Tag Archives: Struggle

January 3rd, 2008

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It’s been a while. I’m un-sure why I have felt no compulsion or desire to write lately. There is an after-taste of apathy in my soul. There have been some real high times (my new job, vision, music, dreams of co-housing, etc) and some seemingly normal times with Brenda.

But recent events have also exposed that I am still mired in self. It seems I have made little progress from the time of my first entry in this journal: September 2003. Almost 5 years. It feels like I’ve gone in circles, slightly expanding circles, yes, but the distance from where I started 5 years ago to where I stand now is a tiny fraction of the distance I have actually traveled. At first, I pictured a swirl shape, beginning from the center and moving outward. But then I pictured it in three dimensions, as a cone with each successive turn around the center not just moving away from that center laterally, but also moving UP and away from that center vertically; like a spiral staircase that slowly widens as it rises.

Perhaps things ARE different. Perhaps the path to transformation is not (to paraphrase Lewis) tried and found wanting, but found difficult and not tried. I just have to keep trudging.

(I don’t recall the circumstances that lead to calling for help, but I remember something happened between Brenda and I that threatened to drag me backwards to the other side of the valley, where I had been months before. I called in three of my dearest and trusted friends who rode up beside me. I call them my “Personal Board of Directors’)

When my “board of directors” came over the other night to save me from ruining everything, one of the key themes I heard from them was “it’s getting better…it will continue to get better.” That’s just so hard to FEEL..but that  little vision of “spiral staircase” the helps me.

Thanks God.

I am now in day three of what I plan to be a 28 day fast. I don’t know if I can make it. I don’t know if I’m supposed to make it. This morning, the sense of waiting for God to feed me was powerful again. I haven’t felt that in a while. It was good. My hope, my prayer is that like any other addict, 28 days without my “stuff” will serve as a psychic BREAK for me.

Food is an idol. I don’t want to want it anymore. I want to fast every day, and take from God only what He gives me…I want to truly live like a lily or a sparrow.

June – December, 2007

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These few bits serve as very lonely sign posts stretched out across the valley between a Pilgrim’s mind and his heart…


This journal is now truly the only place left to me.

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I sneaked a look into her e-mail after telling her I would not. I can’t really imagine myself confessing to it. I tried, but all I can really imagine is how to minimize it, how to justify it, how to explain it away. So now I’m sitting here with a secret too.

How could I possibly bring up any of my issues now with the chance that she’ll just look at me with a calm, superior demeanor and say…”well you went back on your word and looked at a private e-mail…so YOU can’t be trusted.

Wouldn’t that just make everything peachy? I’m a fucking idiot with no impulse control…that’s the problem. I’m a fucking idiot.

I could just confess and defuse the whole thing…or rather: set off the bomb right in my own face by confessing.

Or I could just shut-up and take it. That seems to be the theme of the last year or so. Shut-up and take it. I will wear the badge of “sneak” for having looked at that e-mail. I will wear the badge of adulterer for having looked at porn. I will wear the badge of liar…hell, I’ve worn THAT one forever.

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I confessed about the e-mail…so the power struggle I was worrying about is over: she’s in the driver’s seat. At least I confessed for the right reasons: I couldn’t get near God with that sin hanging over me, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

I’m stuck. We’re in the same place we were months ago…the place we were in 18 months ago: We’re hiding from each other.

She still doesn’t understand that THAT’S the point! Whatever has happened certainly carries with it a great deal of pain, but it’s nothing compared with the on-going pain of knowing she hides, she deliberately keeps me out of her life. That has always been the center of my pain, and nothing has changed.

But she doesn’t see that. She sees that repentance has occurred…and that’s good.  But my offense comes from being shut-out. From being treated like a little brother who has to be kept out of the club-house, and not like a man who can choose for himself.

From the beginning of this whole fucked-up episode she’s not understood this. Our counselor has not understood it, her new found sympathizers don’t care, and the “old” community are wrapped up in their own dysfunctions, needs and philosophizing…so I’m hanging out here all by myself.