52 Card Pickup and Job

Humor In Chaos

Searching for Joy Series

52 Card Pickup and Job

The Book of Job is the hardest books of the Bible for me to understand. I have read up on it and studied it and taught on it for years in religious education classes for teens and children. I’ve listened to numerous homilies and sermons on it. A few years back, I thought I finally got it. I did have more insight at the time; but, no, I still hadn’t fully grasped the message until recently. Just like many of those homilies and sermons and analyses, I struggle finding the right words to explain it.

I’ve been through a lot. My mother once asked me, “When is God going to decide that you have been through enough?”

I thought about Job when she asked me that. Job didn’t give me an answer. I replied to her what little I did know, “Troubles are not evenly doled out like a game of poker. It’s more like 52 card pickup where some get a lot, and some hardly get anything.”

Job wasn’t playing cards. He was living his life. The devil was having a conversation with God and wanted to prove a point about the faithfulness of one man. So, God let the devil have his way with Job so to speak. Within reason. He wasn’t allowed to take his life. I am totally paraphrasing.

Satan took pretty much everything else. Envisioning Job sitting in the ashes surrounded by his friends trying to be supportive but failing makes me wonder if Job was ready to throw in the towel. I know I was to be done with life for a while early in my divorce journey.

I remember my worst night of all. My ex said something to my daughter, who innocently told it to me. It shouldn’t have been an issue. But it was. Because that little tidbit of innocent information wasn’t so innocent. It was a piece of information that tore my heart out one more time. One more time too many. And I lost it. And my sweet daughter was left standing there having zero clue what she had done. She hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t about her. It was about me, a tidbit of information about me, that my ex used against me through her.

Thankfully, I pulled myself together enough to explain to her as calmly as I could muster to please go to her room, close her door, and do not come into my room before morning no matter what she heard. And I spent the night screaming in emotional agony.

I was in the ashes right there with Job. I spent that night taking stock of all I had suffered over that past fifteen or so years. There was so much pain and loss and betrayal. I didn’t reach out to anyone this time. I went inside myself begging God to fortify me. I wonder if Job felt as I felt. The pain was too great to bear on my own but there was no one I could go to for this.

People like to say things like, “God only gives you as much as you can handle.”

The Bible actually says in 1 Corinthians 10: 13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

It’s about temptations, not trials and tribulations that are we can sustain. Sometimes things do happen where we need the support of others to help us along. He did create us to be social beings, parts of the Body of Christ with Jesus as the head. We are not intended to be islands unto ourselves.

At this point in time, I had made progress in my growth. All that progress was gone. I was right back at the bottom of the pit. But I didn’t give up.

When I used to teach my kids when they were young how to make free-throws in basketball, I used to tell them to keep trying. Keep trying. Keep trying. When they finally made the first basket, my drill changed. If you can do it once, you can do it again. If you can do it once, you can do it again. I kept repeating that until it changed to, “If you can do it once,…” they replied, “…I can do it again.” Pretty soon, they were making baskets.

That night, alone in my room and in my pain, I reminded myself that I had already made progress. I hadn’t attained joy yet, but I had enjoyed moments of happiness. Yes, I was back in that pit. But I knew the way out. I had done it once; I could do it again. Each time, it gets easier and I get a little further along.

Knowing how fragile I was, I made a slight detour on that first step. I took my medications and handed them to my adult daughter. I knew I was in danger of myself. I asked her to hide them and only give them to me one at a time when she was certain I needed one. I would not have done that if she was a child. She was an adult, and I needed help from someone I knew I could trust to give me hell if I needed it. She did. She could because I humbled myself to her.

One of the things I did during that climb out was go back and reread Job. I got a whole new understanding. I was able to sit in the ashes with him and hear God say, “Job, Sarah, you don’t know what I know. You don’t see what I see. You didn’t create what I created.”

The things of this world are much bigger than any one of us; and yet, each one of us is immensely important. There is purpose here.

We are not told why things happen in the Book of Job. We are told to trust that this is not the end.

When we try to trust each other, we need proof, right? After all, trust is earned.

Has God earned our trust? Did God earn Job’s trust?

Job chose to trust God. More than that, Job realized God didn’t need to earn Job’s trust. God doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. His faithful love is real and constant. That’s enough reason to trust.

Recently, there was a question in a private group on Facebook that asked, “If you could go back to your 18 year old self, what would you tell yourself?”

Of course, the intention was what would you change or what would you advise yourself to do or not do to make your life better. A lot of people said things like, invest in this, don’t marry that person, don’t quit school, major in this instead, etc.

One person wrote an honest response. She said, “I wouldn’t bother to go back and say anything. I was too hard-headed to listen anyway and would have changed nothing.” She got a little bit lambasted for her response, but I liked it. I thought she was showing recognition of who she was then and is now. She gave me pause before I answered.

I said, “I would go back, but I also would not bother to give my younger self advice. I was deeply in love, and I would not change that even though the marriage ended in divorce. Even if I had told myself that, I would have married him anyway. And that’s okay. What I would do is I would observe myself and hopefully relearn how to be that confident, powerful young woman I was. I want that confidence back. I want me back.”

I started going back through and reading those journals I wrote way back when, trying to remember the experiences I had and what I got out of them. That young woman had an amazing faith in God and ability to accept people for who they presented themselves to be. I want to be that way again. How did I get that way? I don’t have to be 18 or 34 to be like that. I can, and should, be that way now in my 50s and the rest of my life. This goes back to intentionality and integrity, being real in the moment.

I was real back then. It wasn’t until traumatic events happened and I was feeling the loss of my husband’s affections that I made the one major mistake of my life: I tried changing myself to be who I thought he wanted me to be. Huge mistake.

There is a lot of complaining from adults these days on the loss of self-identity, putting the needs of others ahead of our own. These complaints are legitimate. It is a problem I have as well. I sacrificed myself way too much. I lost my identity. That was my own fault, and frankly, the fault of lupus too.

Traumas, of any kind, attempt to take away pieces of us. When they take away parts of our identity that were intended by God, that is bad. When they take away parts of our identity that were not intended to be in us, or take away other things outside of us that get in the way of who God intended us to be, that’s good. When traumas hit, both happen. If we are conscious about it, then we can get guidance on it from God and others who have traveled this path before and succeeded.  We can open ourselves up and allow Him to work on us. That’s another part of being intentional.

Journaling is important here. Writing about my day starts with events. What happened. With whom did I interact. Plans made for another day. In addition, I include my thoughts and feelings. Where did I grow? Did I recognize a trigger either from childhood or a more recent experience? If I was triggered, I analyze the source, identify the feelings, and forgive or put into a better perspective.

For example, one day when my illness was running rampant in my body, my son took me Christmas shopping. I had problems moving at the time and the stores were crowded, so this took a lot of patience on his part. As we walked, there was a display of a cheap version of the Atari game I had as a kid. I told my son how I used to have an Atari and the games I used to play on it with my friends. We looked at this version, and a couple of the games I used to play on my old one were programmed on this one too. He insisted on buying this new version for me in the hopes that it would provide me with happy memories. We brought it home. He set it up on my TV in my bedroom since I spent most of my time in there anyway.

I played it a couple of times with myself and with my granddaughter. It was fun, but it also wasn’t. I didn’t know why.

It sat on my dresser gathering dust. No one touched it. There was no joy in it for me. I appreciated my son’s intention. It was a sweet of him. If anything, it was a trigger, but I didn’t know it yet. I had not yet learned about intentionality.

Years later, as my marriage was in its final death thralls, I was evicted from my home of 12 years. The kids and I were heartbroken. We had years of good and bad times in that house. I could not afford another house. I was going to have to move into a tiny apartment with my daughter. I had to do some major downsizing. I decided to sell this Atari replacement. Instead of selling it, my other son took it to play with his kids.

I felt its loss. I journaled about it. I learned by journaling that it was actually a trigger for me from a memory of when I no longer had my original Atari.

My parents gave me my original Atari when I was 12.. I grew up in a home with only one TV, and computers in homes were not a thing yet. It had to be plugged into a television.

My mother did shift work. When I came home from school, she was either at work which meant I could play, or upstairs sleeping when she was on midnight shift which also meant I could play, or she was at home often watching TV herself while doing housework or making dinner, which meant I could not play. Therefore, she never saw me playing it.

One day, I came home, and she was at home in the kitchen. The TV was on in the other room. She was watching off and on in between steps in prepping dinner, which meant I couldn’t play it. However, when I walked into the other room, I noticed the Atari was gone. The spot it was kept was empty.

I went into the kitchen and drilled her about what happened to my Atari. She informed me that she gave it to my brother, who did not live at home, because I never play it anyway.

I was so hurt and angry. I tried to point out to her that I did play it. A lot. She didn’t believe me. Why? Because she never physically saw me play it. I was even angrier because of her assumption that I was either lying to her, and the fact that she had no idea what I did or didn’t do in my life. That’s how life is when a parent works rotating shifts.

After all those decades, I learned that the Atari replacement was a trigger to my childhood resentment that I never took the time to heal from.

I love my mother. I don’t want anyone getting the wrong impression. She is a good parent. She did her best. I am no better or worse a parent. I have forgiven her for this years ago. I never dealt with the negative feelings of it though. I only stuffed them down. I didn’t complete the forgiveness process so I could let it go. Now that I have dealt with those feelings, I have no issue seeing any game in my son’s home.

One of my three gratitudes that day was being thankful that my other son had the heart to try and resurrect a happy memory for me by buying it in the first place. That was kind of him.

One of my affirmations for that day was for God to continue to give me the fortitude to keep facing triggers and put them into proper perspective. That Atari was a brick in the wall between my mother and me. That brick is not in our foundation.

Journaling is a key tool for intentionality.

So is daily Bible study and daily prayer.

In my separate journal of letters to Jesus during that entire ordeal, I let my feelings out in full color. Letter after letter of anger, hurt, confusion, begging Him for help, and so much more. Thank God He is a transcendent God who can take our hurts and angers and make good come from them. By doing so, I stay out of the 52 card pickup game with Job.

Thanks be to God!

 Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more!

Sarah

Humor In Chaos

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