BB Guns, Quiet Times, and Grown-Up Boys

My legs swung free as I sat on our kitchen table, gazing at the forest of green outside our large picture window. A slight headache dulled my attempt to connect with God but lingering sips of coffee worked to lift the haze.

Don called from our bedroom just off the kitchen, "If you want to me to teach you how to use the BB gun, you can shoot squirrels while I'm gone."

"Gee, thanks," I replied with little enthusiasm.

While he bought me a hand gun for Valentine's Day—just in case—it may not surprise you that I have no intention of shooting the squirrels in our back yard unless the sky falls and necessity reigns. The mere thought further disrupted my attempt at morning peace.

Guns and quiet times just don't gel in my tender soul.

That said, I've not felt like myself for over a week now. And it's my own doing. Excited about the difference I felt after taking Plexus products, I decided to wean off the SNRI I've taken for several years. Touted as an anti-anxiety medicine, it worked to control nerve pain. When vitamins and supplements controlled my pain, I felt certain I could live with one less medicine.

I did well at first. But then my left eye drifted out more, exacerbating my double vision after a day of writing. And after four weeks without Effexor, my right leg felt unhinged. Deep pain I'd never felt before woke me from hip to ankle at night and forced me to ask Don to bring up the walker one morning.

A few days later, I succumbed to rationale. After swallowing the pills for about a week now, my leg and eyes work well again and I'm operating more like me.

But I've felt strangely vulnerable.

Without that little pill, my nerves don't communicate well, my right leg drags behind, the joints refuse to collaborate, and instability reigns.

I'm dependent.

Totally dependent.

By now you know another shooting took place last night. In a movie theater no less. Video clips proved Planned Parenthood harvests baby parts for sale. Today I read about a group of women who were not only raped in a Vietnamese water park but were later blamed for their choice due to their bathing suit attire.

Guns and quiet times don’t go together well, making peace hard to come by in a brash, violent prone world.

Sometimes I wonder if our society is wracked with anxiety because we know too much. Atrocities from across the globe run across our TV and lap top screens with a mere push of a button. Some days I can file it away. Others, the heaviness breaks my heart into pieces and I feel strangely vulnerable. Dependent even.

Since the barrage of horrific news isn’t going away any time soon, I not only need to swallow my morning medicines, I need to embrace time away from the fray, where His word remains clear, and His truth unaltered.

Especially when I don't feel like myself.

At the height of my oddness this week when dissatisfaction reigned, I read a post by John Eldridge from the book Desire:

"To wait is to learn the spiritual grace of detachment, the freedom of desire. Not the absence of desire, but desire at rest. St. John of the Cross lamented that 'the desires weary and fatigue the soul, for they are like restless and discontented children, who are ever demanding this or that from their mother, and are never contented.' Detachment is coming to the place where those demanding children are at peace. As King David said, 'I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me'" (Psalm 131: 2).

The day I learned I was pregnant with Nathan, I wrote a song using the words from that Psalm. Tomorrow he moves into a place of his own with a full time job to pay the bills. Maybe that's why I'm off kilter.

I like him.

I enjoy him.

And he's off to his own apartment, ready to embrace the world.

I've gone through this transition before. I'll be fine. But today, I'll play that song one more time because during change, physical trial, and a constant barrage of bad news, my prayer remains:

"Let my heart not be proud. Let my eyes not be vain. Let my mind be on you and not on things that I could gain. Let me still my soul within you, like a child with its mother. Let me still my soul within you and cling to no other. For you are my hope, Lord. Both now and forever more."