Categories: life
Date: 22 March 2009 16:30:59
Blinks eyes at the strong daylight, and squints out at the world...
Ah. OK, so where was I?
Good question. I'm not sure if this last ten days of almost complete isolation on all fronts has been self-indulgent or just very necessary to whatever it is that's going on inside me. Words seem to have completely deserted me, and contact with anyone really difficult.
One of my current difficulties is with church I mostly go to - and the fact I've admitted to myself I can no longer maintain the façade Sunday after Sunday that this kind of worship is helpful to me. It really was not good being there this morning, and I am taking myself somewhere else I've never been to this evening, and where I'm unlikely to be recognised, to see if a complete change either finishes me off completely, or I can regain some sense of God being in a church service.
I don't cope with Mothering Sunday services where there are flowers given to every woman. I don't mind them being given to mothers, and I don't feel left out. I'm not a mother, I'm really not likely ever to be, and I don't have a mother to give them to, and come to think of it, she wouldn't have wanted them either! Flowers from me, yes. From a church she hated, no. But, it feels false for me to take them.
Nor did I cope well with the advice to "Give them to Mary, that's what a lot of single women do." (It's a fairly Catholic Anglican church, and there are at least two statues of Mary very prominently displayed, and for complex reasons, for now, I have no choice about where I go to church), when flowers were brought to me at the organ, and I refused to take them initially. Eventually, I found someone who'd held back from asking for flowers for his mother's grave, and was upset there were none left.... I very happily gave him the ones I so didn't want!!
I've found lots of ways with coping with Mothering Sunday services, generally by focusing on praying for those with far more reason than me finding it hard to cope with, and this year the list was long! Friends who's children should've been with them, and were not, friends struggling with infertility issues, friends with a dying 13 year old daughter, mothers dying too young.
Mmmm... I may not have physically done a vanishing act, but I've certainly done a mental vanishing act this week, and it's not being easy re-entering life. I may have to find plan B!