Nazarite Call

I am at a loss over what to write about, on this my scheduled night to blog. Accordingly I have asked my roommates for suggestions. This is what they’ve come up with:

• the sky
• marbles
• food
• frozen balls of barley
• airplanes
• shelter
• doughnuts
• glazed doughnuts
• “The Bible”

Roommates! Are they not useful entities?

I don’t think that I have much to add on the subject of glazed doughnuts, other than the fact that I enjoy eating them. But I would like to talk a bit about marbles.

God gave me some insight over the past few weeks about the way that I deal with things like hurt and anger. I make them very small, and very hard, and I swallow them.

(The text in the picture — you’ll see all of it if you click on through on the image — is taken from Psalm 4: Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer.)

This swallowing thing: it’s really not a great thing to do. It’s like swallowing hard little marbles — and marbles break your teeth, and you can’t talk around them, and sometimes you choke a bit on the way down. And then afterwards they just sit in your stomach and give you ulcers. I tell you, it’s no fun at all. And it’s not what we’re supposed to do with our pain, anyway: we’re supposed to give it to God, I think, and let him deal with it.

For internalizers like me, this is a very difficult thing. Most of the time I don’t want to give it up, or I want to but don’t know how, because I’ve already swallowed it and I don’t know how to make it come out. It is so hard.

But the verse I wrote on my picture is more than just a topically-appropriate caption to the image: it is a prayer. Answer me when I call to you … give me relief from my distress. God has been giving me relief from my distress — from some very old distresses, I think — and though that’s been happening in wholly unexpected ways (as this internalizer has started rather violently externalizing some things) I welcome it. God is merciful and does hear our prayers. And he does give relief.

I’ve been spitting up marbles today, and it is sweet.

Christine Dearden

Way to spit, Christine! Thanks for sharing your evocative picture and inspiring post.

Comment by Linda Ruth Ciglen October 21, 2009 @ 5:29 pm

Reply

You don’t actually see the picture if you click it. Silly you.

Also, agreed, and yeah, spitting up = made of win.

J

Comment by Joel October 21, 2009 @ 11:28 pm

Reply