Learning helplessness

On Wednesday last week, I listened to the John Piper devotion titled ‘We All Need Help’. It was easy to agree to what he was saying as I microwaved my porridge and ate it in the safety of my room. 

‘Yes, Lord, I need help,’ I mused in my mind, as I helped myself to another spoonful of peanut-butter laced breakfast.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

Every one of us needs help. We are not God. We have needs. We have weaknesses. We have confusion. We have limitations of all kinds. We need help.

But every one of us has something else: We have sins. And therefore, at the bottom of our hearts we know that we do not deserve the help we need. And so, we feel trapped.

[…] Because we have a Great High Priest, the throne of God is a throne of grace. And the help we get at that throne of grace is mercy and grace to help in time of need. Grace to help! Not deserved help — gracious help. That’s why the High Priest, Jesus Christ, shed his own blood.

You are not trapped. Say no to that lie. We need help. We don’t deserve it. But we can have it. You can have it right now and forever. If you will receive and trust in your High Priest, Jesus the Son of God, and draw near to God through him.

Later that day I found myself in the library, losing myself to the anxiety of planning and trying to please all the people I wanted to meet and worrying about how much work was not getting done in the process, as I looked up restaurant locations on google maps and tried to overcome the reality of London’s vastness. Feeling overwhelmed, I sent a message to my bible study group (feeling again guilty for not going because I felt so anxious) and cycled home, giving myself a good talking to on the way.

‘Miriam – you’ve just got to be firm. You can only do so much. Just find a place, choose a time, and if you can meet them you can, if you can’t you can’t.’ 

Jacob gave very good advice that evening before we prayed – for me to pocket bits of time to focus on things like organising people and life, and to put that out of my mind when I did work – to focus with single-minded intention on work when I need to. So, armed with this practical set of strategies, I went into a new day with more confidence. I turned my phone off when I did reading or writing, I told friends that I needed to leave at specific times to do some work, and I fully engaged with people when I was with them (having fully engaged in work previously).

But it was a false sense of security – that lullaby of ‘I can change things and make everything alright’.  

That became so clear on Friday, when I experienced anxiety as I’d never experienced before. After a coffee with Sally, the beginnings of a knot in my stomach began, a blenched tension that didn’t leave but wound itself tighter within me. I tried to hide the tension (such a physical and also mental feeling) when meeting friends, going to a museum, playing board games. On one level – the rational level- I was having a good day. But my body was telling me everything to the contrary – you are in danger, something is wrong, it hurts, you aren’t normal, something is wrong, wrong, wrong. 

               

This was a different experience to Wednesday – there was no practical solution here. Turning off my phone wouldn’t help, being back home wouldn’t help, knowing my work was done and my friends were there didn’t help. Helpless, and so in need of help. What could I do? I prayed, a garbled thing of ‘God I don’t know why I’m feeling what I’m feeling. I hate this feeling. Help me through it. Help me return to myself. Help me.’ And though I didn’t know what exactly I was feeling and why, I knew that God is good, all the time, and I knew that God listens and answers prayer (something that has been proved time and time again to be over this term in answered prayers for people and circumstances that Jacob and I offer up to God when we pray together before bed).

And God answered the prayers I hadn't said when I didn't yet know this was going to happen - Alex was able to pick up her phone and soothe me when I was crying at the station, and that evening Jacob was in London and gave me a hug that reminded me I am loved and cared for and safe.

This week's poem was written on the train home (and edited afterwards), to do something other than freak out.

1. Hemmed in, on edge,

In my head I am prey:

I cannot eat or I will be eaten.

I walk - poised for flight -

crumpling and uncrumpling

a ticket in my pocket

a ticket out of here.

2. Tomorrow I will wake exhausted

and carry this fragile body into a new day.

Wanting to be held

- the soap dish cradles the soap

and water washes over me -

wanting to be held.

3. And before me a vision

opens like a flower

more sense than sight.

The feeling of dust speckled light

- descended -

on a wood worn table

and porridge, like a promise

warm and there.