Disorder Stalking

Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.

1 Corinthians 16:13-14

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you whenever you go.

Joshua 1:9

 Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? I don’t know. Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.

Gandalf the Grey, The Hobbit

A few weeks ago, my roommate got a tattoo of his angel numbers. Angel numbers are a repeating number or numbers that catch our attention throughout the day that are a sign that the divine force (whether it be God, the Universe, etc.) is telling you that you’re on the right path. I confess that my knee jerk reaction was that angel numbers are simply a coincidence that grabs the human attention in a textbook case of Theory of Mind (which I will not delve into; read it yourself). However, as I though on it more I began to understand it. Although I am not spoken to through numbers, I am spoken to in a different way by God. I am given ideas and words repeatedly in order to show me something. It may not necessarily tell me I am on the right path, but it feels a lot like foreshadowing.

For example, last spring semester I had the sudden urge to study Lamentations with my discipleship partner. We spent three months going through the book (which is essentially a guide on how to grieve biblically) and then that summer I was put in a condition where it was essential that I face the demons of my past in order to not emotionally, mentally, and spiritually implode. Thankfully, God’s grace permitted me to do so and I was put on the other side stronger than I was before.

Can I completely deal with everything that comes my way? No.

Do I still have the occasional unprompted panic after spending days or weeks thinking too deeply? Yes.

Am I still here after those things? Always.

Now coming to the present. This semester I have been emotionally and spiritually stable even though the conditions of the world and my reality are telling me not to be. Since the last time I have written in this journal, Russia has invaded Ukraine, putting the entire world on the edge of its seat; I’ve started creative writing again, which often times starts nights where I wake up with deep scratches along my body; my family has been going through an intense hardship; and several other events and developments.

And yet I feel ok… which makes me scared.

It was today as I was playing poker with some brothers from Cru that I really considered how much of this is me being alright and how much of this is, in reality, me emotionally suppressing myself, not allowing myself to feel my full range of emotions as I am afraid what would happen to me if I did.

There have certainly been moments in my life where I have allowed myself to feel the full range of my emotion and I was either hurt by it or scared afterward.

Regardless of whatever patient persona I give off, when I am angry I get PISSED! It’ll probably happen over the course of a few minutes where I’ll throw something, dig into someone as deep as I can, walk away to sulk, and then return to try and undo whatever damage I’ve done.

In regards to sadness, there’s some shit that I’ve experienced that I hope no one else ever has to experience and there’s some shit that people very close to me have gone through that has caused a great weight to be hung on me because I love them and wish I could help them; and I wish that no one has to experience their loved one’s go through that.

Then that goes to love. Both familial, (which is storge in Koine Greek) and romantic love (eros, in Koine Greek) are two I have an incredible struggle with. With both, there is certainly trauma that I need to work through in order to allow myself to feel the full range of passion that these loves entail. Until then, when I get to a certain point on the “meter” of these loves, I find myself near paralyzed thinking about what it means that I’m allowing the deeper parts of this emotion to be felt.

1. I’m allowing myself to be put in a position of pain.
2. I’m putting this other person, who at this point I care about, in a position where I can hurt them either intentionally or, more than likely, accidentally.
3. Can I focus on the other people in my life if I allow myself to spend more emotional energy in this area of my life?
4. Is there someone else who can support and love them? If so, should I cease pursuing so they have a better chance to find somebody.

The list goes one, but let’s focus on the idea of emotional energy. I don’t think I’ve been able to be the friend the people around me deserve this semester because of a lack of emotional energy. I’ve certainly been resting a lot more than I used to, which I think comes from an incredible amount of emotional energy already being spent on the different areas of my life. I’ve promised SO many people I love to get in touch with them this semester, yet have found myself unable to do so because I feel the need to recharge so often.

This brings me back to the beginning of this rambling. The idea of being strong and courageous appearing in my life constantly throughout probably the last month. First it comes in the form of The Hobbit, next my discipleship partner recommends a study on Joshua, then my Bible study has a random passage about this idea that didn’t even have to do with what we were talking about.

This has either caused me to be aware of or to begin to feel a looming over my life. Whether you consider life to be a journey and the storm clouds are starting to rumble on the mountains in front of you or you consider it a walk and feel a stalking force looming near, you can probably get the idea. What I have decided to title this feeling is “The Agent of Disorder.”

There are three ideas of order in my worldview: order, which is simply the state God’s creating agency allows there to be stability throughout creation; unorder, which is the state that is without God’s creating agency keeping creation apart, the most notable example of this in scripture being the plagues of Egypt; and disorder, which are the forces of sin and darkness that seek to put the world in a state of unorder to separate humanity from God’s order, putting their physical and spiritual life in peril.

Now that this idea has been explored, this Agent has resulted in a feeling of unease. I feel like something bad is about to happen and God is telling me to strap myself in cause its gonna be hard and its gonna be stinky.

And I don’t want that because… I’m a wuss, if we are honestly gonna put it into honest words.

I have this terrible, natural part of the human condition in me that doesn’t chase after or simply lets go of things I want and holds onto things that don’t serve me. It’s awful, truly.

I don’t want to be uncomfortable, but I’m being told that to go on this great next step that I’m chasing I have to be ready to do so.

I have to be ready to have that conversation, I have to be ready to fight for what’s right, I have to be ready to sacrifice, to chase, to break down, to want, to lose, to trudge, to brace, to hurt, and to ultimately just do whatever and survive.

And I suppose that’s my problem. For so long, my goal was to simply get by and survive. But now, the means to which I survived have become my captor. I feel terrified to use the full capabilities of my mind and body because if I do so, I won’t go back. My life will be put on a road that I will not so easily leave. Although I hate quoting from the same book more than once in one journal, J. R. R. Tolkien writes this exchange between Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit about Bilbo going on his journey.

“Bilbo Baggins: ‘And you promise that I will come back?’
Gandalf: ‘No…and if you do, you will not be the same.'”

That is what I feel preparing to turn and fight this Agent, or go head first into the storm, the fire, or great disorders of the world. There is no assurance that going into it I will be ok; the only assurance is that if I come out of it, I will surely not be the same Nic that went in.

I am certain that this looming feeling will come to climax itself in this season of my life. Whether it be through the actions of myself, another, or simply the different forces at work in this world. I have been told several times during my life that the times where I wasn’t suppose to come out on the other side and did show purpose for my life. Whether it be me sprinting to the edge of a cliff at Bryce Canyon at 2 1/2, near drowning myself in a pool at 4, or approaching a gun to my own temple as a broken teen, there is a guardian angel working his ass of to make sure I can do my work.

I suppose the least I can do is make some good out of it.

Have a good night and a blessed Holy Week.

-Nic