was near hopeless at times, surrounded with questions I couldn't answer, trapped by lies that sprang from what I once believed to be truth. At other times I felt silly for even entertaining the idea that Christianity was a lie.
And these two sides warred inside me all afternoon and into the night two weeks ago today.
TO READ THE ENTIRE "TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY" SERIES FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW:
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: FRIDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: SATURDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: SUNDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: MONDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: TUESDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: WEDNESDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: WEDNESDAY Pt.2
posted by Shaun Groves @ 2/11/2006
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