Chicken Licken

[beakerj]

Hi guys, haven't written for a while, but have got to the point of needing to share stuff with others & to ask my constant question 'is this normal?', actually, 'am I normal?'.

I wrote before that one of the things my Mother's death has caused in me is big spiritual questions & doubts. I've been a Christian for a long time & wasn't expecting this. A lot of my questions are about whether God could really be good, & how can we ever be sure. All sorts of scary thoughts come to mind, & I get freaked out because I'm too small to be able to...I don't know what I'm too small for, I'm just too small.

I do have a history with anxiety/agoraphobia & this is all making it really hard for me to be outside & do stuff like normal....& I'm not an indoor person, at all. I look around when outside, at nature etc & think that I'm in the hands of a huge God, or huge chance (if there is no God), & I get very very anxious as I can't prove to myself that I'm safe in the hands of whatever. I'm doing all the 'right' things, reading my Bible, some books on God's love, taking my medication etc etc, but just feel so vulnerable & stressed out all the time. I look around & everyone else is just getting on with life, it feels like the inside of their brains are just so different to mine, & mine has gotten itself into some horrible corner it will never come out of. I want to feel normal about the world again.

What is going on with me? I wrote Chicken Licken in the title because it reminds me of the children's story where he believes the sky is falling in, but no-one else does...that's me right now.

I am so fed up with this.

Becka

[niamh]

hi Becka,

I get it with the is this normal question and I've come to just tell myself repeatedly that everything I feel and question is normal now, it's just a horrible new normal that I'm not used to.

I too am Christian and although never a serious practising one, I've always had faith, always believed but that has been shook to the very core. Sometimes I feel like I am on this constant search for my Dad, where is he now, the generic answer of "Heaven" or "somewhere" isnt enough for me anymore, like you I NEED the proof but yet I don't have it.

I keep hoping I will be one of those people who has a "dream" with my Dad in it which is really an actual visit from him, not a general dream but I'm still waiting.

There are times when I try to tell myself there has to be something more that life can't just end when we leave this physical world, I try to think that this life, our world can't just be a coincidence, a bunch of scientific changes and evolution that happened by chance .........it's like there is too much order to everything for it to be just by chance. But then of course I have so many doubts too, if my Dad is somewhere now why doesn't he push through my grief to come visit and let me know for sure that he still lives on, why doesn't he help when things go wrong ........he adored me, he would do anything for me so why can't he now.

I do get scared when I really start doubting it all, when I start thinking maybe it is all over when we die, those thoughts are not nice, I HAVE to be able to see my Dad again, he can't just be gone.

I feel weary from it, I hate the not knowing for sure, I can't just have faith anymore, I need the proof yet I know I can't just go get it somewhere.

I know I haven't really said anything that helps or that can point you in the direction of believing but just know that I too have the questions, doubts and worry that you have and I think it's ok, it is normal. I know some people find comfort in their faith when they lose someone, I guess I'm just one of those who's faith has become all muddled, confused and lost in it all.

((hugs)) to you Becka,

Niamh

[Guest Nicholas]

Hi,

"I look around & everyone else is just getting on with life, it feels like the inside of their brains are just so different to mine" - I made a very similar remark to my GP when I went to see him following my son's death, and he replied, don't you believe it.

Everyone is suffering to a certain extent, whether now, in the past or in the future. It is inevitable that it will happen to everyone at some stage. Life is a journey and we age and learn along the way.

Nicholas

[MartyT]

Dear Ones,

The posts in this thread reminded me of an excerpt I took from Life Touches Life: A Mother's Story of Stillbirth and Healing, a beautiful book written by bereaved mother Lorraine Ash. As she struggled to make sense of the unexpected death of her newborn baby, she found herself contemplating her lifelong belief that God is all powerful. On pages 52-54 she writes:

I could not allow myself to ponder what God was thinking, but I started from a place of trust – a lifetime steeped in Catholicism, which I often challenged but nevertheless always honored. I simply believed what St. Augustine said in the fourth century: Faith precedes understanding. I simply believed the Jesuit theologian Teilhard de Chardin when he wrote in Le Milieu Divin, "If we believe, then, everything is illuminated and takes shape around us: chance is seen to be order, success assumes an incorruptible plenitude, suffering becomes a visit and caress of God." These age-old luminaries were helping me through my grief. Instinctively, I believed what they wrote. I did not know, of course, whether they were right. Such things are unknowable, I told myself, and human tragedy does nothing to lift the veil of mystery between heaven and earth. But it did me good to contemplate my beliefs. In that contemplation lay one of the greatest gifts my daughter's life brought to me – a clearer view of life and myself that seemed to explain how terrible things like Victoria's stillbirth could happen in God's creation . . . In the course of my reading, slowly I chose to give up the belief that God was all-powerful. Instead, I chose to believe God was hard put to stop the death of Victoria, a pure and innocent soul. What, then, were Victoria and I and God powerless against? Could it be nature? Granted, God created nature, but the nature He created is inherently unpredictable and hardly benign. Nature is ruled by laws implicit with danger. Take gravity, for example. Gravity is a good thing. It ensures that everything on earth stays down in its place. However, as [Rabbi Harold] Kushner explained:

Gravity makes objects fall. Sometimes they fall on people and hurt them. Sometimes gravity makes people fall off mountains and out of windows. Sometimes gravity makes people slip on ice or sink under water. We could not live without gravity, but that means we have to live with the dangers it causes. Laws of nature treat everyone alike.

One of the first good laughs I had after Victoria's death was while reading Kushner's book. I imagined God as an old rabbi in the sky throwing up both his hands, "What? I have a whole world here to make go. You could do better?" I relaxed after that. I had found a rational way to support my belief in God. I had found a way to be angry at what happened to me without being angry at God.

-- Life Touches Life: A Mother's Story of Stillbirth and Healing, © 2004 by Lorraine Ash, New Sage Press, ISBN # 0939165503

[sunstreet]

Dear Becka,

I am sorry for the pain and struggle after loss. I want to acknowledge your courage in posting and good for you. It is so hard to struggle alone, and it can even magnify all our worries, questions, doubts, and pain. I think you are very normal Becka. I know it does not feel normal but that is because you have never been where you are before.

For sure I understand and relate to having huge questions and doubts about your spirituality after such a devisating and significant loss. I also understand that feeling of being to small. These are normal feelings Becka. Especially I think when we loose a parent, they are the ones or one that help us feel safe in the world. I really do think that when a parent that has been your protector, provider, source of comfort, dies, no matter how old we are when it happens, it seems to catapolt us back to when we were very little and young, still in the nest so to say, and it feels we have to step out of the nest all over again, but this time without the watchful and protecitve eye of our parent. It is hard Becka, so I encourage you to let go of judgements and rather find some compassion for yourself at having to learn to navigate and engage in life without your parent.

In regards to God, and is He real, is He there, how could He let bad things happen, all of these wonderings are absolutely going to come up for us I believe. I don't know if you are familiar with the Book of Job, from the Old Testament, but it is one that helps me to read when I begin to have these wonderings. I have a reverence and love for the Old Testament, because of my Grandmother, she reminds me of Job. Even in the midst of the Dark side of humanity, my Grandmother was able to see beauty, see hope, and her Faith and believe in God, never waivered, only grew stronger. In my opinion, the Book of Job really teaches us "how to suffer", "how to have patience" and "how to have hope" Job is often referred to as an example of perserverance. Job had the same wonderings, questions, anger at God even charging Him with wrong, Job never crosses the line though and humbly submits to God when told that the answers to his quesitons are beyond his ability to understand. In other words Man is unable to subject the painful experiences of human existence to a meaningful analysis.

Sometimes I pray to God and thank Him for His trust in me that I will survive what ever challenge is in front of me. The God, I believe in allows us free will, He let's us have choice. I believe that God, mourns along with us and is continually hoping we choose to let our hearts remain open to Him so we might see His wondrous works as I have throughout my life.

I have been through much tragedy in my life and I am certain that I have survived as in tact as I have because of my ability to just believe that God is there and is encouraging me, to use my free will and survive, and not question why or how, just to believe.

Anyhow Becka, I am sorry for the pain and the struggle and I hold you in gentle thought and prayer.

Blessings, Carol Ann

[beakerj]

Hey Everyone,

I just realised that I never replied to say thankyou to everyone for replying...which is unlike me. I really appreciate the time & effort put in. What I appreciate the most is that no-one here has ever (yet)acted like any of the wierd stuff I post is anything extraordinary or to be worried about. I say stuff here I pretty much clam up about elsewhere.

I want to feel normal again, but it's only 3 months for me, so I suppose I can't expect too much too soon. I just massively appreciate everyone's help.

Big Love,

Becka

XXX

[sunstreet]

Hi Becka,

No worries at all...no judgements here.....and a gentle reminder you are so normal. Your loss is still yet so new....so hard...HUGS.

Blessings and Courage, Carol Ann