stream

I rather like these entries, where I start typing with no real idea of what I'm going to say. It's a nice change when I've been trying so hard with writing recently to just let some thoughts flow.

Hmm.

What am I thinking?

Actually what I'm doing right now is eating. A slice of lemon bar cake that my mum bought me and a handul of frozen pineapple, peas and sweetcorn. And before you ask, yes, of course they're still frozen. What kind of girl do you think I am?

That whole joke about the student diet. It's really not so funny when you're dipping ever deeper into your overdraft, paid double your house deposit out of your own money and your primary joy in your flatmate getting a job at Medicine is that now you can get free food. Hoho, the grown-ups say, they're off to uni to eat beans on toast all year...

To which I say, who the hell can afford toast?

How's it going?

We talked a bit about healing at the Alpha course tonight. The course has been wicked so far, such an opportunity to just chat to people and have some really challenging debates. Tonight was something of a tough one.

Does anyone have any experience of God's healing? You're looking at me?

The first story on my lips is about a couple whose son was declared braindead and, by some miracle, is now married with children.

The second story is about Kit, lovely Kit, who will not be married with children. Kit, who God didn't heal.

Should I tell you about myself? I'll tell you about last Sunday, when I had stomach cramps so bad that I was shaking, and all the praying in the world wouldn't take them away.

Perhaps I'll tell you one day about the shit I got up to when I was thirteen, pain that drove me crazy til I went to church and I asked for it to be taken away and it was.

Maybe I'll tell you about how I slept with the light on until I was sixteen, became a Christian, asked to feel safe and now always feel safe.

Maybe I'll tell you about the first time someone actually prayed for me to be healed, last summer. How I cried uncontrollably and everyone said it was the Spirit in me and I didn't have the balls to say that actually, no, I just needed to cry.

I asked that it would end. And a voice in my ear said, not yet.

My mate tells me the drugs don't work. I ask if they'll just make me worse, but he means it, says they don't work. I tell him to shut up, to tell that to the people whose lives have been saved by anti-depressants.

Maybe I'll tell him how much better I feel. Maybe I'll tell him I secretly think he's right.

It's scary. Everyday at about six, I pour a glass of water and wonder what would happen if I were to stop taking them.

Days before you came / freezing cold and empty.

I've cried twice, I think, since starting the drugs. Once in that horrible dark week after Kit's funeral, when all the life was sucked out of me, I thought I'd fail my course and felt, if possible, even worse than I had done before.

The second time was on Sunday, when some very well-meaning people asked God to heal me of my depression.

Not yet.

I've learnt not to go for quick fixes. Let me get this straight - I believe that God heals people, fully and completely. I've heard too many testimonies and seen too many things, I've had far too much amazing change in my own life to doubt that.

I also know from bitter experience that God doesn't always heal people. Sometimes the lame stay lame, the blind stay blind, the miserable stay miserable and the living die. This is life in the real world, the fallen world, and it's shit sometimes.

In all things God works for the good of those who love him. Is that the toughest verse the New Testament asks us to get our heads around? I believe it's true. But I believe the world has a pretty crap view of what good is.

What you want isn't always what's good for you. I want my parents to win the lottery so they never have to worry. God knows better. I want a biscuit, I want ice cream, but my Dad knows that it'll rot my teeth.

I want God to take the pain away. But what I want more is to trust him. I don't like praying for healing because I think this is a process. I think there's a reason I've been so unhappy, some cause of these feelings, and I know that, eventually, I can figure it out and that, somehow, things will work out.

Sometimes all you have to do is ask. Other times all you have to do is trust.

I don't like it. I don't like the implied thought that perhaps I could be healed if only I'd focus a bit more, if only I'd pray a bit harder, if only I'd step out a bit further. I don't know how to put myself on the line any further than I already have. I'm all out, and I've gotta be honest, the only thing making me unhappy at the moment is standing there with my arms outstretched with people speaking tongues over me, somehow feeling like I've failed when the cramps don't ease, when the pain doesn't go.

Christ gave us authority over all illness. I'm still trying to figure out what that means. I know that it doesn't give us authority over life and death, or over God. It's not a matter of just getting up the guts to pray because if that was fucking true then I'd be fine and Kit would be alive. Stop saying that all it takes is guts. Please. Stop.

Funny how this goes. You sit down and start typing and pretty soon you get right to the heart of what's actually bothering you. I'm not gonna edit this, change it, or even re-read it until I've published it. This is as raw as you get it from me.

How to finish. A positive thought? I'm not worried as such, just a bit frustrated. I'm at peace with the fact that I'm in a bit of a spot and I have some issues to work through. I feel immeasurably better now that I'm getting help, some counselling and some useful medication. I don't want to become dependent on drugs, I don't believe they can 'fix' me, but as plasters go, they're pretty good at stopping the bleeding.

I don't believe that depression is just my lot in life. That's not the way it goes. Someone once spoke over me to say that they see incredible joy in my future. Which is fine. If nothing else, I get such hope from that. I believe that I will be ok, better than ok, I do believe in God's healing. Perhaps this is just the way my body is, the way my brain is, that's fine. People live with sickness and disease their entire lives. God doesn't always heal our bodies, but he can always heal our hearts.

And if that makes you want to vomit, that's fine too. This is about me learning to trust, in God and all kinds of other nice things like friends and family and (brace yourself) myself. It's more than a bit nauseating, but it's true. It's just gotta be done, hasn't it?