Slow Train Coming (2)
I was miserable and about to die from my youth on; I suffer Your terrors; I grow weary. Psalm 88:15 NASB
From my youth – Some things stick. Some experiences you had early on just remain, buried away in the subconscious of your worldview, coloring how you look at life. Modern psychological theory, removed from the divine, calls these early traumas. The psalmist calls them God-absence. What’s important about trauma is that it doesn’t go away. It’s like a frozen bit of ice lodged in the psychic refrigerator. It needs to be defrosted since its very presence restricts the optimal operation of the machine. But the problem is getting at it. Every time we try to examine what’s there, the emotional triggers send us back to the experience and we feel it all over again. We’re back in the hole—alone, empty, stinking. We’re back in the childhood, pre-cognitive upheaval. Something irrational. Dark. Threatening. The mysterious “why” that won’t give us any answer.
When I was born, I was placed in an incubator for several days. Disconnection. Abandonment. When I was just a year old, my brother was born. I was no longer the infant. More disconnection. More abandonment. In fact, the overwhelming feeling of my childhood was being alone. Of course, there are good explanations for all this. Medical necessity. Family necessity. Being the oldest. Frankly, the explanations don’t help. They don’t make the feelings go away. Years of therapy resulted from moments of loss of touch. “I was miserable and about to die from my youth on.” I didn’t die. We usually don’t. We survive, but we have that dead person strapped to our backs, and whenever moments of panicked abandonment arrive, we feel his hands around our throats. We feel it—even if we have all the right rational answers as to why we shouldn’t.
Life is a slow train coming. The experiences pile up and pile up and pile up, loading the boxcars with memories. Some good. Some bad. Some inexplicable. But there’s no way to disconnect them, to send the rotten ones off on some side rail. The slow train pulls them all along our track. “From my youth” I’ve been picking up freight. It’s harder now for the train to pull it. I’m slowing down. Grinding to a halt. I’d like to send some of those cars away, leave them behind and carry on without the load. But it’s my train and every one of those cars is somehow a part of me, a part that brought my train to this particular place on the track at this particular time. “From my youth” means I survived being young. I’m not sure how, but I know I did some damage along the way. The psalmist, ever conscious of God’s sovereignty, accounts for the long-haul train as something God is doing. I suppose he’s right. I’m not the conductor or the engineer. I’m just the passenger waiting to go somewhere. The Hebrew summarizes it in a word: ʿâpûnâh—I grow weary.
Yes, I do.
Topical Index: youth, nōʿar, grow weary, ʿâpûnâh, Psalm 88:15
Yes… that damned burdensome freight! Yet, when I join with Messiah’s yoke upon myself and learn from him, I find his gentle, forbearing and unassuming patience with my ongoing learning humbles me, eases the discomfiting sense of my blameworthiness, and strengthens my soul. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Working through reading “The Hidden Beast”…just noticed last week the spine of the book has a subtitle…”Reality Therapy for Becoming Human”…reality therapy indeed…I’ve been telling the guys I’m reading through the book with I’ve felt a weight of late…love how you described it in this Today’s Word…a long freight train…something I’m very familiar with from my working years…I’m sure others have said this to you…but…thanks for writing my biography…I found a song recently that has really helped to carry the weight…and to see it as a “blessed curse”…”O Love That Will Not Let Me Go”…by Keith and Krysten Getty with Dana Masters…on YouTube…live version is the best (Live from Sing!)…never heard this song before last week…hope it blesses others…
Thanks for your comment. Sometimes my struggles find their way into my writings and it’s always reassuring to discover that they help someone else.
It is a long and weary train. I have learned, providentially, that Yeshua is willing to uncouple the cars, if we are willing to cooperate with Him. We can be free of the burdensome weight, but only in our decision to own and then release the painful beliefs we have taken on.