Like a Lonely Bird on a Housetop: February 2012

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Back again

I’m back at your feet, because, once again, I stand in danger of losing my mind. I feel the pull in my body as strong as if I were on the rack. That device was used so many years ago to pull so much out of people. It’s certainly pulling it out of me. I want you completely, he says. No, I want you completely, she says. But I NEED you, he says. But I also NEED you, she says. And more than anything, they say: I don’t want THEM to need you.

And what do I need? I’m once again melting into darkness. I am once again becoming a vehicle for everyone else's needs and wishes. And all I want to do is the most dangerous thing of all—keep other people happy. I know I can’t, but I know they can’t either—and therein lies my problem. Am I controlling, or am I simply trying to control all of us from going down in to the abyss? And does one lead to another, and back again? I know You can help me out of this, but there are so many doors right now. Show me the way. Show me how to raise up from the pit, whether or not others rise up with me. Show me that your voice should always be the loudest voice of all.

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Hear my prayer, O LORD!
And let my cry for help come to You.
Do not hide Your face from me in
the day of my distress;
Incline Your ear to me;
In the day when I call answer me quickly.

For my days have been consumed in smoke,
And my bones have been scorched like a hearth.
My heart has been smitten like grass and
has withered away,
Indeed, I forget to eat my bread.
Because of the loudness of my groaning

My bones cling to my flesh.
I resemble a pelican of the wilderness;
I have become like an owl of the waste places.
I lie awake,
I have become like a lonely bird on a housetop

--Psalm 102:1 – 7

I don’t remember when it was, or where I was, when I first read these words. But I remember how it felt when I realized there was someone else who had once stood where I had. Someone who had been there. And understood.

I thought I was the only one who felt my days consumed in smoke. The only one whose bones had been scorched and whose heart had withered away. Maybe, the only one who had ever begged God not to turn His face away from me at the exact moment when I needed Him the most.

I have never forgotten the picture of being a lonely bird on a housetop. For many years now, that verse has come to symbolize to me a life that is a mysterious jumble of joy and pain. Of knowing God intimately, and yet dealing day by day with a heavy heart because of a chronic situation.

I have a good friend who once told me that anyone can live with a difficult situation for a while, but it’s the chronicity that pulls us under. No wants to live with chronicity, whether it’s pain in the body or pain in the heart. And no one wants to live around someone one that finds himself in a chronic situation. We want to get over things, to get well, to get a job, to have our children turn away from the lifestyles that hurt them. We want to meet God, fall in love with him and live happily ever after.

But, sometimes that’s just not the way it works. Not everyone finds God, marries Prince (or Princess) Charming and goes to live in the castle in the air. A lot of us find God, fall in love with him and begin a walk down a very long road that was not what we signed up for.

We can love God and still struggle. Struggle a lot. And sometimes we try to tell others about our struggles, and they don’t like it. And sometimes, when we just won’t be fixed, they grow tired and they leave us. And when friends and family start to disappear, then we know what it is like to be alone with God.

And we know what it is like to be a Lonely Bird on the Housetop.