Be still my quaking heart...

Can you feel the beats as they pound in a furious steady motion? Can you feel the unwanted rush and hear it as it pulses through, the loud drum echoing? Is it so loud that others can hear it too? Oh how it quakes and shudders. How it trembles with fear. I can feel and hear each pounding beat, like a gong resounding in my ear. Now the shakes will start, first on the inside and moving to the outside. I feel it, but can anyone see it. Can you feel how the room rises in heat so fast that you feel it creeping into the top of your head? Can you feel the room grow cold, so very soul chilling cold that nothing of nothing can get you warm? Do you dare feel the emotions? So strong, so powerful, they will bring you face down to the floor in utter despair? So powerful that the rage turns you into a person you would never recognize, and one you would flee from if you met her? Do you feel the exhaustion that never leaves and the pains that seem here to stay? It’s just another day. Bad days consist of these exhausting breakdowns one after another with no apparent reason. Good days are well, not good but better than bad. Just how deep does this dark hole plunge? And how in the world do you get out? Did I fall in suddenly by a simple misstep or start the decline without even realizing it. It has now paralyzed me. Life goes on around me but not with me. I disengage, slipping into some unknown space where reality is right there, but I am in my safe spot. Safe from what? What do I need to withdraw from or whom? What am I trying so desperately to escape that has such a tight crushing grip on me? I can feel it squeezing life right out of me, leaving a useless shell in its place. When my heart is not pounding, the silence almost screams in my ears, but noise bothers me. It’s almost like wanting just enough light to see around you, but not enough to find your way out because it’s too bright for your eyes. In so many ways it seems as though the whole thing is some made up oxymoron. But made up this is not. This is my life, the life I have lived for some time now. I abandoned my family a while ago, and I see how they miss me. Friends have stopped calling because they know I have no intention of returning their calls. Nothing personal, it’s just don’t do people because I don’t do anything. No dishes or clothes washed, nothing out of place put in its place, one thing starting a new pile when the pile beside has become too big, stuff strewn about in utter chaos. There are dirty pots on the stove from a dinner my husband cooked because I stopped cooking long ago. Now dinners are fast food or whatever they can fix for themselves. I hope one day when I look back and read this I can cry like I know I should be right now, but for the moment there are no tears, no rage, no emotion. What a wretched way to live, but to be honest I have seen more of my fleshly self than I thought I had. My sinful-self sickens me to the point I no longer like what I see or who I am. I have seen my sins and tucked them away, thinking if others didn’t know then I would be ok. This was not so. I thought if I said the past was really in the past, it would be and wouldn’t terrorize me in my dreams. But my dreams are no place I go to seek solace or rest. I long for rest but dread the dreams. I long for someone to really understand and show me the easy way out, but I’m told that is not so. I rejoice in the day where a tears and rages don’t control my days and racing hearts and nightmares don’t control my nights. I want just a normal day, one that brings a deep smile to my heart resting in a peace. I understand life will happen and things will always come our way, but when will the day come when at last I will feel secure within the shelter of my Savior? What must He do, that He hasn’t already done, to prove Himself strong enough and safe enough for me to trust? My flesh knows so many loved ones have left me and with me the way I am now, why would He even want me? What would keep Him from turning His back on me now? I know many would cry, “May it never be,” but the truth is my heart is still searching for a resting place, a safe shelter in which to hide. I cry, “Could this never be,” but yet here am I still, searching and waiting to be found.

Melissa Fitzwilliam